Scalps (1983)

best movie i've ever seen.

As Good As It Gets

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Scalps (1983) * 1/2 (out of 4)Some archeologist students head out to some Indian land where they plan on digging bodies up so that they can take ka variety of items. It doesn't take long for them to unleash an evil spirit who decides to teach them a lesson.Fred Olen Ray's SCALPS has become a cult favorite over the years and in all honesty I can see why. The film certainly borrows some elements from THE HILLS HAVE EYES but back in the day when VHS was all the craze, something like SCALPS would be the perfect example of the type of film that made that format boom. Yes, the film is quite poor and very boring at times but there's still some low-budget charm to it.The biggest problem with SCALPS is the fact that the middle section is just downright boring. The film kicks off in high gear as we see a decapitation right off the bat and you get ready to see this type of thing throughout the 88-minute running time but it doesn't happen again for quite a while. The entire middle section of this picture is downright boring as the characters do nothing but talk about what we've already seen them do and talk about what we're about to see them do.The horror elements finally kick in and that's when we get some more fun, gory violence but it takes a very long time to get there and by the time it does come it's just too late. I will say that the film has some charm if you're a fan of these types of movies. The cast range from poor to okay but you do get Forrest J. Ackerman playing a small role.

I think I've got Fred Olen Ray's schtick down now. After watching however so many of his movies, I think this is his approach: to take a completely trite excuse for a story that anyone who has ever seen a horror movie could recite in their sleep and then suck it of any of the life and possibility of interest it ever could have had. His movies are usually short, barely clocking in at over an hour, and that entire first hour will be "characters" wandering around doing absolutely nothing of interest and certainly nothing that will invest them with a personality, or give you any reason whatsoever to care about them at all. After he has lulled you to sleep better than your grandmother could when you were six months old, he'll start deploying with the actual "horror" movie stuff, ie. gore, but as I said, you'll be asleep or perhaps even comatose by this point.In the first hour of a Fred Olen Ray movie, he carefully constructs as many barriers between you and caring about his movie as he can. In the last ten or fifteen minutes, he throws the things you probably watched the movie hoping to see at you, ie. the blood and guts, but you probably gave up at barrier 3 or 4 and have long since stopped paying attention to the movie and started doing something else."Scalps" has a few extra barriers between you and it, aside from its most sturdy, ie. the tedium of it. These are the picture quality and the sound. The movie looks like it was filmed through mud. You can barely make out what you are seeing, anyway, so even if it wasn't boring and pointless, you wouldn't be able to see it.The sound was obviously all recorded in post production, making it stick out like a sore thumb and sound entirely unnatural and distracting throughout the entire movie. It makes you want to watch the characters lips at the beginning at least, knowing it's probably totally out of sync, but then you realise that you can't really see their lips - remember? The movie was filmed through mud.The plot is something to do with college students (I guess) going to stay in an Indian burial ground. They wander around doing nothing and saying nothing of interest for an hour until they are killed in a variety of admittedly gruesome ways. One is clubbed from behind by something that looks like a topless Dame Edna Everidge. In the movie's most noteworthy scene of violence, a woman is, indeed, actually scalped, so at least there was a reason for the title other than the racist exploitation of Native American myths the movie engages in.The scalping scene may not look all that realistic, but it must have cost some actual money. If they could afford to do that, why couldn't they have come up with a plot for this mess, a boom mic, and a camera lens that wasn't covered in sludge?

Director Fred Olen Ray has admitted that his movie, Scalps, concerning an evil Indian warrior spirit, Black Claw, who takes over the body of hunky Richard Hench who, in turn, begins murdering his fellow college classmates/friends in gruesome ways after excavating the ancient artifacts from a burial ground near a sacred area called the Black trees, was badly tampered with by rude investors("The guys from New York")making the entire experience an incomprehensible, incoherent mess. Ray, through great trouble, has tried to assemble a film in it's entirety using what materials were present, but Scalps(..sent to numerous foreign distributors who themselves edited footage out and into Scalps), he admits, is still an improper version of what he set out to accomplish. I thought the film itself was rather dismal, but his audio commentary was both fascinating and enlightening as he thoroughly explained the painstaking process he went through attempting to bring this film back to it's complete form. The photography(..Ray proclaims that he at least worked with 7 or 8 DP's)is often really ugly and the cast doesn't help the director out. From start to finish, the film is a trial to sit through. The pacing drags at a snail's pace, and the dialogue can make your ears bleed, but perhaps the writing is hampered by those who say the words. The Black Claw spirit carries the facial features of a grotesque witch you might find in a Grimm Fairy Tale storybook. The gore often delivers the goods, specifically the scalping scene and slit throat which gushes blood. There's also an impressive oozing bullet wound to the forehead as well. There's an unpleasant rape scene where Richard Hench's possessed Randy throws his girlfriend down, ripping her shirt and bra, while forcing penetration as she cries out in horror. Ray mentions in the audio commentary that he didn't want to create such a scene but wanted to distribute this film into theaters and that "the guys in New York" demanded nudity during the rape. I thought Forrest J Ackerman's cameo, plugging his MOnsters mag, was shameless and inappropriate(..and it was clear that Olen Ray doesn't exactly condone it in retrospect). Carroll Borland(..the *vampire* protégé of Lugosi's Count in Browning's MARK OF THE VAMPIRE)has a minor scene as a college dean furious with anthropology professor(..played by former Superman Kirk Alyn)for breaking certain rules regarding artifacts he possibly confiscated illegally. My favorite scenes in the film feature skeletal remains left burning in the sun as either a rat or desert tarantula crawl about over it. The history behind this film is far better than the product presented, but Scalps is a definite example of what can happen when a directors work is butchered by others. The beheading is rather limply presented. The music alternately works and/or is tiresome.

Gritty, low-budget horror film from Fred Olen Ray. A group of teens on an archaeological dig disrupt the angry ghost of an Indian. One member is possessed, and by the end of the film, the cast is pretty much dead. The first half takes a while going nowhere, but a certain feeling of dread hangs over each shot of the film, and helps things move along a little bit smoother, especially when nothing is really happening. The murders come quick and are quite bloody, something this movie is known for. The special effects rank as pretty good, to just plain cheesy. The acting is passable and the characters are not a pain to watch. The film was shot on a pretty creepy piece of land, and it keeps the story moving. The movie is pretty flawed though. Scenes are shown out of order, creating confusion to a basically simple story. Some of the action takes place in complete darkness, which is just annoying. The video print I saw many many years ago was basically unwatchable at times. The DVD release is cleaned up but still pretty bad in spots. For the basic horror fan, this is fine for a view. Two And A Half Stars.