The Prowler (1981)
A college graduation dance is underway but a man dressed to the nines in army gear wants to spoil the revelry with his pitchfork, the same weapon he used to kill his "Dear John"-writing sweetheart back in 1945. THE PROWLER is a fairly average slasher but has a few things that help make it stand firmly out of the pack. As stated, the serial killer has a pretty original outfit, roaming around the town with fatigues and a metal helmet. His weapon of choice is kinda dumb, especially since its inclusion in the prologue helps allow the makers to feature a Bava/Jason double kill, but thankfully he switches over to using a bayonet and a sawed-off shotgun. Speaking of kills, all of the murder special effects were done by Tom Savini and they are gorily beautiful, with the true highlight of course being the amazing head explosion. I also digged that the final girl was more braver than usual and had an interesting wardrobe choice, fighting back against the intruder with a sheriff jacket-party dress combo. And finally, the movie bucks the trend of other slashers at the time and features several call-backs to the grandfather of the genre, PSYCHO. All that being said, the rest of the movie is normal fare and sadly has a lot of padding; try to keep attention during the long, two minute phone call scene. You could just check out the great kills on YouTube but it doesn't hurt to give this movie a full watch.
FINAL REVIEW: 3 / 5
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