The next VHS in the pile was a tape I recently acquired from the basement of the Vinegar Syndrome store. It's a movie I hadn't seen, or even thought of for decades, but when I saw that cover I instantly recognized it. I'm speaking of John McCauley's 1985 slasher The Deadly Intruder.
A mental patient escapes custody and makes his way to Midvale, only to cross paths with Jessie (Molly Cheek). Who will survive, and will I still be awake?
Just as I'm now looking at it, I realize how similar this cover is to the 1989 flick Hider in The House, only that art director had the sense to turn a light on. But I digress. The Deadly Intruder begins promisingly with a score that doesn't even pretend it wants be John Carpenter, as two orderlies with no weapons or backup chase after a psychopath. Surprise! They both get offed and our maniac escapes into the night.
Perhaps it was because the Carpenter seed was already planted in my head, but the first fifteen-or-so minutes of this movie just felt like a Halloween re-enactment. Like, someone really dug that hot tub scene in Halloween II because it turns up here verbatim, subbing in a literal kitchen sink.
Frankly, the middle is just a haze of dad jokes, dog farts, extended scenes of food preparation and drifters skulking while Cheek's body double takes a bath. Oh, and the occasional kill. It really is quite amusing how unsophisticated this movie is. You know how every slasher has that scene where someone is sneaking up on someone else and it's framed like it's the killer, but it just turns out to be a friend pranking. Well, that doesn't happen here. It's just the killer killing.
Did you know that there is only one newspaper in BC, and it's called The Canadian Star? I admit I got a belly laugh out of that one. Danny Bonaduce looks like he's the one having the most fun here, at least until he gets his head rammed into a TV of course.
While watching the killer in the last act - the actual killer and not the bright red herring the movie waves in our face for an hour - I was reminded of Josh Hartnett's recent performance in Trap. There is an implausibility, an inherent disregard for logic and the laws of space and time, to this pair of criminals that after a while you just have to embrace it as comical if you're going to get any enjoyment out of it at all.
Anyhoo, The Deadly Intruder is not a winner and decidedly just filler for video store shelves. The Canadian Star rates this one, take off eh!
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