The Sinister Urge

SLAUGHTER HIGH (1986)
THE URGE TO KILL (1989)
LIVING DOLL (1990)

It took three directors - including Caroline Munro's partner George Dugdale - to helm SLAUGHTER HIGH.

AMERICAN horror and exploitation producer Dick Randall took up permanent residence in the UK from 1981 until his death, bankrolling a number of disposable fare including the three features under consideration here (he also produced DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS). SLAUGHTER HIGH - shot in London and at Holloway Sanatorium - is a cheesy slasher which begins with bespectacled high school nerd Marty Rantzen (Simon Scuddamore) seduced by Carol (Caroline Munro) as a joke. Several other students appear and physically abuse Marty while filming his ordeal, before the school's coach (Marc Smith) intervenes. However the April Fool's Day pranksters aren't finished yet, giving Rantzen Marijuana which accidentally sets off a chain of events that ends with Marty being doused with nitric acid. Ten years later the culprits are invited back to a fake school reunion, where Marty stalks them in a jester mask.

By the mid 1980s the slasher genre existed in self parody - even Jason Voorhees is referenced by name here - and sample killings in SLAUGHTER HIGH are suitably outlandish for their cliched characters: Ted (Michael Saffran)'s stomach explodes after drinking acid-laced beer, Shirley (Josephine Scandi) is melted in an acid bath, Joe (Gary Martin) is eviscerated by tractor blades, and Stella (Donna Yaeger) and Frank (EMMERDALE favourite Billy Hartman) are electrocuted while having sex. But the most ridiculous factors are the variable American accents and Munro trying to pass herself off as "girl most likely to succeed" despite being thirty-six at the time. Like the movie itself the cast are simply going through the motions. Only Scuddamore goes the extra mile in what would be his one and only film; the actor committed suicide by a drugs overdose not long after the production's wrap.

Following in the footsteps of H.A.L. 9000 and Skynet, THE URGE TO KILL's murderous A.I. takes sexually driven human form.

THE URGE TO KILL's premise is given away by its working title: ATTACK OF THE KILLER COMPUTER. Written and directed by renowned smut peddler Derek Ford, this unreleased travesty tells of lecherous music producer Bono Zorro (Alan Lake lookalike Peter Gordeno). Bono lives in a hi-tech flat (actually Randall's London apartment) which is run by a computer called S.E.X.Y.; however the A.I. develops feelings and becomes jealous of his female company. The computer kills the girls by scalding in the shower, death by electric toothbrush, melting by jacuzzi and - in the most notorious scene - a woman is trapped in a sun bed and her breasts explode. Somehow S.E.X.Y. has been able to manifest itself in human form, a green and silver nude woman who can even drive a car.

Horror movies of the 1980s both feared and revered technological advances, asking questions where society might be heading as we embraced the home computer boom. For THE URGE TO KILL, the answer is down the sexploitation sewer. In his last film, Ford crafts a tale that is Alexa meets DEMON SEED meets GARTH MARENGHI'S DARKPLACE (but without it being an in-joke). All the actresses have zero credentials, and spout dialogue as if reading idiot boards off screen. This, together with the dubious dubbing and hokey special effects, make it simply one of the worst entries in the entire British horror film canon.

"Look at her hair, its real"; Mark Jax and Katie Orgill in LIVING DOLL. Despite the perverse premise, the film falls between comedic understatement and gross-out.

In LIVING DOLL, introverted medical student Howard Adams (Mark Jax) works in the NYC Metropolitan morgue (actually Hammersmith Hospital) with wisecracking Jess (Gary Martin) for hostile boss Ed (Freddie Earlie). Howie is infatuated with Christine (Page 3 girl and model Katie Orgill, in her only acting role), who runs the flower shop at the hospital. He is shocked when she becomes his latest arrival, having been accidentally killed in a car accident by her obnoxious boyfriend Steve (Marcel Grant). Adams is shaken to discover a medical card indicating Christine suffered from catalepsy; refusing to accept she is definitely dead, he digs up her casket and carries her corpse back to his fleapit apartment, despite rent problems with harridan landlady Mrs Swartz (Eartha Kitt). Howie and Christine share the happenings of "their" day, watch television and cuddle on the couch - the student even brings a teddy bear back from her apartment - as the maggots and rats slowly take hold.

LIVING DOLL is a ponderous sleazefest that exists in a dreamstate tinged in sadness; it is a story that doesn't develop, and has a cast that aren't engaging. Every role is unlikeable or stereotypical; gullible nurses and a transsexual who lurks in alleyways are quite unnecessary. Orgill is visibly breathing in some scenes, but the sudden lapses into an "alive" state are jolting and effective. The lurid effects on Christine's decaying corpse help magnify the insanity, and there is also a gruesome autopsy sequence (yet the "money shot" is undoubtedly Howie's gooey, open-mouthed kiss).

Santa Slayer

DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS (1984)

“Do you think we might have a psychopath on our hands?” Wearing a distorting plastic mask, a hooded killer is terrorising London Santa's in Britain's answer to the American slasher craze of the 1980s.

WITH a scene of 198 naked, elderly men corralled in an electrified reindeer pen, the release of Finnish horror RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE is set to rekindle interest in the sleazy sub-genre of mean-spirited Christmas cinema. Origins of this particular type of film can be traced back to the Mexican-made SANTA CLAUS in 1959, which displays both a nauseatingly wholesome attitude to its hero and near surreal art direction. It features Santa battling Satan, who sends bad dreams to innocent children and inspires them to break windows and steal toys. The original killer Santa appeared in the celebrated And All Through the House segment of TALES FROM THE CRYPT, before the festive season was the setting for two influential slashers released in 1974: the sorority-house based BLACK CHRISTMAS and the giallo-like SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT. The most notorious, SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is actually nothing special, but came along at the wrong time and felt the brunt of a slasher-weary protest movement during its 1980s explosion. Rather than following the mold of these previous entries, DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS makes Santa the victim, focusing on the search for a London serial killer who slays Shopping Centre Father Christmas's.

The film is associated with a long list of cult personalities. Producers Stephen Minasian and Dick Randall had previously been involved with FRIDAY THE 13TH and PIECES; Derek Ford, a director and writer of sex films throughout the 1960s and 70s, wrote the screenplay; Alan Birkinshaw, who helmed the notorious KILLER'S MOON - here credited as Al McGoohan - is "assistant director"; and Des Dolan (the guiding light behind the Go Video label) provides the score. Fallen star Edmund Purdom heads the cast as Scotland Yard detective Ian Harris, and set dressing is provided by Caroline Munro cameoing as herself, and sex starlets Pat Astley (as a nude model) and Paula Meadows (as the London Dungeon secretary). In his final film Alan Lake plays journalist Giles, a fittingly seedy role to end a seedy life; a notorious heavy drinker who had punched an extra on the set of THE PLAYBIRDS, he was most famous for being the third husband - and attempted murderer - of Diana Dors, before shooting himself in 1984.

Why has a killer such an apparent and vile disgust for Santa and the festive holiday? The answer is supplied in this obligatory childhood flash-back scene.

This role call of suspect talent could not prevent DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS suffering one of the most troubled shoots in British cinema history. The film took two years to complete and scenes were reshot and rearranged endlessly, with Birkinshaw, Ford, Purdom and editor Ray Selfe all taking turns in the director's chair. What eventually surfaces looks suitably filthy and is technically inept, but at least the body count is kept consistent and the deaths bloody and inventive; one Father Christmas has his penis cut off with a razor, while another has his face thrust into roasting chestnuts. There are also scenes that exude a sleazy charm: the photographer snapping nudes in his grubby bedsit could have come straight from any British smut-fest of the previous decade, and Munro's glittery performance of an instantly forgettable song (Warrior of Love) concludes with a scream when a Santa with a machete in his face comes up through the stage trapdoor.