Michael's Film Dungeon: Slashers (2001, Direct-to-Video)

I won't hold it against you if you haven't seen Slashers before. No, really, I'd be floored if anyone reading this knew the first thing about this absolute gem of Canadian horror-satire. There are so many direct-to-video horror films out there that one cannot stumble upon Slashers at this point. One would need to make a very concerted effort to unearth this one, since it's been out of print for a good fifteen years.

Slashers is that rarest of cinematic achievements, a fantastic idea made even better by a low budget and lower-quality acting. While these are often the death knell for more serious flicks, director Maurice Devereaux knows exactly what he wants to do, and even at its lowest points, Slashers keeps its head well above the water threatening to swallow it. I friggin' love this movie, and if you'll allow me to explain, I bet by the end of this article, you will too.

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Slashers takes place in the same dark, twisted reality that gave us novellas like The Long Walk by Stephen King, video games like Smash T.V., and the overall insanity and over-the-top gore you can really only experience in anime like Gantz. Written and directed in 2001, it's clear Devereaux (who both helmed the camera and penned the script) could see the way media was heading, and chose to take it to its most absurd conclusion, and I really can't blame him. This is a time where "Reality" Television was scoring higher ratings than more standard scripted affairs, where people by the millions were tuning in to watch a group of strangers backstab one another on Survivor. In the intervening years, this genre has so consumed entertainment culture that it's rare to find anyone who doesn't keep up with the Kardashians, cheer on their favorite storage locker warrior, or get sucked in to the world of people who top the scale at six hundred pounds.

The central conceit here should be obvious: 'Slashers' is Japan's most popular game show by leaps and bounds, with millions of viewers tuning in to watch a handful of unarmed contestants, followed by a camera crew, play hide-the-scalpel with a roving gang of murders, psychos, and otherwise-unhinged individuals. These psychos all have their own gimmick (killer clown, hook-handed pirate, demonic preacher, etc...), and legions of devoted fans, which adds a professional wrestling-style aura on top of the mayhem. Throw in a gaggle of crowd-pleasing cheerleaders (The Slasher-ettes, who dance around with pom-poms made from human skulls with brightly-colored wigs attached), a catchy theme-song ("Slashers! Super-Fun!"), a charismatic announcer, a live-mix soundtrack for the mayhem courtesty of DJ Slash, and a gorgeous celebrity host/commentator, and an anything-goes clause when it comes to nudity and sex, and you've got a combination more winning than a full-line PowerBall jackpot match.

Released into a maze-like dungeon filled with secret passages and decorated for that haunted house vibe, the goal is to outwit, outlast, and outmaneuver the killers and your fellow players alike and stay alive for the duration of the broadcast. Winners walk away with enough money to last a lifetime, the jackpot grows with every Slasher the group takes down, and it's all caught on tape, with occasional commercial breaks.

Now, for the first time, 'Slashers' is coming to the West. Six contestants have been chosen. Three killers have been selected and prepared. The doors to the arena are about to open. Twelve million bucks is on the line. Who will win, and who will die?

Tune in and find out!

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Slashers succeeds on pure heart.

I cannot stress this enough: Slashers works entirely because of what it is, not what it was trying to be. Made for a ludicrously small budget of under $200,000, it's the kind of movie that comes up with so many novel ways of to overcome its own limitations that I can't help but be charmed. From renting out an underground paintball arena to customize for the dungeon, to employing a number of camera and lighting tricks to make it seem filmed in one continuous take, to utilizing native Japanese speakers for many of the parts including bi-lingual actress Claudine Shiraishi, who plays celebrity host Miho Taguchi and switches back and forth between Japanese and English throughout the 'broadcast', to tasking actor Neil Napier with portraying two of the three main villains, Maurice Devereaux uses every trick in the low-budget filmmaker's handbook to make the production slicker than it has any right to be. Napier is, in fact, so good with his acts as both Preacherman and Chainsaw Charlie that I didn't realize they were played by the same guy until the credits rolled and saw his name attached to both.

Likewise, Devereaux's script is wise enough to understand the need for the audience to quickly grasp and identify with the six contestants, so they start out as obvious genre tropes: The Athlete, The Ex-Soldier, The Hothead, The Nerd, The Model, and the Final Girl. Over the course of the movie though, each one tells a little bit of their story and background, and they all become a little more well-rounded as a result.

The script is also smart enough to understand you cannot play a story like this too straight. It's at times silly, campy, and over-the-top, but surprisingly despite the multitude of opportunities for it to fail, Slashers never walks off the tightrope. This may sound weird, but the movie I feel it most closely resembles is not The Running Man or Battle Royale or The Hunger Games, but Robocop. Before you start throwing popcorn, hear me out.

Robocop takes place in a world where human life is not just cheap but comically disposable, and it makes this clear through the media interludes that intrude upon the story from time to time. Commercials depict a world where absurdly high SPF ratings on sunscreen, board games based on nuclear annihilation, and large cars with environment-rapingly low gas mileage are a way of life; newscasters cheerfully banter between stories about laser satellite mis-fires, food riots, and massive death tolls from natural disasters; and the most-watched television program is a show called 'It's Not My Problem' featuring a comedian who gets big laughs from parroting his catch-phrase, "I'd buy that for a dollar!" The world of Robocop is painting-the-walls-with-its-own-feces insane.

Despite that, it's insane in a way we can somehow relate to. It's a world any of us can look at and go, "Yeah, I can see how things might go that way." It's the worst kind of dystopia--it didn't get that way through dictatorial edict or a takeover of fascist ideology, it got that way because it's what people wanted, and those in charge were only too willing to provide. The world of Slashers functions much the same way: the show exists because it's what people want, and in a world where the United States just elected a real-estate mogul and reality television star to run the country, where kids routinely challenge one another to do everything from setting themselves on fire to eating laundry detergent, it's not hard to shrug and say, "Well, of course this is the next logical step."

Don't get me wrong, Robocop is an objectively better film in every sense of the word, but if Devereaux's intention was to match Paul Verhoeven's satirical bent with his own, you have a hard argument ahead of you if you believe he failed.

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Now, here's the thing...Slashers is not perfect. You've not seen any of these main six contestants in anything else but bit parts for a reason. Low-budget films and bad acting share a bed like politicians and their mistresses, but Slashers features more cringe-worthy delivery than a fat pizza driver whose pants keep falling down during the Super Bowl rush. Bad acting can have a certain charm, and Slashers occasionally achieves this, but you're going to hear some real groaners from this group of would-be survivors. Acting is Slashers' weakest link, and this will ruin the movie for anyone who can't stand the camp.

The good news is, Devereaux's script makes the delivery somewhat tolerable thanks to its humor. You need a truly top-notch actor in order to get the best mileage out of a line like, "Ooooh...from cheesecake to beefcake!", but you're still going to laugh even if you don't want to. The three Slashers are something else though, all memorable for either performance or persona, and there are plenty of times these guys carry the weight of the entire production on their shoulders.

Fortunately the over-the-top absurdity of the story creates enough of a support system to keep the viewer interested. Some of the best dialog and back-story happens when the show has to break for a commercial. It's all live, so everyone, contestants and killers alike, has to freeze, no matter what they're doing. This leads to some wonderful opportunities for the survivors to verbally spar with their would-be assassins, and the producers always pick cliffhanger moments to break for advertising. The end results are some of the film's best bits, where the survivors talk out a plan of attack, try to sweet-talk the killers into leaving them alone, or get a chance to catch their breath and thus break out of what should otherwise be a no-escape scenario.

The contestants are also very much aware of the world around them, and frequently break the fourth wall. In a movie like Battle Royale or The Maze Runner, this would be scene-shattering and out of place, but here it's just one more reminder to the audience that we're not to take this seriously. If the characters can point out how the presence of the cameraman or the soundtrack suddenly ramping up means they're in danger, then we know it's OK for us to feel the same way. The way the show's employees banter with one another when there's no signal being broadcast is a nice touch too, as we see performers dropping their facades and bitching about their hair while getting their makeup reapplied.

Gore and nudity are both used effectively too. Blood sprays liberally, especially when it comes to Chainsaw Charlie's chainsaw eating through a contestant, and even if the gore is low-budget, it's still refreshing to see a movie from the 21st century doing everything with practical effects instead of relying on post-production CGI. There's a recurring joke with Sarah Joslyn Crowder's character Megan having her clothing torn off against her will by the Slashers, and re-dressing herself from the cast-off remnants of other people's shirts, not to mention a couple of other cast members who strip down a bit in the hopes of buying more screen time for themselves, and this serves as a great lampshading of the 'naked people getting killed in a horror flick' trope. Props are due to the actors for their willingness to embrace this route, though Crowder's the only one who goes all the way with a full-on topless scene towards the end of the film as seen through a washed-out night vision effect.

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For what it is, Slashers pulls off a very unexpected win. It isn't for everyone, but if you're willing to go along with a film's premise and take it as seriously non-serious as the director is, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better hidden gem to add to your horror film library. The original 2002 DVD release has been out of print for years, Slashers is still relatively easy to find and inexpensive on the second-hand market thanks to a 2008 re-release; a quick trip to Amazon will net you a copy for under ten dollars. The disc has some great supplementary content as well, including deleted and expanded scenes, interviews, footage from the premiere, and other goodies.

For all its flaws, this is one of my absolute favorite low-budget films of all time. Sure, films like Halloween and Night of the Living Dead did low-budget horror better, and Maurice Devereaux is no John Carpenter or George Romero. But Slashers is eminently re-watchable, great for a small get-together of like-minded individuals, and at just over an hour and a half in length, there's plenty of time for a solid game of Cards Against Humanity afterwards, since by that point you'll be in the perfect mood for more laughter at awful things.

7 Chainsaws to the Torso out of 10!

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Best Scene:

During a particularly tense break in the action, one of the psycho killers has to stand there and listen to his would-be victims hash out their plot for what they're going to do to him once the cameras start rolling again. When he starts to understand the contestants are serious about what's going down when they all un-freeze, he's the one who begins begging for his life, pointing out that while they all volunteered to be there, he's just doing his job and it's nothing personal, even going so far as to drop his particular persona in an effort to create sympathy for his position. This is goddamn brilliant, equal parts awful and hilarious, and single-handedly cements the film as a piece of cinematic gold as far as I'm concerned.