Guilty Pleasures: Happy Birthday to Me
I’ll confess right off the bat. The biggest reason that I picked this particular film was because yesterday was my birthday. But I do love this movie even though it’s one of the most ridiculous slasher films of the 80’s (and trust me that’s saying something).
You see in the 1980’s Slasher films EXPLODED. While you had plenty of great franchise films like Halloween, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street you also had plenty of one shot slashers mostly cashing in on a holiday. These films varied in quality from the intentionally good (The Prowler), unintentionally good (Sleepaway Camp) and painfully bad (Splatter High). Now obviously with Happy Birthday To Me they’d run out of holidays (by this time Halloween, Friday the 13th, April Fool’s Day, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Graduation had already been claimed).
This movie is absolutely ridiculous but we’ll get to that in a minute let’s start off by explaining the plot a bit.
You see the movie follows Ginny a pretty & popular high school senior. She’s part of the “Top Ten” which is a group of the richest, smartest and snobbest students. Someone is killing off the various students. And man, do they ever kill them off.
The movie was advertised with the tagline “6 of the most bizarre deaths you’ll ever see” and that is not a false advertisement. I won’t spoil these glorious deaths (however the producers already spoiled one by making it the poster).
After killing almost all of the Top Ten Ginny begins to believe she may be the killer. She comes home on her birthday to find all her friends dead bodies sitting around a table and an exact look-a-like of herself.
Almost as if it were an ending to Scooby Doo the doppelganger removes her mask revealing herself to be one of Ginny’s friends Ann. Ginny kills Ann just as the police walk in. The audience never finds out if Ginny is arrested for the murders or able to prove her innocence.
This is what makes the movie shine where other films from this time failed. Not only is it beyond outrageous with it’s murders and the way the killer is revealed only to end on a dark and tragic conclusion. Unlike most slasher films where there’s always someone there to witness the survivor killing the masked murderer the films also pretend that ‘life moves on like normal’ (this excludes franchises like Scream that follows the survivors over a span of films). The reality is that you were just surrounded by various dead bodies and most of the people you know and love have been killed, there’s no happy ending regardless if the boogeyman is dead or not.
Hmmm that was kinda darker than intended.
Anyway my point is that it’s blend of dark humor and intense death scenes make this film more entertaining than some of the other 80’s slasher one-offs. Go check it out, it’s October damn it!
