On June 9, 1970 a trio of children were born at the height of a solar eclipse simultaneously in the Meadowvale General Hospital. One decade later a teenage couple are viciously murdered in the town’s cemetery and the only evidence left by the killer is the handle from a child’s jump rope.
Before we dive into this rarely seen gem from 1981 I’d like to mention that this DVD arrived for me to review on June 9, which just happens to be my birthday. So, along with Johnny Depp, Michael J. Fox, Less Paul and Natalie Portman I share my birthday with a trio of fictional children that lack emotions and are prone to do very naughty things. Great, that’s just great.
Bloody Birthday was written and directed by Ed Hunt whose previous films were a mix of softcore porn (Corrupted and Diary of a Sinner), sci-fi (Plague, Starship Invasions and Point of No Return), a speculative documentary (Flying Saucers Are Real!) and the “Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar” episode from the television series Greatest Heroes of the Bible. Bloody Birthday features a little bit of all of Hunt’s previous work and adds the killer kids element. It’s not a particularly scary film but it does have a certain amount of charm as checks off the traditional list of slasher clichés. Some might say the charm comes by way of MTV’s Julie Brown and her striptease but I actually prefer Lori Lethin’s (The Prey, Return to Horror High) performance as naïve protagonist Joyce Russel. The film also features K.C. Martel who would later appear in E.T. and the television series Growing Pains.
Bonus features include a brief, but entertaining, interview with Lethin, a rather long and dry audio interview with Hunt that offers an overview of his entire career and a 15-minute featurette called “A Brief History of Slasher Films” that offers a quick run through the bloody timeline of the horror sub-genre (the same program is also available on Severin’s DVD release of John Lamond’s Nightmares).
If you’re looking for an amusing slice of retro horror Bloody Birthday will do nicely.