After I finished viewing this (and I did, incredibly), something happened that normally doesn't occur after I finish watching bad slasher movies: I began to think. Not so much about the movie itself--it's wretched badness is self-evident--but why it was made, and who it was being marketed to.
Anyone who loves slashers or studies their rise and fall knows that the majority of these films exist because of simple economics: slashers made money. Great cost-to-profit ratios and insatiable demand made these movies fool-proof investment ventures. I don't have any hard figures, but I would venture most of these efforts turned a profit, or at least made back their expenses plus. Of course, this assembly-line approach to movie making didn't always produce cinematic masterpieces, and it's a wonder that so many slashers are as solid (or watchable) as they are. Which brings us to this movie.
What makes SLEDGEHAMMER unique is not the film itself, it's concept, script, or cinematography, but it's intended audience. The biggest question starts with the movie's medium: video tape. Why would David Prior choose this? Few, if any, conventional movie theaters in the early 80s had the technology to project video tape. Was he trying to market the movie to cable TV? The quality of most cable programming from this time was bad, but not THAT bad. The straight to video market? That wasn't even a gleam in anyone's eye at this point. Two possibilities come to mind: Prior made this cheaply and quickly as a marketing tool, something to show to potential investors/producers that he could make a (barely) passable feature film, or he simply made it to show to himself that he could make a movie. No other logical reasons come to mind.
Prior's trying to prove his mettle as a movie maker couldn't be too far from the truth, because the movie itself has little to recommend it. A paper-thin narrative, one-dimensional characters, terrible acting and at times incoherent line readings, clumsy editing, copious padding, and an overall cheap look make this one of the worst slashers in a long, coagulated smear of bad slashers. The script must have only been 10-15 pages long, because most of the scenes seems improvised: food fights, actors roaming around outbuildings and rummaging through piles of junk, slow-mo walks across yards. One thing of note: the killer seems to be some supernatural entity, as evidenced by his disappearing and reappearing in the hallways of Prior's apartment (the main shooting locale), which means this killer beat Freddy Kruger to the punch by a few years. And Prior did improve, working mostly in the B-grade action movie genre, but also making a better slasher later (KILLER WORKOUT). It isn't a milestone, but it did offer a unique concept and better overall execution. And it was even shot on film.
Review of Sledgehammer
