Who knew a 23 minute horror-comedy short would also play out like an epic 1980’s romance novel? That’s exactly what you get in Revenge of the Slasher, a collaboration between Screecher TV and JHF Productions. Centered around a cute, rural mom-and-pop town and its infamous forests and lakes that are home to a variety of murderers, Revenge of the Slasher finds Ernie (The Autumn Hill Killer) as he struggles to maintain his body count and please the deadly desires of his wife. When another survivor girl leaves Ernie in the dust, he sets out on an epic mission to right his wrongs and become the deranged psychopath he always hid on the inside. Written by Julian Hoffman and Zac Spiegelman, and directed by Julian Hoffman, Revenge of the Slasher stars Zac Spiegelman, Catherine Brown, Michael Charles McNeil, Maddisyn Fisher and Patrick Fedorov. Find it on Amazon Video in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and on Vimeo worldwide courtesy of Reel Nightmare Films.
Any slasher flick is ripe for viewing during Halloween season, so I’d definitely recommend checking this one out as we head closer to October. It’s very reminiscent of Friday the 13th, with its big lake, chase scenes and masked killers. With such a strong lineage, the comedy comes into play with dry humor and the poking fun of horror film troupes and cliches. Horror-comedy is a hard subgenre to tackle, but the team behind Revenge of the Slasher pulled it off flawlessly. There’s an equal amount of smile or chuckle inducing content matched with an above average body count for a movie of this size. That was what impressed me the most – Julian Hoffman and Zac Spiegelman really payed tribute to the great slashers of the past with a terrific kill count and a great deal of practical special effects. In between all of this, there’s the love story between The Autumn Hill Killer and his wife. With all of this going on, Julian and Zac still managed to pull off a short film that’s actualized, coherent, fluid and quite enjoyable!
Revenge of the Slasher was produced by Julian Hoffman and Zac Spiegelman with executive producers Patrick Fedorov and Kat Terekhova. It features cinematography by Jonathan Satov, editing by Julian Hoffman and special effects by Layla Amiel. And they gave us a 1980’s montage, MONTAGE! No, seriously, for an independent production, I don’t have any big criticisms for Revenge of the Slasher aside from the fact that their picture quality wasn’t as clear at night as it was during the day. Interestingly enough, Revenge of the Slasher was filmed mostly during the day, so the picture quality isn’t iffy all that much. When you can dissect a title into three parts – horror, comedy, romance drama, edit it as such, and still walk away with three solid films packed into one project, that’s when you know you have a great product and a lot of awesome talent behind and in front of the camera. Revenge of the Slasher is successful from all angles and I would recommend it to horror-comedy fans.
Final Score: 7.5 out of 10.
