the slayer

Difficult to categorize and even harder to see since its release in 1982, The Slayer is a psychological slasher film with a pre-Nightmare on Elm Street killer that stalks its victims' dreams. Director J.S. Cardone doesn't do as much with the concept as Wes Craven managed to a few years later, but his approach is just different enough to make this one a square peg in the round hole of '80s horror.

Kay (Sarah Kendall) is an artist whose recent abstract work is caused by a series of nightmares that have kept her mentally and emotionally on edge. Her husband, David (Alan McRae) suggests tagging along on a trip with her brother and his wife to an isolated island retreat. But their arrival only makes Kay more uneasy as their vacation home seems eerily similar to the landscape of her dreams.

Sure enough, David and the others are soon in danger from an unseen force that roams the island, sealing their fate in exactly the same manner Kay predicted. Their survival, and her own, depends on her staying awake to prevent her nightmare from becoming a hellish reality!

Citing Val Lewton as a major influence, Cardone certainly adopts the same patient approach to crafting his story. With only a few characters to kill off, the body count is considerably lower than most slashers from the era and avoids the usual POV clichés. In fact, other than a few very brief set piece gore effects (including a subtle but effective pitchforking), The Slayer is focused more on mood than mutilation. And its ace in the hole is the shooting location - Tybee Island, Georgia - captured during a windy and desolate looking off-season. With drifting sand and cold, inhospitable waves trapping our troubled foursome, there's more than a hint of Lewton's I Walked with a Zombie or Isle of the Dead.

But the actors struggle to fill their roles with anything more than amateurish enthusiasm. Lead actress Sarah Kendall (in her only role besides a stewardess in Karate Kid 2) fits the part of a haunted artist, with sunken eyes and a distracted stare. The others disappear into an uninteresting background of worrisome nagging and bad decisions. And despite his attempts to keep things classy, Cardone more often than not falls back on endless scenes of people creeping through the dark calling out various names. The Slayer is compulsively watchable, if only for its relative obscurity, but is still weighted down by the usual flaws inherent in the genre...even if the filmmakers themselves won't admit it.

Arrow Films new Blu-delivers a beauty of a Blu-ray on every level, from the superb transfer (a 4K scan from the original negative) to an enormously entertaining slate of extras. There are three commentary tracks to choose from: one from Cardone and company, another with The Hysteria Continues horror podcast, and finally a 60-minute of so conversation with composer Robert Folk followed by musical selections. And anything not covered there is certainly brought up in the hour-long documentary Nightmare Island: The Making of the Slayer. A tour of the original Tybee Island locations, footage from a recent Tybee Island screening, Q & A and audience "reaction track" that allows you to experience the film with a live audience complete the package.