STUDIO: Intervision | DIRECTOR: David A. Prior | CAST: Ted Prior, Linda McGill, John Eastman, Jeanine Scheer, Tim Aguilar
RELEASE DATE: 5/10/11 | PRICE: DVD$19.95
BONUSES: commentaries, featurettes, director’s interview
SPECS: NR | 87 min. | Horror thriller | 1.33:1 fullscreen | stereoRATINGS (out of 5): Movie
| Audio
A killer's work is never done in Sledgehammer.
Considered to be one of the first horror films shot on video for the home market, 1983’s Sledgehammer, the first movie written and directed by David A. Prior (Raw Justice), has grown an impressive cult reputation over the years. Its arrival on DVD by the recently rebooted VHS label Intervision is big news for fans of those almost-innocent days of low-budget 1980s horror, when nearly every fan with a camcorder set out to try to make a movie.
Starring Playgirl model Ted Prior, Sledgehammer is a weird one — a zero-budget slasher movie in which a sledgehammer-wielding killer stalks a bunch of young people who are partying in some small, out-of-the-way house. All sense of narrative or motivation essentially goes out the window as the movie progresses and the blood and guts begin to flow as a strange musical soundtrack blares.
Production-wise, Sledgehammer is filled with slow-motion sequences, freeze-frames, burn-ins and polarized/high-contrast colors, the kinds of visual effects that were undoubtedly functions of the video camera that was used for the shoot.
The bonus features on the DVD are arguably more fun than the movie, particularly if you’re watching it on your own and don’t have the benefit of a surrounding crowd of raucous pals.
There are two commentary tracks: one by David Prior and another by two gents from BleedingSkull.com, a lively website that celebrates shot-on-video horror films from the 1980s. Unless you’re a diehard fan, you can skip the tracks and move onto the disc’s pair of featurettes.
The first, “Hammertime,” is an eight-minute piece featuring horror author Zach Carlson who admits an over-the-top love for the film. He describes Sledgehammer as having “no sense of reality at all” and that it “doesn’t fall into any kind of definable horror classification.”
Next is the seven-minute featurette “Sledgehammerland,” which offers comments from two programmers from the Los Angeles-based weird movie lovers organization Cinefamily. Like Sledgehammer, their featurette is also shot on video and uses a cheesy green screen technique to “drop” them into the film as they verbally embrace it.
Finally, there’s a brief interview with director Prior, who claims he can’t even remember his inspiration for making this film, apart from admiring other slasher flicks, like “the ones with Jason.”
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