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Released by: Synapse Films
Released on: 4/26/2011
Director: Stephen Carpenter, Jeffrey Obrow
Cast: Laura Lapinski, Stephen Sachs, David Snow, Pamela Holland, Kay Beth, Jimmy Betz, Dennis Ely
Year: 1981
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The Movie:
Co-directed by Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow during their stint in UCLA film school, The Dorm That Dripped Blood was originally submitted to the film's distributor as Death Dorm. It was edited down and out it went, eventually released under the alternate title of Pranks with a trailer that played up the practical joking aspect of the film (which is minimal at best). It was an odd choice, calling it Pranks, but regardless, that was the cut of the film that was best known. Synapse has unearthed the original directors' cut of the film with the original Death Dorm title card and including footage that wasn't in previous releases. Certain scenes had no audio for them, so Synapse has had to rescore those bits, but you'd never know if they hadn't said so in their press release. So what we have with this Blu-ray/DVD combo pack is the longest available version of the film ever released.
So what's it all about? Laura Lapinski plays Joanne, a college student who is staying on for a few weeks in a dorm that's about to be torn down to, along with a few other students, get it cleared out so that it can be renovated and rebuilt. Joanne kisses her boyfriend goodbye as he leaves for a road trip with his pals and sets about organizing the team of students to get as much work done as they can as they're under a tight deadline.
Soon after all the students are cleared out, Joanne is left with only three accomplices - Craig (Stephen Sachs), Brian (David Snow) and Patty (Pamela Holland). Originally Debbie (Daphne Zuniga of Spaceballs and Melrose Place) was going to help out, but her parents show up to take her home when a relative takes ill. Or at least, that's what the other kids think. In reality Debbie and her parents have been beaten murdered - her mother's throat slit, her father's head bashed in with a spiked baseball bat! Suspicious things are happening aplenty, and there's even a local janitor type wandering around the premises creeping out the kids. With everyone else gone, the dorm is nice and empty and without anyone around to turn on the lights, it's quite dark as well - spookiness ensues!
Anyway, as our motley crew sets about their tasks, Joanne arranges for a local scrap dealer to buy some of the desks that they're clearing out of the dorm. He takes a shining to Joanne and flirts with her a bit, but she leaves the scene and heads back to safety. There she finds out that one of the weirder students, John Hemmit (Woody Roll), hasn't vacated the premises as instructed and appears to be running around causing problems. Eventually the handyman ends up dead, killed by having the back of his head drilled into by his own power drill, and the kids being to suspect that Hemmit is the one behind the killings. They call the police in hopes that they'll be able to stop him, but things of course go horribly wrong and don't end up as planned.
The film has a couple of good kill scenes in and is actually rather unpredictable and grim which makes it interesting but it's kind of hard to care about the characters as they're never really developed much. The acting is better than you might think and it's fun to see a young Daphne Zuniga pop up here long before she'd go on to mainstream success. Shot primarily in the basements of the UCLA campus filling in fairly well for the basement of the dorm, there's a good bit of atmosphere in the last half of the picture where the pacing starts to pick up and things start to get a little more interesting.
The film suffers from many of the same problems countless other slasher films do - flimsy characters and all too convenient actions on the part of those characters being the two biggest issues - but there's enough style and retro-charm here to make this one a fun watch. Matthew Mungle's effects work is solid and plenty gory and Christopher Young's score, while very familiar at times, does its job well by enhancing the jump scares and adding a bit of atmosphere. The camera work is solid and the film is reasonably well edited (Obrow and Carpenter are credited but discuss contributions from a few others in the commentary). There's quite a bit of alternate footage here compared to the Pranks cut (sadly, not included in this release) and the film is a better one in this version.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The transfer for this film was taken from the only existing 35mm answer print of the original cut of the film, which would have to be a blow up as the film was shot on 16mm. As such, the film is pretty grainy but thankfully this well authored disc ensures that's never a problem. There isn't much in the way of actual serious print damage, just the odd speck here and there, and if this isn't ever going to look as good as the latest Hollywood blockbuster, anyone who has seen the film before will certainly appreciate Synapse's efforts here. The previous DVD release, a bootleg from Jef Films, was a fullframe presentation culled from a crappy VHS source. It was soft and flat and ugly and of horrible quality. By contrast, this version not only presents the film in its original 1.66.1 widescreen aspect ratio but the 1080p AVC encoded high definition transfer offers up far more detail than ever before. The film is still very dark and sometimes suffers from poor lighting and so detail in the darker scenes, of which there are many, isn't going to blow your mind but black levels are rock solid here and there are no problems with compression artifacts, edge enhancement or noise reduction. The result is a very film like transfer that has to be a pretty damn accurate representation of what this movie would have looked like when it was projected in theaters. While the limitations of the source material mean that this movie will only ever look so good, this transfer is a very substantial upgrade and fans of the film will be very pleased with what they see here.
The only audio option provided for the film is an English language DTS-HD 2.0 Mono track, no alternate language options or subtitles are provided. The clarity of the mix is quite good, you won't have any problems understanding the performers or appreciating the Psycho-esque score used throughout the film. Levels are well balanced and there are no problems with hiss or distortion.
Extras start off with a commentary track from directors Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter. A very amiable pair, Obrow and Carpenter talk about how they made this during their stint at UCLA and how they more or less used friends as cast and crew wherever possible. It's no secret that they had no real money when they were making this, so they talk about how they cut corners and tried to bring things to a finish on a budget. Carpenter gives slightly more technical input, offering up thoughts on the effectiveness of his lighting and certain shot set ups, while Obrow's thoughts tend to be more reminiscent. They share a lot of interesting stories here, talking about how the death of John Lennon affected the production and about how, for some reason, the film looked its best when projected at a small town theater in the south where the film played first. They express their admiration for Mungle's effects work and Young's score and discuss some points that make this one unique amongst slasher films, from the ending to the way the big reveal takes place at the end. It's a very laid back and modest track, one that's interesting to listen to and quite warm - almost as if these two guys are your pals and they're taking you on a trip down memory lane with them. There's lots of good information here and it's delivered at a very good pace and overall this was just a really enjoyable listen.
From there, Synapse has supplied two featurettes, the first of which is entitled My First Score (8:11) and it's an interview with composer Christopher Young in which he talks about how he became involved in the project, the obvious influence of Bernard Herrmann and the importance of 'stingers' when scoring a horror film, noting that he even used them in his work on Spider-Man 3. The second featurette is My First Slasher (9:28) and it's an interview with make-up FX man Matthew Mungle, who would win an Oscar for his work on 1992's Dracula and be nominated for his work on Ghosts Of Mississippi and Schindler's List. Here he talks about his early days in the industry and about the effects work that he did for this particular picture, and what it was like collaborating with Obrow and Carpenter and how even though they were 'co-directors' they had very distinct roles in making this picture. Aside from the fact that for some reason it looks like a black inky blob is eating the back of Mungle's head in a few shots, this is a pretty revealing look into the toils of a man trying to do the best he could on very limited funds. Both Young and Mungle would work with Obrow and Carpenter again a couple of years later on The Power.
Rounding out the extras on the disc is a great isolated score audio track, a trailer for The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1:26) and a trailer for the alternate Pranks (1:53) cut of the film, animated menus and chapter selection. Reversible cover art, offering Dorm That Dripped Blood and Pranks images, is also included. All of the extras on this disc are in high definition. A second disc in the set contains a standard definition DVD with the same extras.
The Final Word:
If The Dorm That Dripped Blood isn't the greatest slasher ever made it's still a well done low budget picture made by an interesting cast and crew. There's a good bit of atmosphere here, some rock solid kill scenes and bloody effects work, and even a bit of nudity - it'll give slasher fans pretty much exactly what they want. Synapse's Blu-ray release treats the film with a lot of respect, offering up the film in the best possible quality and with a good selection of extras too. All in all, this is a pretty great release.
Click on the images below for full size Blu-ray screen caps (and yeah, some of these screen caps do contain spoilers so proceed with caution)!
I enjoyed it a lot and said during the end credits that it was a decent slasher film made great by the score. Sure, much of it was PSYCHO inspired but still way more than it could have been.
Great review! (Yours, not mine!)