Happy Birthday to Me – DVD Review

The Film:

Before Melissa Sue Anderson played a blind Mary Ingalls on The Little House on the Prairie, she practiced her screaming and shish-kabob stabbing skills in the 1980 cult Canadian horror classic, Happy Birthday to Me. A returning Crawford Academy student Ginny Wainwright, (Anderson) becomes part of the Academy’s most popular clique well known as “the top ten.”  A demented killer however is targeting the group and wants to put an end to their teenage shenanigans (which include strategic planning of wearing the same blue and grey scarves, dumping mice into beer and jumping over draw bridges for fun) by brutally killing them one by one. Can’t say I blame him/her.

Being a horror fan born out of Montreal, Happy Birthday to Me has always had a revered cult status amongst Montreal native horror fans as the slasher was filmed in the beautiful city.  Although, having not seen the film in years, it was hard to tell if this once controversial slasher was going to hold up against the hands of time. Now having just re-visited Happy Birthday to Me, I can honestly say the film still delivers a solid punch to any hard core horror buff’s cerebrum and is fairly entertaining—even if it’s for all the WRONG reasons.

The early eighties saw the start of the ever so popular “psycho slasher” sub-genre and even though Friday the 13^th took most of the blood-soaked glory, it is evident Happy Birthday to Me is one of the most influential slashers of all time as popular mainstream horror movies like Saw 3, Scream 3 and many others have homaged several of the film’s grotesque set pieces and sequences.

Besides having an Oscar winning director (J. Lee Thompson) and a renowned actor (Glenn Ford) in the film, Happy Birthday to Me is most known for its promise of showing “six of the most bizarre murders you will ever see!”  Unfortunately, with franchises like Saw and Final Destination desensitizing their viewers every year with grisly “domino effect”-like murders, HBTM’s kills seem pretty tame now and realistically only three of them are truly bizarre. The easily nostalgic will still wince with the always stellar Matt Craven’s demise and my personal favorite involving a soon to be victim lifting weights still causes perverse laughter to this very day.

Speaking of laughter, there are many unintentionally funny moments that stemmed from bouts of extreme confusion.  Asides from the baffling sub-plot in a hospital, a scene where a character falls from the second floor of a library and gets up completely unscathed is truly mind-boggling. However, it’s not as mind-boggling as the film’s Scooby Doo like finale which has a character introduced to the film in the last three minutes through sloppy exposition.  Although despite its many flaws, the film’s infamous last scene at the birthday party still sends chills up this reviewer’s spine to this very day…even if it seems eerily similar to the finale of the videonasty classic, Madhouse.

THE DVD:

Audio/Video: Syreeta Wright fans rejoice! Anchor Bay Entertainment has done a terrific job restoring the film’s eerie orchestral score (composed by Bo Harwood and Lance Rubin) that was replaced with god awful disco tracks in Columbia Pictures’ initial DVD release years ago. In its Anamorphic Widescreen Presentation, Happy Birthday to Me also looks as sharp and as bold as it once did back in 1981.

Extras: This DVD is completely bare bones besides its original theatrical trailer. I suspect a special edition will be released sometime in the new year.

Conclusion:

Happy Birthday to Me may not be a feature-heavy DVD, yet despite its lack-luster extras, it’s definitely worth a spot in any horror buff’s collection for it exemplifies the slasher genre’s many strengths in its unrelenting mayhem.

Buy Happy Birthday to Me this October 13, 2009!

The Film: Rating:

The DVD: Rating:

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