Box Art Review #12
Death Valley (1982)
Directed by
Starring
The Movie
Death Valley is a lot like the movie Prison in that they
both have impressive casts and most people have never seen them. Also, they’re
both on Blu Ray through Scream Factory, so there’s that too.
Death Valley opens with a kid and his dad palling it up in
New York for like 5 minutes and the music makes it seem like you’re about to
watch a family film. Then you realize that the kid is Ralphie from A Christmas
Story and you really start to wonder
if this is a family film. Sidenote: The guy that directed Christmas Story (Bob
Clark) also directed Black Christmas which is considered by many to be the
first slasher film (or at least the one that kicked off the 80s trend (there’s
a good argument that Psycho is the first slasher film and a lot of people claim
a lot of other movies were the first slasher movie too, so…) and supposedly is
where John Carpenter got the idea for Halloween. Also, if you wanna get real
fuckin tangential, the kid that played the bully, Farkus, in A Christmas Story
was in Freddy Vs. Jason. A Christmas Story has a long reach in the horror genre
apparently.
As soon as Ralphie starts talking, you realize how much of
an asshole this kid is. He can’t take a hint when his dad tries to tell him
that there’s no way he’s getting back together with his mom and makes him
deliver possibly the coldest analogy for divorce that I’ve ever heard. Then he
hits the road with his mom and her new bf, who seems to be a nice enough guy,
and just puts the guy on blast the whole drive.
Another reason I’m surprised Death Valley isn’t more fondly
remembered: this is one fo those movies where they went way over board
designing a special car for the villain, and it looks totally badass.
Some random trailer trash get their throats slashed open and
you start to realize it’s not a family film when you see a woman’s boobs.
Ralphie happens upon the trailer where the bare boobed lady got killed and
stupidly steals the bad guy’s weird hippie frog necklace. Then the whole family
meets up for lunch where the mom and her new man both order chili and Ralphie
gets a burger. But, and here’s where things get crazy, the mom orders and
orange juice with her chili, the new man orders a milk with his chili, and
Ralphie orders his burger rare. What planet do these people live on? Oh yeah,
and the waiter has the same necklace as the one Ralphie stole earlier.
Ralphie and his mom and his not-dad hit the road again and
see the wreckage of the RV from earlier where that chick got her throat cut for
not wearing a shirt. Wilford Brimely stops by on his way to the set of John
Carpenter’s The Thing (Death Valley was released a month before The Thing in ’82)
to play the sheriff who knows a dark secret. The rest of the movie is set in
Knott’s Berry Farm style ghost town where cowboy serial killer twins (not as
dumb as it sounds) stalk Ralphie and his new family unit. Somehow, the movie
manages to make a reference to the daydream scene with “Black Bart” from A
Christmas Story a year before it actually came out (I doubt it was vice versa,
but maybe).
Death Valley isn’t the kind of movie that looks good on paper.
Reading the description, I couldn’t help but remember the terrible 90s slasher
Leprechaun. They both have low budgets, stupid concepts, and cast members that
went on to do bigger and better things. But somehow, possibly because it stars
a little kid, Death Valley strays pretty far from the usual slasher territory and
is more like a neo-noir thriller, especially given the setting and a lot of the
background music. Unfortunately it never really does anything too memorable,
all the kills are literally the same and the cool car barely sees any action. It
may sound kinda stupid, but I recommend Death Valley for anyone who wants to
see the kid from A Christmas Story in danger of getting murdered, or also if you’re
a horror fan who hasn’t seen this one yet, but really, it’s fucking Ralphie from A Fucking Christmas Story in a fucking
slasher movie.
The Cover
I’m sorry, but Ralphie looks like a creepy sex doll. Like,
for real man. The cover is very reminiscent of Home Alone already, and that
weird wide open circular gaping mouth brings these uncomfortable thoughts about
Michael Jackson to my mind. Maybe that’s just me; maybe I’m fucked in the head
or something. Regardless it’s a really lazy cover design. The cover doesn’t do
anything to really clue you in on what the plot of the movie is, and what’s
worse, is that the only sign of any danger at all is this tiny knife reflected
in the sunglasses. This is a movie about cowboy killers in the desert, you’re
telling me they really couldn’t find some kind of western imagery to throw in
there and play up the cowboy angle? On top of that, the villains drive this
really badass car, why not put that on the cover? It would be one of those
cases where the movie doesn’t really deliver what’s on the cover, but it would
at least be interesting, which this cover is not.
The Movie: 3/5
The Cover: 1/5
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