Sledgehammer (1983)

Such a frustrating disappointment

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

"Sledgehammer" is more than just a lousy and nearly insufferable early 80's slasher flick! This milestone in its own league marked the debut feature of none other than David A. Prior! Who? The name might not ring a bell to cinematic value seekers, but since more than three decades straight now, Mr. Prior is one of the most over-active and prolific trash directors in the business. Nearly forty bad films in thirty years, that's what I call perseverance and dedication! And David doesn't operate all by himself, in fact, since practically his entire repertoire stars his hunky beefcake brother Ted. The two heroic brothers started out with horror flicks ("Sledgehammer" and the equally horrendous "Killer Workout"), but then quickly turned to jungle adventures and Vietnam action vehicles probably because they realized Ted's posture is more fit for that type of movies. Their absolute highlight inarguably remains the phenomenal 1987 "Deadly Prey", which is – I believe – a movie that everybody in the whole world needs to watch.But back to David & Ted's first venture into the movie industry, entitled "Sledgehammer", which is … a lousy and nearly insufferable early 80's slasher flick! This shot-on-video project simply oozes amateurishness, ineptitude and total helplessness. We're talking horribly weak camera-work, a complete lack of editing, pathetic stereotype characters, limited set-pieces, atrocious acting performances, zero attempt to build up tension and/or atmosphere, insufficient plot material to fill a long feature film (resulting in a dreadful amount of irritating padding footage) and laughable gore effects accomplished with kitchen equipment! A bunch of idiots invade a countryside mansion for a weekend of booze and childish fun, but during the opening sequences we witnessed already how a woman and her lover were "brutally slain" with a sledgehammer in the same house one decade earlier. The woman's 8-year-old son vanished after the murders, but local legend states that he's still dwelling around in the area. Following the worst amateur-séance in history, the group members are butchered one after the other by … a guy with a sledgehammer! Now, who might he be? Although I probably shouldn't waste any further words to this awful stinker, I would still like to highlight two elements in "Sledgehammer": the characters and the padding footage. Ted Prior is quite embarrassing as the "leader" exposing his muscled torso the entire time, but strangely enough he still is the most authentic masculine character. There's a dude called John, who looks like a wardrobe closet and doesn't have more than 2 brain cells (1 for beer, 1 for food). Whenever he kisses his girlfriend, he practically eats her entire face! Another guy, named Jimmy, clearly struggles with his sexuality. Also, his mullet and porno-mustache are hilarious. The script is extremely anti-feminist, since the three girls in the cast hardly say or do anything of significance. 85% of the film's content is pure filler, without exaggerating. Exterior shots of the house last for approximately 30 seconds, unloading the van upon arrival at the house takes up about five minutes and there's a truckload of sequences illustrating empty stairs and empty rooms. There's a pointless "we are walking in the garden together" collage (in slow-motion!) and the absolute masterwork of stretching time is a pitiable food-fight sequence. Heck, even the sole sex sequence in "Sledgehammer" is dull and overlong!

This is a homemade 80's slasher film that appears to have cost about 14 bucks to make and looks like it was shot on a VHS camcorder (I'm not kidding). It was shown at a theater in L.A. recently as part of a homemade horror video festival and I still can't get it out of my mind. The film begins with an abused child being locked in a closet while his mother has a drunken fling with a character referred to in the credits as the "Lover". Before the affair can commence a giant masked maniac armed with a sledgehammer beats them to a bloody pulp. A title card (old ass 80's camcorder text) tells us it's 10 years later and we are introduced to seven potential victims as they go for a weekend retreat in the home of the previous murders where they are systematically stalked and killed by the same sledge wielding madman. OK, I know it all sounds very derivative and there are much better, more professional cheap ass slashers out there, but this movie is "special" in a lot of ways. First off, the low production value and it's cheap, home video quality cinematography actually enhance the film a lot. That combined with a simple, yet effective, bass heavy synthesizer score, an amateur cast made up of muscle bound jocks and big hair bimbos, and a freakishly tall killer who wears a clear plastic mask and is genuinely creepy looking make this movie transcend into a weird kinda art piece. It's like if Pinter made a slasher movie at a friends house one weekend for beer money on his home video camera. There is also an unexplained paranormal bit where the killer can physically change back into the small child from the beginning so I assume the kid is the killer and he's a shape shifter. Huh!? This effect is handled with an old fashioned dissolve. There is a completely inappropriate food fight that is extended for so long it becomes almost disturbing on a sociological level. The killer is SO big he barely clears the hallway's ceiling as he chases a victim and he holds his sledgehammer in one hand the way most normal people hold a regular hammer. Freaky. This whole films visual style is unnerving and escalates it into something much more than what was probably intended. David Lynch meets The Slumber Party Massacre. If you can get a bootleg dub somewhere, get high and drunk with as many friends you can find and toss it on the old VCR. The 80's never seemed stranger.

Sledgehammer was the slasher debut of David A. Prior whose name you may recognise as the mastermind behind the grated cheese extravaganza that was Aerobicide (aka Killer Workout). Although Aerobicide was hardly a work of art, it was mainly memorable for the fact that it was so inadvertently humorous that it caused a damn site more giggles than it did chills down the spine of its viewers. I must admit that I expected more of the same from Sledgehammer as it was released three years before the aforementioned throwaway hit the shelves, which could only mean that it was bound to be considerably worse than its follow up. Its very rare that my initial expectations have failed me throughout the slasher genre, but I must admit that I held a glimmer of hope that Sledgehammer might just be a forgotten gem.We start with a mind numbingly long and equally pointless shot of the outside of a country home. Finally the camera pans inside where we see a mother struggling to silence a young brat who doesn't look too interested in the fact he's in a movie. The middle-aged woman is your typical clichéd sadistic parent, and she proves it by locking the boy in a closet for the evening, much to his unconvincing distaste. She returns downstairs to her seventies-throwback boyfriend and tells him, "Don't worry about the kid, I took care of that little b'stard, he won't be bothering us again tonight." The couple start getting jiggy, which leaves them blissfully unaware that a silhouetted assailant is creeping up behind them. Before you can say 'by the book', the maniac cranks the unsuspecting playboy on the head with a sledgehammer (hence the title.)- Great gore scene by the way! After the mother too is measured up for a body bag, the screen fades to black… Fast-forward fifteen years and a van pulls up outside that same now-abandoned abode. Out pops a gang of outrageously mulleted muscle bound jocks and their scrawny girlfriends, who have presumably turned up only to party-party-PARTY! We never find out why they've picked that particular venue for their gathering, but I must admit that it doesn't look too shabby for a place that's been abandoned for a decade and a half! I should tell you that this motley crew's idea of a 'great party' is somewhat inexplicably bizarre. Yes I agree that the continuous beer swigging and contagious flirtation is par for the course. However I struggle to believe that dancing like a headless chicken and pulling bizarre faces whilst covering each other with the contents of the kitchen cupboard ranks highly on anyone's list of classic fiesta ingredients. Eventually things take a turn for the sinister when someone mentions holding a séance. Bad move, because before you know it a masked sledgehammer-wielding killer has been resurrected from beyond the grave to cause havoc amongst the hapless revellers.Many fans of the eighties slasher craze enjoy watching these back-dated titles mainly for the shameless amount of cheese that's spread thick and fast all over the cheap video tape like butter on a piece of toast. Well if you're one of that number you'll be pleased to hear that watching Sledgehammer will make you believe that you've fallen asleep and woken up in a dairy. There are plenty of bad movie moments to be found here, which are mainly supplied by the hilariously daft cast members and their shockingly out-dated eighties fashions. But the good news is that when the horror starts, David Prior does well to build a creepy atmosphere and the movie manages to switch between moods quite effortlessly. It's a shame that such a gooey opening gore shot was not bettered as the runtime grew, but instead the effects seemed to dry out as the film drew to its conclusion. The cast here do a pretty good job – wow did I really just say that? No honestly, although none of them could ever be labelled as great or even good thespians, they weren't distinctively horrendous. I especially thought that Ted Prior tried his hardest and funnily enough that was proved by the fact that he would continue to work with his brother on many of his later film projects.Shot on video features are not the best quality productions even today, so you can guess how sketchy this looked being released over twenty years ago. It's true that the camcorder-like cinematography does show its limits at times, but thankfully the sets are competently lighted and Prior makes the most of the minimal budget. The maniac could have been given a better disguise; because a hulking lumberjack in a plastic see-through mask was hardly nightmare inducing. Perhaps the flick's only attempt at any originality was allowing the killer to appear and disappear as if he were being beamed up by Scottie every time he needed a rapid escape. Only problem was that David Prior - like a child with a new toy - irritatingly overused the effect ad nauseum. And whilst we're listing the film's numerous flaws I must mention the 'must-have' sex scene, which has to be the most unconvincing reconstruction of the exercise ever filmed. It makes you wonder if the actors involved were perhaps the oldest virgins on the planet?Sledgehammer is as clichéd as an Elvis look-alike contest and makes no attempt to conceal its magpie nature. With that said though, slasher fans will enjoy the odd gore shot and some of the silliest dialogue ever placed on cheap videotape. I doubt you'll ever be able to track a copy of this rarity down, but if you do manage to uncover it somewhere, then give it a go - if only for a quick giggle

I am a fond lover of the horrible straight to video shot on camera horror movies of the eighties but this one was just UNWATCHABLE. Well first it starts off with this mother locking her son in the closet so she and this guy can do the naughty but I guess as any normal person would the kid does not like this and comes out and kills his mother and his mothers "friend". Well over the next years a group moves in and...you can pretty much guess what happens later on....the son is somewhat older and kills the people off. The worst thing about this movie is that the director shows the same scene for a good 10 minutes and it gets just a tad bit boring. This is the same director that made the awesome "Killer Workout" so I cant call this movie a complete waste of time but I know for sure I won't take another hour or so to watch it again. This movie makes bad movies we love horrible. 3 out of 10