Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.0

The Slayer Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 26, 2017

In some of the supplementary material Arrow Films has assembled for its new Blu-ray release of the cult 1982 horror film The Slayer, various personnel, including co-writer and director J.S. Cardone, argue against seeing the film as a traditional “slasher” entry, even though these same creative types admit that the slasher craze certainly sparked at least some elements of the film and led to its being made in the first place. What’s kind of unintentionally funny about this attempt to properly categorize The Slayer is that there’s another, perhaps largely overlooked, subgenre of the horror idiom that The Slayer falls more or less perfectly into, namely films dealing with people isolated on an island where there’s some kind of mad killer (not necessarily of the human variety) on the loose. The list of entries at least tangentially linked through some shared plot elements is surprisingly long, and includes such fare as Horror Island, 5 Dolls for an August Moon, Uninhabited, Butchered, Dark Island, Island of Terror, Mindhunters, Matango, American Gothic, Island of Death, Humongous, A Perfect Getaway, Fear Island, Anthropophagous, Survival of the Dead, Who Can Kill a Child?, The Lost Tribe, and Fog Island. Of course one of the best remembered films dealing with people stranded on an island where someone (or something) is picking them off one by one is Agatha Christie’s wonderful And Then There Were None, though of course Christie opts for a rational explanation of what’s going on. Things are considerably murkier in The Slayer, a film that kind of wants to have its horror cake and eat it, too, with both a natural and a supernatural explanation offered for the events unfolding on an isolated island off of Georgia’s coast.

Kay (Sarah Kendall) is troubled by recurring nightmares, and they frequently show her being attacked by a kind of Freddy Krueger-esque character. In order to allay her growing stress levels, and the resultant threat to her nascent career as an artist, a vacation is arranged for Kay, her husband David (Alan McRae), her brother Eric (Frederick Flynn) and Eric’s wife Brooke (Carol Kottenbrook). The quartet take off for the supposedly remote but well appointed resort island on a private plane piloted by Marsh (Michael Holmes). Though they get to the island fine, two unexpected issues arise immediately: first, there’s a huge storm a brewin’, meaning Marsh has to drop them off and leave them, and, second, the island is in fact far from deluxe and seems to be populated mostly by decrepit, abandoned buildings. Already Kay is experiencing a dreaded kind of déjà vu at the place, seeming to recognize the barren, windswept dunes as locations from her nightmares.

This is in essence a “locked room” mystery, with a rather small coterie of characters to suspect of being the murderous culprit once the body count accrues, but even with the suggestion that Marsh actually didn’t get the heck out of Dodge (or Georgia’s Tybee Island, as the case may be), and with at least one other tangential character introduced (however briefly), there’s really no suspense since ultimately Kay is the lone survivor of her party and so there are only so many possibilities as to what’s going on. The film attempts to inject a little ambiguity courtesy of a hint that maybe Kay is doing the killing in a somnambulistic state when she’s asleep and dreaming (in a kind of reverse angle of elements Dreamscape or even A Nightmare on Elm Street ), and there’s a notable lack of true clarity at the film’s climax that more or less gives permission for more than one interpretation of the bloody events.

The Slayer kind of wafts between a true lo-fi ambience and something at least a little more ambitious, and it does have a couple of decently gory moments, for those who crave such elements in a horror film (slasher or not). Performances are a little on the overheated side, though that adds a certain (no doubt unintentional) comic charm. The setting on Georgia’s Tybee Island is rather well handled, though, giving the film a kind of fetid mood, the sort of feeling you get in the Deep South when the weather has suddenly changed and you know a hurricane is bearing down full force.

The Slayer Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Slayer is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Arrow's insert booklet provides the following information on the transfer:

The Slayer was exclusively restored by Arrow Films and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with mono sound.

The original 35mm camera negative was scanned in 4K resolution on a pin-registered Arriscan at OCN Digital. The film was graded and restored on the Nucoda grading system at R3store Studios, London. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches and other instances of film wear were repaired or minimised through a combination of digital restoration tools and techniques.

The original mono soundtrack was transferred from the optical negative at the BFI National Archive and was remastered at R3store Studios.

For anyone who has ever seen The Slayer on previous substandard home video releases, Arrow's restoration will be something of a revelation, though there are still a few passing issues that are encountered, mostly to do with variable clarity and (especially) grain resolution. Some of these issues can be tied directly to inherent source based issues like optical dissolves, but occasionally things vary pretty dramatically for no apparent reason. I've shown some of what I consider to be problematic moments in screenshots 14 - 19. Otherwise, though, this is a really solid looking effort, one without any discernably huge age related wear and tear, and with a nice, robust accounting of the film's palette, along with generally excellent detail levels.

The Slayer Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Slayer is presented with an LPCM mono track that has perhaps surprising fullness in the mid- and lower ranges, offering good support for a rather winning score by Robert Folk, as well as some of the ambient environmental effects like the storm that washes up on the island. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly and is presented with smart prioritization.

The Slayer Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Nightmare Island: The Making of The Slayer (1080p; 52:24) is an excellent retrospective, featuring well done interviews with J.S. Cardone, William Ewing, Karen Grossman, Carol Kottenbrook, Eric Weston, Robert Short and Arledge Armenaki.


• Return to Tybee: The Locations of The Slayer (1080p; 13:18) is a fun look at some of the Tybee Island, Georgia locations utilized for the film.


• The Tybee Post Theater Experience is a screening of the film before an invited audience with introductory comments (1080p; 2:38 and 1:04) and a post film Q&A session with Arledge Armanaki (1080p; 17:50) that was done in Tybee Island at the Tybee Post Theater. The Q&A is playable as a separate feature.


• Still Gallery (1080p; 9:55)


• Trailer (1080p; 1:56)


• Audio Extras

  Audio Commentary with J.S. Cardone, Eric Weston and Carol Kottenbrook

  Audio Commentary with The Hysteria Continues

  Isolated Score Selections and Composer Interview

  The Tybee Post Theater Audience Track

As they tend to do, Arrow has also provided a nicely appointed insert booklet with writing, archival stills and information on the transfer.

The Slayer Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Slayer is no undiscovered or even underappreciated masterpiece, but it has good if middling anxiety levels and it's buoyed (no pun intended, given the island setting) by it's rather evocative Tybee Island location work. The film probably tries a bit too hard for "twist" status in its final moments with a kind of needless coda (especially needless after the "pick one" assortment of possible solutions), but there's decent if limited gore on display, and a couple of well done practical effects. Arrow has once again assembled some impressive supplements to augment a niche title. For genre enthusiasts if for no one else, The Slayer comes Recommended.