Well, this is rare. The Dorm That Dripped Blood is actually better than I remembered.
I missed this one on its theatrical run and I caught up when I got my first VCR. That was in 1988. Horror had changed, and so did I. I was preoccupied with comedic horror and Italian imports. I still liked slashers, but their day had mostly passed.
It didn't help that The Dorm That Dripped Blood videotape was murky and drab. I honestly didn't remember a lot about it, other than the movie was yet another so-so low budget slasher romp.
I've been meaning to catch the film again since Synapse did a restoration. Has it really been over a decade since it came out?
I snagged a copy on some half-price sale recently, and I was happily surprised. Surely The Dorm That Dripped Blood is no slasher milestone, but it's a nasty piece of work that is more mean-spirited than most of its brethren. Content-wise it reminds me of the early 2000s and the Hostel/The Hills Have Eyes/High Tension heyday.
The Dorm That Dripped Blood was the brainchild of Jeffry Obrow and Stephen Carpenter, of The Kindred fame. They worked under a much lower budget with this earlier production.
It's Christmas break at the University of California. The rich kids are off skiing, while the poor are stuck closing down a decrepit dorm for renovation. Of course a killer is whacking off crew-members with elaborate methods of destruction. There's an obvious red herring, and the killer's identity isn't too hard to predict. The lure here is the death scenes.
Matthew Mungle isn't the best-known gore makeup maestro, but he has had a busier career than many of his contemporaries. He toiled on budgets big and small, with impressive credits like Just Before Dawn, Nightmare on Elm Street 3, The Kindred, and The Guardian under his belt. He also worked in the big, big leagues in Schindler's List, Edward Scissorhands, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and The Irishman. His efforts in The Dorm That Dripped Blood are gruelingly effective.
The cast is barely competent as they e-nun-ci-ate their dialogue with correct but bland precision. The big home video draw was having Daphne Zuniga in a small role. She got better in the next few years in Vision Quest and The Sure Thing.
Synapse did their usual great job with The Dorm That Dripped Blood, but it's still a pretty dark production. The lighting is never what it should be, but who cares about light in something like this? It's all about the death toll.
Originally known as Death Dorm, the producers wisely changed the title to the more fitting one slasher fans know and love. The Dorm That Dripped Blood gained notoriety as one of the films targeted as a Video Nasty in England.
Ah, it takes me back to the halcyon days of 1982, when slasher films were both reviled and embraced. Creatively bankrupt filmmakers try to emulate the time, but none of them get it right. If you want a taste of what it was really like, enroll in this deadly dorm. It's the real thing, done as it should be done. The low budget grittiness makes for a much more compelling experience than something slick and gutless like Final Exam.
Written by Mark Sieber
I missed this one on its theatrical run and I caught up when I got my first VCR. That was in 1988. Horror had changed, and so did I. I was preoccupied with comedic horror and Italian imports. I still liked slashers, but their day had mostly passed.
It didn't help that The Dorm That Dripped Blood videotape was murky and drab. I honestly didn't remember a lot about it, other than the movie was yet another so-so low budget slasher romp.
I've been meaning to catch the film again since Synapse did a restoration. Has it really been over a decade since it came out?
I snagged a copy on some half-price sale recently, and I was happily surprised. Surely The Dorm That Dripped Blood is no slasher milestone, but it's a nasty piece of work that is more mean-spirited than most of its brethren. Content-wise it reminds me of the early 2000s and the Hostel/The Hills Have Eyes/High Tension heyday.
The Dorm That Dripped Blood was the brainchild of Jeffry Obrow and Stephen Carpenter, of The Kindred fame. They worked under a much lower budget with this earlier production.
It's Christmas break at the University of California. The rich kids are off skiing, while the poor are stuck closing down a decrepit dorm for renovation. Of course a killer is whacking off crew-members with elaborate methods of destruction. There's an obvious red herring, and the killer's identity isn't too hard to predict. The lure here is the death scenes.
Matthew Mungle isn't the best-known gore makeup maestro, but he has had a busier career than many of his contemporaries. He toiled on budgets big and small, with impressive credits like Just Before Dawn, Nightmare on Elm Street 3, The Kindred, and The Guardian under his belt. He also worked in the big, big leagues in Schindler's List, Edward Scissorhands, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and The Irishman. His efforts in The Dorm That Dripped Blood are gruelingly effective.
The cast is barely competent as they e-nun-ci-ate their dialogue with correct but bland precision. The big home video draw was having Daphne Zuniga in a small role. She got better in the next few years in Vision Quest and The Sure Thing.
Synapse did their usual great job with The Dorm That Dripped Blood, but it's still a pretty dark production. The lighting is never what it should be, but who cares about light in something like this? It's all about the death toll.
Originally known as Death Dorm, the producers wisely changed the title to the more fitting one slasher fans know and love. The Dorm That Dripped Blood gained notoriety as one of the films targeted as a Video Nasty in England.
Ah, it takes me back to the halcyon days of 1982, when slasher films were both reviled and embraced. Creatively bankrupt filmmakers try to emulate the time, but none of them get it right. If you want a taste of what it was really like, enroll in this deadly dorm. It's the real thing, done as it should be done. The low budget grittiness makes for a much more compelling experience than something slick and gutless like Final Exam.
Written by Mark Sieber
The author does not allow comments to this entry
No comments