Director: James Polakof
Writers: James Keach, James Polakof, and David Pritchard
From: Chilling
Watch: archive.org
Two friends go hiking to find their friend’s cabin and explore their feelings for each other. Then one is assaulted by backwoods yahoos.
Ready for a fun one folks? Then skip this movie cause it blows. I’m starting here so you can save yourself some time, maybe check out a different flick from the archives. I mean, this is my 216th review. You have options.
Okay.
Slashed Dreams opens with Jenny reading a letter from her friend Michael. He dropped out of college a few years earlier and went into the mountains to find himself. Surprisingly, it worked, and he’s very happy in a cabin he’s built. Jenny’s friend Robert creeps on her without saying a word and then her boyfriend Marshal, who’s a dick, takes her away. Excited about the emotional possibilities this opening scene is laying out? I know I am.
They go to class where the instructor is using Age of Aquarius language to float really conservative, “our unmoored, amoral culture” ideas. Jenny and Marshall arrive late, Robert is somehow already there, and we hear his voice.
1000% smackable smug prick.
Jenny talks about Michael finding peace in nature, Marshall poo-poos the idea, and rejects all the hippie-dippy stuff about leaving to find yourself. He says the real excitement is happening on campus with all the people planning their lives. It’s a good point. Unfortunately, he’s a complete cock when he’s making it, belittling Jenny the whole time.
I don’t know why I’m telling you all this stuff about the prologue—this is all prologue!—it’s just that this is when the movie still feels like it has promise.
They’re all at a frat party that night, Jenny and Robert are dancing and floating the idea of going to visit Michael. Marshall tells one of Jenny’s friends that he’s in love with Jenny and doesn’t trust Robert. The friend says they’ve been best friends since they were kids. Then Marshall is emotionally abusive some more and tells everyone to go to the mountains to see Michael. On the way, he throws a can of beer across Robert’s windshield and then almost has a head-on collision with him and Jenny. Jenny dumps him there and that’s the end of Marshall’s presence in the movie. Wave goodbye everyone, he was the only source of interesting drama in this picture.
The rest, or until the 2/3rds mark, is Robert and Jenny hiking through the woods, hanging out in an empty cabin, and skinny dipping, all to the sounds of the worst kind of treacly 70’s folk-pop. The music always gets it wrong, making the whole movie seem like a laid-back exploration of this couple’s budding relationship. Only there doesn’t seem to be any will they/won’t they/could you care tension. They’re in couple mode the moment Marshall disappears.
So they’re just in the woods with no sense of threat or tension when two backwoods types living in the mountain appear. They spy on the couple skinny dipping and then make some uncomfortable comments. They leave and the couple, deciding everything’s okay for no explicable reason, go back to the cabin. That night, the yokels break in and rape Jenny. After they leave, Robert tries to comfort her and then goes outside to stand watch. The treacly music starts up again implying that the drama here is whether their relationship will be able to endure this.
I have to mention it because it’s so perfect. The Shockmarathons podcast did an episode on this movie and one of their hosts said Slashed Dreams, “at this moment, becomes one of the most unwatchable movies ever.” You are correct, sir.
The next morning, Michael, Robert Englund himself, finally shows up, and goes in to talk to Jenny. He’s just beavering away until he finally mentions the rape—the rape that just happened hours before in the very place they’re talking—and tells her she needs to get it out of her mind, sort of like the poison oak he has on his legs. The more he thinks about it, the more it itches.
Fuck you, movie.
Outside, Robert, the real victim in all this, hears a noise and goes to find the yokels arguing with each other. One wants to go back and murder the couple, the other wants to go back and finish raping her. One cuts the other and then Robert rushes out to attack uninjured one with a hatchet, poorly. They wrestle around a bit, Robert shoves they guy’s face in the mud, and the yokels run away as Jenny and Michael run up. The trio all laugh because “those two won’t be back any time soon.”
Cut to all three of them skinny dipping. Jenny gets out, goes into the cabin, and reads a poem about pain. Then she and Robert traipse off into the sunset. THE END.
What
the Actual
FUCK?!
This is a dull, empty movie where nothing happens for forty minutes that then drops in rape and tries to make it meaningful by having the victim read a poem about the liberating nature of pain. No catharsis, no justice, no closure on her assailants, just they run off into the woods because they’re afraid of the smug fuck that can’t fight. This movie is insufferable when it’s not interminable, and that doesn’t even include the Rudy Vallee cameo where he tries to sell them licorice.
While this is not as bad as Cave Girl or Going Steady, movies that titter at and revel in their rapey elements, it’s relentlessly twee without anything cute and imagines itself charming when every element is utterly charmless. I mean, the emotional arc of the movie, if there is one, is focused on Robert: he finally gets the girl he’s been Nice Guy™-ing for over a decade only to see her get raped, which really cramps his style, man, but he makes it okay by wrestling one of the attackers a bit, kind of.
Just wretched. Instead of watching this movie, I’d recommend The Shockmarathons podcast. They have a deeply informed perspective on the movies they cover and, unique among the bad movie podcasts I listen to, are actively building upon their discussions episode-by-episode. In other words, rather than have occasional running gags or throwbacks, each movie’s discussed within the context of what they’ve talked about before. It makes the cultural context of each movie clearer.
This movie, though, sucks on toast. Avoid it if you can. That said, it is in the public domain so I’ve added an MPEG-2 copy to archive.org here. Cut it up to use the nature shots for something better, or pull the music to design your own endurance test. Just stop at about the 40-minute mark. That’s when it goes from dull to “Why?!”
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