Scalps – 1983 – a desert slasher

The fun thing about slasher collections is that there’s always one or two that aren’t really up to par with the best of the genre. Scalps is such a movie. I don’t really understand what they thought about conceiving this. It’s a movie that goes all over the place, it contains all of the necessary elements for a slasher but it never delivers the goods properly. It’s bloody, there is a campfire and ghost stories told around it. There’s an old legend and people die. What more can you ask for?

Well, there’s not much suspense even if there’s some atmosphere in the desert scenes. You do, however, need to remember that Scalps didn’t have much budget to work with and that all of the actors and the director were beginners at the time. That makes it kind of interesting to watch anyway even if it’s bad. And if there’s nothing else to say, there’s the lion. The lion stands on two legs and wiggles his upper lip. I don’t know what this means. What the thought about that was but I guess it was designed to add to the mysticism of the story. It does indeed add something to my confusion.

The Lion

I can’t really recommend Scalps. It’s too strange and too boring to be something else than a movie that gets stuck in the collection. It will most probably stay on the shelf but never be watched again.