6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Girl student wants to be part of the school’s most popular clique. But somebody has begun killing the group’s members. Could a deadly accident from her past be connected to the brutal killings?
Starring: Melissa Sue Anderson, Glenn Ford, Lawrence Dane, Sharon Acker, Frances Hyland (II)Horror | 100% |
Thriller | 19% |
Mystery | 14% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
One's reaction to Happy Birthday to Me (hereafter, "HBtM") no doubt depends on what one wants from a slasher film. If you're looking for elaborately staged executions of scantily clad and misbehaving teens, the film will disappoint. The deaths are widely spaced, and the buckets of blood that director J. Lee Thompson reportedly tossed around the set had to be toned down to obtain an R rating. (Copies of the uncut version are rumored to exist for those willing to search and pay the price.) If you crave a tautly edited, unrelenting turn of the suspenseful screws à la John Carpenter's Halloween, HBtM can't deliver that either. It has way too much plot, and its suspense rises and falls in waves as it gradually reveals its story in layers. What HBtM has going for it—and why I consider it a minor classic—is a distinctively loopy originality, a kind of determination, just one year after the original Friday the 13th and three years after Halloween, not to fall into the slasher formula that would generate so many routine sequels for the next two decades and well into the next century. Instead, director Thompson tried to make a slasher movie as if it were the kind of thriller with which he'd had such success when he made the original Cape Fear nineteen years earlier. Admittedly, a somewhat different skill set was required, especially with the credibility-straining script penned by John Saxton (who wrote the original story) and several other scribes, and the last-minute decision to change the ending after most of principal photography had been completed. But Thompson, no matter how cheesy some of his projects turned out to be, remained an old-fashioned storyteller. He always tried to ensure that his characters had reasons for their actions, no matter how convoluted they might be. With the passage of time, it's hard to replicate the kick that contemporary audiences experienced from seeing Melissa Sue Anderson in the lead role, because she was then at the height of her fame as TV's beloved Mary on Little House on the Prairie. As the film progressed and suspicion grew that her character might just be a killer (because so many other suspects had been eliminated), the cognitive dissonance either made viewers ill or, depending on one's predilection, gleeful. (I was among the latter.)
The source material for the transfer used on Mill Creek's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is in remarkably good shape, with minimal speckling and no major damage. The blacks are deep and solid, which is essential to rendering Canadian cinematographer Miklós Lente's many nighttime shots accurately. Detail is remarkably good for a low-budget production of this vintage, allowing for appreciation of the details of the bell tower where Rudi takes Ginnie, or the individual cycles in Etienne's race, or the vaguely sinister equipment in Alfred's workshop, among many other sights. Colors are on the drab side, even in bright sunshine, when compared to today's "pop", but they are accurate to the original photography. The film's grain structure appears natural and undisturbed by untoward electronic manipulation, and artifacts from sharpening, filtering or compression were not in evidence.
As far as I have been able to determine, the film's original release format was mono, which would be consistent with the era and the budget. Earlier DVD releases had Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtracks that were called "surround". I don't have either of them to compare, but my recollection is that they didn't offer any separation between the front two channels. The Blu-ray sports a 5.1 soundtrack in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 (although the back cover lists it alternately as 2.0 and 5.1), but the mix is entirely front-centered and is simply spread across the three front channels. It's a decent but unremarkable mix that reflects the limitations of its age. Dialogue is clear but not especially natural-sounding. Effects are sufficient to achieve their purpose, and the score by Bo Harwood and Lance Rubin is effective within its rather limited dynamic range. The DVD released by Sony in 2004 caused controversy because some of the music was replaced with a disco score; speculation persists that a temp track was inadvertently substituted for the final mix. A 2009 DVD from Anchor Bay rectified the error. Without access to either DVD for comparison, I can't be one hundred percent certain, but the consensus seems to be that Mill Creek has used the correct track. Syreeta Wright's rendition of the original song, "Happy Birthday to Me", remains intact over the closing titles, and the piano notes over the opening are there where they belong. The only faintly disco sounds occur in a disco.
No extras are included. The 2004 Sony and 2009 Anchor Bay DVDs also had no extras.
If Alfred Hitchcock had ever made a slasher film, it would have been more disciplined and precise than HBtM (and Hitchcock wouldn't have started without knowing the ending), but it would have been much closer to HBtM than to anything in the Friday the 13th or Halloween style, let alone the modern "torture porn" genre, which demands nothing more than witless sadism. Without giving away any crucial points in the plot, I've tried to convey what kind of film HBtM is so that readers can decide for themselves. I'm a fan, but it's not for everyone. Mill Creek's presentation is quite good. With appropriate caveats, highly recommended.
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