JULY 8, 2023
GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)
Sometimes I get a plot synopsis of a movie in my head that is so far from what it actually is, I have to wonder where exactly I got the idea and if I’m having a stroke of some sort. All-American Murder has been sitting in the pile for nearly two years now, and despite the presence of Christopher Walken (and ‘90s crush Josie Bissett), I kept shrugging it off, because of its plot of a professor who teaches a class about serial killers and how he encourages one student to commit his own. But that isn’t even remotely the plot! Where the hell did I come up with that? It’s so damn weird, and it’s not the first time it’s happened.
No, this is actually a giallo-esque college slasher about a “bad boy” type (Charlie Schlatter) who falls for the most popular girl on campus (Bissett) and then becomes the chief suspect when she is murdered. But head cop Walken takes a strange liking to him and gives him 24 hours to clear his name, so it skirts into buddy comedy territory at times except with Walken and the one-time Ferris Bueller, which is an amusing concept even without the Argento-tinged death scenes, where folks are killed by drills, snakes, and – yes! – even a black-gloved killer stabbing someone in the back. Add in Walken’s usual off-kilter performance and you have a recipe for a movie that is basically begging for my love and affection. Hell it even has a power ballad on the end credits that could have subbed in for “Sword and the Stone” from the Shocker soundtrack.
I also had to laugh that I had never heard of the film and then spent an additional two years ignoring it after it arrived from Vinegar Syndrome (who no longer sends me things unprompted, so finding such minor gems won’t be happening anymore, alas), because my only real criticism of the film, besides some uneven pacing (after Bissett’s murder there isn’t another for a while, and then they happen in quick succession) is that it was pretty easy to guess the killer, something that would not have been the case if I watched it 30 years ago like I should have (at the time I also crushed on Bissett’s fellow Melrose Place-r Amy Locane and thus tracked down a DTV horror movie she made*, why didn’t I do the same for the lovely Jane Mancini?). It’s something that would have worked great on the page, and assuredly shocked the hell out of anyone reading the script, but on-screen there’s something a little too obvious to me about how Bissett’s death scene plays out that tipped me off almost instantly who the culprit was. I don’t want to spoil it, so I can’t go into further detail, but suffice to say it’s one of those things that I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t seen 11,000 movies over the years, a couple of which tried something similar.
But otherwise it’s pretty fun! Sometimes the script is a bit too slick for its own good, where every character is fighting to be the one with the memorable lines in a scene, but there are enough good ones to forgive it. I mean, one of Walken’s earliest lines is “I never forget a face, especially if I’ve sat on it,” which is so hilarious it buys the movie leeway for a dozen eye-rollers. And the supporting case is great too; Richard Kind as a far more suspicious cop, Joanna Cassidy as the dean’s wife who is also Schlatter’s lover, and JC Quinn from Maximum Overdrive and The Abyss as that most obligatory of school slasher characters: the creepy pervy janitor red herring! And Schlatter is an engaging enough lead; it’s obvious why he got the gig on the Ferris Bueller show and I’ve enjoyed his performances in other things (I used to watch Diagnosis Murder reruns over the summer when I was in Maine without cable/video games; it was an enjoyable procedural), so it was fun to see him going through the motions that any number of Argento protagonists have played out. It’s at its best when he’s interacting with Walken of course, but seeing him race around with the ticking clock, talking to people who mostly think he did it, is pretty involving.
VS’s blu-ray has a pair of interviews, one with Schlatter and the other with the film’s cinematographer, both of whom spend a lot of their time talking about Walken (Schlatter’s impression is a cut above most!) and Ken Russell, who was originally set to direct. It’s funny, I just watched Tommy for the first time a couple days before, and Russell has said that’s his most commercial movie, but this would have cleared it I think – it’s got odd touches of course, but it’s at its core a pretty conventional murder mystery, and at no point does anyone get covered in beans or get molested by Keith Moon. The only other bonus feature is a commentary with the Hysteria Continues guys, and it did little to change my mind that these folks – while well meaning and obvious fans of the genre – are really not insightful or interesting enough to warrant being on so many tracks. More than once I found myself rolling my eyes at their frankly kind of stupid comments, like when one mocks a character for having her name on her door in her dorm, as if this wasn’t a common thing (“Maybe she forgot her own name?” he ponders – it’s so people can find her easily in a sea of identical doors in a giant hallway). They also repeatedly bring up how the film was compared to Twin Peaks upon release, confused at how anyone could make that connection, prompting one guy – who hasn’t even seen the show! – to explain to the others that it’s probably because Bissett’s character is, like Laura Palmer, supposedly the perfect girl next door but after she dies people discover she was into some far from wholesome lifestyle behaviors. Which I thought was pretty obvious, but it somehow went over all their heads. And that’d be fine if they were just some goons with letterboxd accounts, but when they’re repeatedly tasked with being the top listed bonus feature on an expensive blu-ray, I can’t help but wish VS (and Arrow, and whoever else hires them) to spread that wealth and get other podcast/historian types to contribute on the regular, maybe give these guys a little more time to prepare. Not everyone can be Troy Howarth or Jarret Gahan, but they can certainly at least be a little more perceptive than, well, me.
Anyway, not a movie you need to own as its rewatch value is fairly low, but definitely worth a look. I don’t need to tell you that the post-Jason Lives/pre-Scream period for slashers was not particularly glutted with solid options, so to find one that had completely passed me by was a wonderful little treat. It’s also worth noting that this was a year before Walken’s big-screen comeback with Batman Returns, which is what set him a track of pretty much all villain roles (or at least, ones that really played up the eccentricities), so seeing him elevate this pretty normal cop role while actually remaining a sympathetic ally to the hero is such a novel sight to behold nowadays. AND he sings “Feelings” in a scene that was apparently cut from the video (probably for clearance issues), so there’s another good reason to track it down.
What say you?
*It’s called No Secrets and I assure you it isn’t worth any effort.
Horror Fans
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