The Slayer is unfortunately another 80's horror movie that was once loved when I was a teenager, but has sadly now been added to the pile of - How on earth could I have ever enjoyed this. I guess though that a redeeming quality 70's and 80's horror movies had, was that they weren't all full of idiotic teenagers who love to turn on each other at a moments notice. With that said, there is still not much about The Slayer, that in recent viewings, makes any actual sense.
Struggling artist Kay and her husband, along with her brother and his wife, all decide to take a vacation to a remote island. For most of her life Kay has had this recurring nightmare of a hideous figure, The Slayer, who's hunting her. As she got older and the dreams became worse, she turned her back on a promising career as a successful, albeit commercial artist, and started to paint more surreal images of what she sees in her dreams. Of course there's little market for this kind of thing at the time and they all feel that this trip to the island will clear her head and perhaps put her back on a more structured path.
The only way to the island is by a small charter flight that can only land along the beach. On arrival, the island is a windswept and dismal looking place with only Kay's brother seeing any positive of being there. As soon as they start walking to the house they have arranged, Kay feels that they're being watched and after walking past some ruins of an old theatre, she's convinced that she seen these images before in her dreams and has painted the area before, even though she's never physically been there.
Things take a turn for the worse on the first night with the pilot warning them that a major storm will hit the island and that if they stay they'll be cut off. Of course they decide to stay, which never made that much sense to me, remember this is 1982 so no Internet, mobile phones or satellite phones, so if you got into trouble you were pretty much screwed.
In any case, we see a random old fisherman brutally killed by something we only ever see a shadow of for seemingly no reason except this guy is in the wrong place at the wrong time. The next three murders of Kay's husband, brother and sister-in-law are again all committed by something we never see, but Kay ends up finding all the bodies and she realises that what's been haunting her dreams may be all too real. She decides to bunker down for the night in the house in the hopes of help finding her, and all she manages to do is kill the pilot who's come back looking for them all. The annoying thing about that is that the pilot never once bothered to call out or announce his presence, he just tries to force his way in so naturally an already distraught Kay defends herself and kills him with a flare gun. As the house starts to catch on fire, The Slayer turns up at the door, (the ONLY time he's seen through the whole movie), stands there snarling like an idiot, Kay Screams and wakes up in bed. To make a stupid scenario even worse, Kay has reverted back to a young girl and we're led to believe that her whole life has been one long dream or premonition and it's now going to all play out for real.
Unfortunately so many 80's horror movies were like this, where not a lot of what happened had to make any sense, and the audience was left to come to their own conclusions. While this kind of annoyance gets overlooked when you're a teenager and all you cared about was who's going to get killed and how, on viewing this kind of thing now it just gets in the way of being able to properly enjoy it. The Slayer could have been so much better had the ridiculous ending been scrapped altogether and we were at least given some glimpses of the beast before the big reveal at the end. If Kay was indeed conjuring up this creature, instead of just lying there squealing like a stuck pig, it would've made more sense to have her face down her demon. As I said, too many 80's horrors were not made to make any real sense and we're left with what is. The Slayer is enjoyable enough if you can look past the stupidity.
Struggling artist Kay and her husband, along with her brother and his wife, all decide to take a vacation to a remote island. For most of her life Kay has had this recurring nightmare of a hideous figure, The Slayer, who's hunting her. As she got older and the dreams became worse, she turned her back on a promising career as a successful, albeit commercial artist, and started to paint more surreal images of what she sees in her dreams. Of course there's little market for this kind of thing at the time and they all feel that this trip to the island will clear her head and perhaps put her back on a more structured path.
The only way to the island is by a small charter flight that can only land along the beach. On arrival, the island is a windswept and dismal looking place with only Kay's brother seeing any positive of being there. As soon as they start walking to the house they have arranged, Kay feels that they're being watched and after walking past some ruins of an old theatre, she's convinced that she seen these images before in her dreams and has painted the area before, even though she's never physically been there.
Things take a turn for the worse on the first night with the pilot warning them that a major storm will hit the island and that if they stay they'll be cut off. Of course they decide to stay, which never made that much sense to me, remember this is 1982 so no Internet, mobile phones or satellite phones, so if you got into trouble you were pretty much screwed.
In any case, we see a random old fisherman brutally killed by something we only ever see a shadow of for seemingly no reason except this guy is in the wrong place at the wrong time. The next three murders of Kay's husband, brother and sister-in-law are again all committed by something we never see, but Kay ends up finding all the bodies and she realises that what's been haunting her dreams may be all too real. She decides to bunker down for the night in the house in the hopes of help finding her, and all she manages to do is kill the pilot who's come back looking for them all. The annoying thing about that is that the pilot never once bothered to call out or announce his presence, he just tries to force his way in so naturally an already distraught Kay defends herself and kills him with a flare gun. As the house starts to catch on fire, The Slayer turns up at the door, (the ONLY time he's seen through the whole movie), stands there snarling like an idiot, Kay Screams and wakes up in bed. To make a stupid scenario even worse, Kay has reverted back to a young girl and we're led to believe that her whole life has been one long dream or premonition and it's now going to all play out for real.
Unfortunately so many 80's horror movies were like this, where not a lot of what happened had to make any sense, and the audience was left to come to their own conclusions. While this kind of annoyance gets overlooked when you're a teenager and all you cared about was who's going to get killed and how, on viewing this kind of thing now it just gets in the way of being able to properly enjoy it. The Slayer could have been so much better had the ridiculous ending been scrapped altogether and we were at least given some glimpses of the beast before the big reveal at the end. If Kay was indeed conjuring up this creature, instead of just lying there squealing like a stuck pig, it would've made more sense to have her face down her demon. As I said, too many 80's horrors were not made to make any real sense and we're left with what is. The Slayer is enjoyable enough if you can look past the stupidity.