Scalps

source: Scalps

Six young archeologists set off to the desert to find sacred Indian artifacts. One of the six becomes the spiritual embodiment of the infamous Black Claw and begins to murder(including scalping one) his friends. Though warned by an old Indian that shakes a lot, these kids cannot be stopped in their desire to drive down the road of motion picture obscurity. This film has next to no budget which compliments its acting, directorial, and other creative talents. Director Fred Olen Ray directed this early work, and although the film has so many problems, one can appreciate Ray's appreciation of the classic horror tradition. He gives meaningless roles to the serial Superman Kirk Alyn as a befuddled professor who sees the POINT-lessness of digging up sacred Native American artifacts in the end, a brief and purposeless cameo to Mr. Sci-fi himself, Forry Ackerman, and a small role to Carroll Borland from Mark of the Vampire fame. The six stars(being very judicious with that appellation)appear to be right out of a high school play. The only plusses any of them have is that the ladies, especially the gal playing Ellen Corman, have wonderful visual assets. The special effects are a big joke as nothing looks real or scary in any way. A puppet is occasionally popping up here and there to show us the disembodied spirit of Black Claw. Night and day readily change. One moment the players are at a campfire in blackness, another moment on a rock as the sun falls, and then back to the darkness all in the same evening. Black Claw is one hell of an Indian if he can manipulate time and space to make that happen! This film falls in the so bad it's entertaining category. I wasn't scalped after seeing it, but I probably lost a few more hairs!

This one is putrid. No redeeming points at all. A friend rented this and we punched him out for daring to fall asleep during it because we still had to watch it. He deserved it and worse. What could he have been thinking in renting this travesty? Avoid at all costs, even drugging the audience is futile.

"Scalps" doesn't have much to offer. A cliched bunch of college-aged archaeologists head out to the California to dig up some rocks at an Indian burial ground, and this spirit kills and possesses this one guy to start killing them all. Some okay killings, but nothing more than that. You're not missing anything if you don't see this, believe me.

The best way to describe Scalps is as a missed opportunity. The premise is scary enough. College kids go to remote desert location to look for indian artifacts, come under attack from evil black magic and strange creatures(who are not explained in any way) and an evil indian sorceror. This movie is utter pants. All the scenes shot at night are virtually impossible to watch, you literally cannot see anything, and the sound quality is very poor. It could be argued that this is just my copy of the movie, but then how do you explain the totally incoherent narrative? It makes no sense whatsoever. Where did the monsters come from? Why are they attacking the kids? Why did the people in town know about this if no one returns alive? At the end of the day I think that this makes the film virtually unwatchable, and not endearing like The Beyond of Lost highway as the questions raised by those films are not suppossed to be answered.

A professor of archaeology (played by '40s Superman star Kirk Alyn, in his last ever screen appearance) sends six of his college students on a field trip to the desert where they desecrate an ancient native American burial ground, much to the annoyance of an ugly Indian spirit called Black Claw, who possesses one of the group and proceeds to kill off the rest. Director Fred Olen Ray blames the distributors for ruining Scalps by messing around with the editing; but even if this wasn't the case, I still very much doubt that the film would have been much cop, given its predictable plot, lousy pacing, lack of scares, and crappy performances from a cast of nobodies (apart from Alyn, the only other recognisable name is renowned monster movie aficionado Forrest J. Ackerman, who is clearly there to plug his latest book, Mr Monster's Movie Gold). A few semi-decent gore effects—including a slashed throat, a grisly scalping, and a juicy decapitation—make the second half of the film marginally more interesting than the uneventful first half. 3.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 4 for IMDb thanks to the hilariously bad animatronic lion-man, which was apparently one of the things added by the distributors against Olen Ray's wishes.

When you see the name Forrest J Ackerman and Fred Olen ray then you know that you are in the Drive-in atmosphere. And let me say, that's exactly what we are looking at. It's made in the middle of the slasher heydays but it isn't really a slasher. Why Fred gives away the decapitation in the beginning is still an unsolved question because it almost the best part of this flick. What's weirder is the fact that before the begin credits you have only a score combined with the images. Once they start talking you're in for bad sound and bad editing. Some parts were filmed without extra light which gives you too dark images. Some parts of this flick is filmed on bad reel, other parts are better, it's just like they used different reels to add it on the DVD. The effects are sometimes ridiculous like the pop up of the Indian ghost with white eyes but others are done well. The scalping is done really good and the beheading is also okay. But overall you have to take a lot of talking before the movie really starts going. It reminded me a bit of the story of Evil Dead, here they use some Indian sticks to wake up old spirits and they get possessed by them killing their friends. This is a pure example of what Drive-in is all about. It's watchable still today if you're looking for old horrors but don't expect too much of it.

Still I have yet to see a Fred Olen Ray movie that is half decent. In this movie only its second half is somewhat half decent but as a whole this still remains a quite bad and really poorly done film. Fred Olen Ray just can't direct. He has no talent for it and his movie are just always a mess. His movies are just so bad, that they aren't even funny or enjoyable to watch and I'm used to seeing some very bad movies, so you can take my word for it. But having said that, this was probably the first Fred Olen Ray that I didn't hate to watch. It's first half is still absolutely horrible but the movie somewhat redeems itself with its second half, in which finally some stuff is happening. That is really the biggest problem. For the longest time there isn't happening anything. It's some bad build up, that in fact is only just some time filler, or else the movie would had even been a whole lot shorter than its mere 80 minutes of running time. Besides, it's all done so very bad, with some bad acting, horrible editing and silly characters and dialog, that also just aren't very interesting, combined all with the clueless directing by Fred Olen Ray. But once the action and horror kicks in, the movie becomes a far more pleasant one. Some moments and its concept does actually work out quite well. It makes it obvious that this could had been a somewhat decent horror flick, with perhaps some more money and some more talent involved. A slasher featuring some Indian ghost. Now doesn't that just sound like a potentially good and interesting concept for a genre movie like this one? Unfortunately the execution of it all is really lacking, as a whole. I didn't hated it but it's still some bad stuff all. 4/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Fred Olen Ray's first "big" commercial release (it was the film that made me aware of his existence) stars Kirk Alyn a an archeology professor who has a group of students go out to a forbidden Indian burial ground where one is possessed by the spirit of one of the dead natives. Clearly shot on the cheap with almost no sound effects in the film, sequences appear to have been shot with sound when they happened or silent with a music score laid over them. It produces an odd effect and makes the film seem more like a home movie then a professional film that was written up in the magazines like Fangoria upon its release. The oddness of the sound is what kind of wrecks the film because otherwise this is a perfect example of the gory horror films that were being cranked out by the smaller producers, with a stereotypical plot, a big star (former Superman Alyn who over acts) and some, for the time, good gore effects. Honestly this is almost an okay little film, but its technical limitations make this something thats more likely to put to to sleep rather then send a chill up and down your spine. 3 out of 10

"Scalps" is an extremely predictable and boring early eighties movie. Looking back, the only good thing about this movie is the special effects, but unfortunately, all of the gore takes place either in the very beginning or the very end. This movie is a very good example of a movie with a good premise that has gone bad. The "plot" of this movie is as follows: A group of students goes out to a Native American burial ground to try to find artifacts. Predictably, the group of students begin to see signs of ancient spirits, who eventually start to attack and overcome the group. Aside from being almost plotless beyond the first fifteen minutes, this moviesuffers from bad acting, extremely annoying characters, bad pacing, and horrible quality. The spirit effects actually look cool, but eventually they get annoying when the same shots are played repeatedly. I suppose that the gore effects are decent, but there are very few of them. Try to miss this one. My rating: 2 out of 10