Synopsis
A group of parapsychology students, as part of their final project, head to a secluded house where a man murdered his entire family. Soon, they discover the dark and terrible secrets that lie within.
Fatal Exam
1990 Directed by Jack Snyder
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16mm Regional supernatural slasher hokum runs a bit long but the good stuff in here is awesome and made it all worthwhile—I dug the setup, the outdoor shooting locations, one liner zingers, the super solid score, the zone out drone out atmosphere, and the always admirable low budge moxie on display—plus a guy drinks about 538 Pepsi Cola cans.
The line “there’s a fucking head in the coffee table!” mixed with how cool the poster for this is swayed me with an extra half star—there’s some super fun dialogue and spooky house shenanigans as well and I’m always down for that. This was the only movie in the box set I hadn’t seen, and honestly I don’t know how often…
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First of all I just want to give a shout out to Vinegar Syndrome for creating the Homegrown Horrors set because these homemade classics are some of my very favorite kind of horror. This is the only one of the three I hadn’t seen and I’m glad I finally got around to it because it’s another gem!
Sure it’s almost 2 hours long and that’s the very reason it took me a while to get to it and sure probably too much of that run time is too talky, but it’s so oddly watchable with the incredibly bizarre and hilarious dialogue.
Add in a nice creepy house and that’s all I need, but it’s also just another strange as hell…
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DIY 16mm regional slasher that benefits from an abundance of sincerity and commitment but is unfortunately burdened by a 114 minute runtime - some imminently quotable dialogue in here though that's just begging to be discovered and made a theatrical rep staple at a venue like Spectacle, case in point:
"Heads on the coffee table, body parts all over the bedroom, some silly son of a bitch swinging a sword around. What's it gonna take, a sword up the ass before you believe me?"
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A mind scratcher of a supernatural slasher Fatal Exam is a mesmerizing display of zero budget brilliance. Relying on it's other worldly dialogue, bizarre decision making and heavy wall of lofi dissonance it captures your mind like a Venus fly trap. Slowly sneaking up on you with it's marvelous synth score, goofy characters and hokey premise it pulls you into it's realm of mystical Z grade cinema like quicksand.
A bunch of 40 year old college Dads embark on an assignment where they have to investigate an old folklore of murder and satanic rituals. They head to the house where the murders occurred many years ago! They sit around drinking beers repeatedly talking about how they are going to do…
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"This is boring!" - exclaims a character trapped in FATAL EXAM.
What if Chantal Akerman directed a regional slasher film?
In FATAL EXAM, time loses meaning, we watch similar-looking events fuse into pure monotony as the presented reality forces us to reflect upon our own life choices.
Six schlubby-looking (so, just like you and me) college students spend the weekend in a murder house. We never see the murders. The students explore their surroundings, talk about weird stuff we never see, walk around some more, and go back to talking about more weird stuff we never see. When the cloaked killer finally shows up over an hour in, it’s a jarring surprise “Oh yea! Stuff can happen in movies!” Just…
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Picture only the parts of PRINCE OF DARKNESS with the 30-year-old grad students talking to each other, but shot for the price of a hot meal.
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A low budget/no budget supernatural slasher with demonic possession at the forefront. Amateur hour acting, a stop motion Demon that looks kinda like a character you'd find in a Mortal Kombat game, some surprisingly ominous vibes, a group of students in a spooky old house getting picked off one by one...this was cheesy fun but at 2 hours it's wayyyy longer than it needs to be. 30 to 35 mins could've been cut easily imho. Still its another ambitious homemade gem that hopefully get some new fans! Hope Vinegar Syndrome releases more of these Homegrown Horrors box sets in the future!
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Regional Horror Flick that realizes it's got some gnarly juices cooking and decides to overstay its welcome.
Seriously, this is almost a fantastic movie:
-Great set-up of quirky college kids doing a paranormal investigation at a haunted house
-Half-way in morphs into a supernatural slasher
-Strong eerie atmosphere, enforced by the moody synths that coat every scene in dread
-Handful of grisly kills with multiple weapons and assailants
-Cloaked figure with a scythe stalking and eviscerating
-A twist ending that honestly blind-sided me
-A few hilarious lines fulfilling the "so-bad-it's-good" quotientSo what happened then?
Somehow between the heavy-lifting of the phenomenal synth-score and the onslaught of too many reaction shots, the director fell in love with what he was… -
Hi, I directed The VelociPastor and I think this movie is pretty much fucking cinema
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woefully inundated by a tiresome duration where everything moves at a glacial pace, certainly the least-desirable aspect for anything billed as a slasher, Fatal Exam’s no-budget regional excursion is devoid of jaunty suspense, thrills, or any real feasible grit, but, damned-be, if the zinger dialogue and camp of incompetent acting isn’t a blast and a half. the score is good, the set design is fun, the infrequent blood splatter is delectable—it sort of thrives in this vacuum of conventional horror and forces a flimsy arm of cardboard execution on purpose to perhaps inadvertently captivate, and it works every now and again. ultimately remains overlong and without good reason, but, ya know. these films beg for inquisition via whatever ride they choose to take us on, whether it be intermittently boring or not, and that kind of charm can never be rejected.
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every single person in this film looks like they are a registered sex offender.
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Scavenger of Human Sorrow (A Spooky Season Marathon)
Clocking in at nearly two hours, this regional supernatural slasher kinda overstays its welcome. Had some of the fat been trimmed, however, there's actually some fun to be had here. Jozlyn and I cracked up when the guy got stuck in a loop, opening a seemingly endless number of Pepsi cans ("Oh my God, did he just take out another one?!" 😂). There's also a stop-motion demon at the end of all this nonsense, if you can make it through the gauntlet of poorly acted expository dialogue and long stretches where nothing happens.
If you're going to watch this, make sure you have some Pepsi and Hostess Cupcakes on hand, for that truly immersive experience.
Watched with Jozlyn