Sledgehammer

Sledgehammer (1983)

The movie starts off with a little boy being locked in a closet by his mother before she heads to the living room to get busy with her lover. Before they get too far a killer shows up and dispatches both of them with a Sledgehammer. 10 years later a group of friends show up at the house to party. After a while they decide to have a séance and sure enough the killer shows back up. He picks them off one at a time as they keep trying to figure out how to stop him.

Let me start the review portion off with a small disclaimer. Sledgehammer is one of those ‘80s movies that were shot on video, so it has all the challenges that come with that sort of flick. The sound is iffy at times and the picture quality isn’t great. But I’ve come to the conclusion that if you are going to check one of these movies out you can’t really complain about that sort of thing, so I’m not going to. If shot on video isn’t your sort of thing then you might just want to pass on this movie.

Now that I have that out of the way lets get to my review. I had heard some pretty bad things about Sledgehammer, so I was prepared to not like it. While I can’t say that I loved this movie, it is pretty interesting. Unlike so many other low or no budget shot on video flicks from the ‘80s I didn’t feel like this was trying to be Friday the 13th or Cannibal Holocaust (yeah they tried it…). Sure this is a slasher movie with a masked killer stalking his victims, but unlike the other movies there is a pretty nifty twist. I’m not sure but I think the killer is a ghost. He appears and disappears at random and can seemingly pass thru walls and doors. The same thing also happens to his victims, which is a nifty way around the sometimes-awkward attempts at getting the characters alone after they know someone is out to get them. You might also notice that I said I think that the killer is a ghost. The movie never makes any attempt to explain it. You just have a killer that is taking people out. I sort of dig this approach and give the filmmaker some props for it.

Sledgehammer does fall into a couple of the typical low budget traps. The 1st thing that I noticed is a lack of material. They really didn’t have enough to fill out a feature run time with this one. The establishing shots linger, sometimes up to 10 or 15 seconds, and we get a lot of them. It seems like there are 4 or 5 transitions where we get extended looks at the out side of the house. There are also a few scenes where characters are doing things like unloading the van or having a food fight. They don’t feel scripted at all and go on way too long. Hell they even reuse the opening footage when one of the characters is telling them what happened at the house 10 years earlier. Yeah we get to see it all again! This kills the pacing of the movie and drags down what I’ve already stated was an interesting story and twist. There is about 45 minutes of real good stuff here with about 40 minutes of filler.

The other thing that I wanted to mention is the casting of non-professional actors. These are amateur actors and you can really tell. Some of the dialogue is delivered awkwardly and flat. Plus they don’t really sell the “I’m about to die” terror like they should. I also wanted to point out that if they had real actors then the filler scenes might not have been so obvious. Again this only serves to drag down the interesting stuff that is going on.

When I heard that someone was going to put out Sledgehammer on DVD I was kind of shocked. I mean this is one of those VHS releases that I never thought I’d see on digital. Not only did Intervision put the movie out, but they included some special features! We have an interview with David A. Prior, as well as a commentary track. This was a nice surprise as I had thought he had disowned this movie and didn’t want to talk about it. Also included is Hammertime, which is an interview with a VHS collector that is a real fan of the movie. Sledgehammerland is another interview with a couple of guys that arranged Sledgehammers what might be the movies only showing in a theater. These are both really interesting and worth checking out.

If this is the sort of movie and effort that Intervision is going to make then I can’t wait to see what they do next. As for Sledgehammer if you are a fan of the ‘80s video store or slasher movie scene you really will want to check this one out. Sure it has its flaws, but it also has its moments.

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer