Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Scalps (1983) * 1/2 (out of 4)Some archeologist students head out to some Indian land where they plan on digging bodies up so that they can take ka variety of items. It doesn't take long for them to unleash an evil spirit who decides to teach them a lesson.Fred Olen Ray's SCALPS has become a cult favorite over the years and in all honesty I can see why. The film certainly borrows some elements from THE HILLS HAVE EYES but back in the day when VHS was all the craze, something like SCALPS would be the perfect example of the type of film that made that format boom. Yes, the film is quite poor and very boring at times but there's still some low-budget charm to it.The biggest problem with SCALPS is the fact that the middle section is just downright boring. The film kicks off in high gear as we see a decapitation right off the bat and you get ready to see this type of thing throughout the 88-minute running time but it doesn't happen again for quite a while. The entire middle section of this picture is downright boring as the characters do nothing but talk about what we've already seen them do and talk about what we're about to see them do.The horror elements finally kick in and that's when we get some more fun, gory violence but it takes a very long time to get there and by the time it does come it's just too late. I will say that the film has some charm if you're a fan of these types of movies. The cast range from poor to okay but you do get Forrest J. Ackerman playing a small role.

If you want a fine example of 'bare bones (horror) film-making', "Scalps" is just as fine as any example. Not that it's a fine film, mind you. Everything about it, is rudimentary. Like if it was made by a brute. It looks like the editing was done with an axe, first having the film chopped to pieces and then glued together with Pattex super-glue. The camera work is limited to pointing it where the actor is when he speaks his lines (or when he does something). The audio work was limited to making sure it was at least recorded. This makes up for background noises being very inconsistent during simple conversations, when the camera switches angles. In an attempt to cover up the sloppy sound, you get many scenes where the musical score continues to play throughout several scenes where it doesn't even belong. While this becomes ridiculous too often, the score itself does have its moments. It's minimalistic and electronic, and at times manages to enhance the desert landscapes with an ominous atmosphere.Essentially, "Scalps" plays out like mixing an ordinary slasher flick with an "Evil Dead"-ish 'vengeful spirits'-theme, set in a desert à la "The Hills Have Eyes" (at one point it even seems Fred copied the exact same 'passing through a tunnel with a car'-scene from the first "Evil Dead"). A group of young archaeologists set out to excavate an Indian burial ground. We all know you should stay away from such sites when you're starring in a horror movie. One directed by Fred Olen Ray, no less, so thankfully that also means naked boobs and gore... The boobs at display are fine, the attempted rape-scene too (yes, the spirits they awaken are not only angry, but also horny). The gore at display, while being raw and not of a high technical standard, is pretty cool too (heads being decapitated & scalped, throats being cut,...). It's bloody but very basic, yet not without charm. You can include not-so-effective 'possessed' make-up effects in the gamma, and one, incredibly puzzling appearance of a ghostly demon dude with an animatronic lion's head. A great source of incomprehensible laughter, but afterwards I learned that this was test-footage Fred never intended to edit into the movie. His producers decided otherwise. Another highlight in the SFX department is the exploding ghostly Indian head. Its evil, floating influence is felt & seen numerous times throughout the movie (not sure if that was intended either), but at one point it makes the stupid mistake to appear amidst a crispy campfire. Boom! Bye bye, ghostly Indian head. Good stuff.The film's pace is pretty damn slow; obviously, as we're dealing with an early 80's slasher here. The performances aren't very convincing, as to be expected, but the young cast does manage to say things with a straight face. And that in itself is an accomplishment, as most of the dialogues are clichéd-driven, moronic drap. However, one girl manages to utter the most memorable line from the whole film: "Defiling the graves of the dead will only anger their souls!". Upon hearing it, it spontaneously evokes the viewer's urge to repeat it with a more firm, low-pitched, threatening voice. And so we did. Hilarity ensued.I think that sums up about everything there is to say about Fred Olen Ray's "Scalps". He does try to make a serious-toned supernatural slasher, but delivers an inept piece of bare bones film-making. It's notable for the rudimentary gore effects and the occasionally atmospheric soundtrack. But, as so it goes with most of his other 80's horror/sci-fi outings, it's advisable to watch it with friends. That way you can have more fun with the 'bad movie qualities' it has. Make this film better, and share the laughter. And then go right ahead and watch his honest-to-god "Alien" cash-in "Deep Space" too. By then (1988), Fred had already learned to pick up the pace of a film, understood that his films needed more slimy tentacles & grotesque monster action and very well gained the budgetary means to hire The Great Charles Napier ("I've got a mouth that can open sideways too!") to spear-head the cast. It's the one film that proudly managed to put him on my B-movie map in my early days. If you really need to see one Fred Olen Ray film, then watch "Deep Space".

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 a pretty decent, if overall unspectacular slasher.**SPOILERS**Heading out to the desert, archeology students D.J., (Jo-Ann Robinson) Randy, (Richard Hench) Kershaw Ellerbe, (Roger Maycock) Ben Murphy, (Frank McDonald) Louise Landon, (Carol Sue Flockhart) and Ellen Corman, (Barbara Magnusson) prepare for a field trip assignment. Using local maps, they try to locate a burial ground that contained Native American remains for them to study. Finding the proposed site to study, they come across an old Indian legend concerning the movement of artifacts and bones from their graves would unleash the spirit of a warrior from it's resting place. As they manage to get the bones out of the ground, they suddenly find a series of strange events befall them and come to the realization that the stories were right and are now being stalking by a maniacal killer, who could be one of the students possessed.The Good News: This one here does have a couple of rather nice areas that work. One of the main ones is that this one decides to forgo the usual matter of having it be an Indian burial ground and instead uses the storyline of making the artifacts removed from their land bring about the curse. That offers up a little amount of ingenuity, and makes for some really tense moments when the group begins digging up the grounds knowing full well that it will lead to them getting killed off. Those are quite fun and do have some nice amounts of tension to them. The kills themselves aren't terrible and do offer up some pretty gory moments. One is whacked in the head with a tomahawk, another has an arrow shot into their eye at close range, another has their throat slit before being scalped, all done in extreme close-up and another has a slew of arrows shot into their back and legs, among others. These here do spill a lot more blood than expected, which allows them to have some appeal to the gore-hounds out there. The final half-hour, which is where ninety-five percent of the action takes place, is a lot of fun. It's fast-paced, contains all the best scenes and kills, and is something that allows for plenty of fun to be had. The other good part is all of the pop-up scare tactics where the head of a deformed Indian head appears out of nowhere to offer up a few nice scenes. The fire-pit is the best one, since it's the best out-of-nowhere gag among them, and really works nicely. These here make the film watchable.The Bad News: This one isn't that bad, but it does have a couple of rather important flaws to it. The first one is the fact that this one takes so long to get going. After the opening murder, this one takes until the forty-five minute mark to knock off another, and that is just way too long for the film. That leaves unending scenes of them complaining to no end about the seriousness of what they're doing and how it will come back to hurt them. Those scenes are just irritating, no less as the heroine is the one complaining about it, and rather than trying to take the obvious route or reasoning with the others, this one decides to have them focus on just ranting out a long series of statements that are supposed to get the viewer to side with the heroine, as they're arguing for the right cause, but this is done in such the wrong way that it finally gets too much and those scenes are annoying to watch and just make the film a chore to sit through when they're on. Those also hurt the film due to it's length, as this one could've really been stretched out a little longer. The fact that it doesn't even make eighty minutes is something of concern, as there's a little more that could've been done to make the film a little longer without it feeling stretched out at all. The confusing way it ends is something else, and when viewed, it will be obvious what is being criticized since it's easy to spot and makes for a rather head-scratching moment. These few areas here are what keep the film down.The Final Verdict: While this one isn't that terrible as far as slashers go, the incredibly long period of time in between activity is what hurts this one the most. See this one only if you're a hardcore slasher fanatic or have a need to see trashy films, otherwise there's much better ones out there to see rather than this one.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Language, Brief Nudity and Rape