I wanna start this one off with quick anecdotal story. The year was 1987, and 14-year-old me and my best friend Jim were fully engrossed in the 80s slasher horror craze. We would have sleepovers all the time and have our parents take us to the local video rental store where we would go straight to the horror section. Our parents (and the video store employees) were obviously not paying attention, as we routinely walked out with some really crazy titles.
As we continued to watch video after video, the next logical step in our progression was of course to write and film our own slasher flick! My family had just gotten our first VHS video camera and we were ready to go. We sat down and brainstormed ideas, eventually settling on Butcher Town as a title.
I sat down and began writing a script to what I thought was sure to be the next big slasher horror hit. And that's about as far as we got. 3 or 4 pages of a story. We eventually jumped to the next big idea (which I think was our first walk-through haunted house!) and Butcher Town was permanently shelved...
And that is why I love this video so much.
Halloween Party is an amateur horror film project that was created by Connecticut teenager Dave Skowronski and his friends in 1989. It was a straight forward slasher, following a killer in a mask (who, it looks like, rose from a grave in a cemetery?) who stalks a group of teenagers having a party on Halloween night.
Now I will come right out and say that this video is pretty bad. It's shot directly to VHS tape, every scene is too dark, and most scenes are of the girls talking over each other and you can't really hear what they're saying.
But damn if that isn't what makes this so good. Couple all that with the hilariously bad killing scenes, a solid killer character, an opening in a cemetery with actual scary music, and the early digital title type, and you have an absolute nostalgic gem. A perfect snapshot into the free-for-all that was 80s horror and the DIY projects that it inspired.
Huge credit to Skowronski and his friends for actually producing this. You can tell that they are true fans of horror and had an absolute blast making it. And, it even made a Halloween night broadcast on their local cable access channel (which is what this video was taken from).
Be sure to catch the local horror host after the film's end as well as a full blooper reel. It really is an enjoyable watch that really encapsulates Halloween and horror fun from those crazy 80s.
It almost makes me want to go back and revisit Butcher Town. If I could only find that original script again... Enjoy!
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