a review of

HOOPTOBER NINE! NIGHT NINE! + 2022 CULT MOVIE CHALLENGE WEEK 39: BLEEDING SKULL WEEK Found this one a lot more enjoyable than I would have suspected going in. The slasher plot is some pretty by-the-numbers stuff obviously swiped from Halloween/Friday the 13th/Black Christmas with some fairly lackluster kills, but the structure of everything around it is kind of fascinating. Like the decision to have the heroine (who I failed to recognize as Doogie Howser's mom) just chasing down bureaucratic paperwork for half of the movie, or to have a two-story sorority house apparently built on top of a multilevel stygian labyrinth of industrial corridors and steam tunnels, or to cast nebbishy/gay character actor Sydney Lassick as the surly local sheriff. Not to mention the decision to shoot the whole thing in 3D (readily apparent from the blurry depth-of-field when watched in 2D) but to only have a handful of coming-at-you shots sprinkled throughout. Veteran actress Viveca Lindfors gets top billing here for a character who really only gets maybe two or three scenes to make any particular impression, and she gives easily most realistic, affecting performance in the whole film. She stands out so much from the rest of the ensemble that the "twist" with her character -- revealed only in the final minutes -- feels literally telegraphed from the moment she appears.