SHALLOW GRAVE (1987) Blu-ray
Director: Richard Styles
Vinegar Syndrome

Schoolgirls on spring break run the risk of ending up in a SHALLOW GRAVE in Vinegar Syndrome's Blu-ray of the lesser-known Hitchockian slasher.

Narrowly avoiding expulsion for a Hitchock-inspired prank, Catholic college quartet Sue Ellen (BAYWATCH NIGHTS' Lisa Stahl), Patty (Carol Cadby, AMERICAN RICKSHAW), Rose (Donna Baltron, HIDE AND GO SHRIEK), and Cindy (Donna Baltron) get off with an additional essay assignment as they jump in the convertible and head to Fort Lauderdale, ostensibly to care for Sue Ellen's ailing grandmother. Stopping at a diner in Georgia, they meet up with college hunks Chad (Vincent Tumeo, SALSA) and Owen (Gregg Todd Davis, NIGHTMARE BEACH), making an appointment to meet up with them the next day for breakfast at the Florida border. Unfortunately, the girls suffer a blowout outside middle of nowhere town Medley. While Patty hikes back to the town in search of help, Sue Ellen wanders into the woods looking for a place to relieve herself and stumbles upon a lovemaking couple (Tony March and Merry Rozelle). The pair get into a violent argument with the woman threatening to tell the man's wife, and he kills her in a fit of rage. Sue Ellen escapes unnoticed, but Rose and Cindy are not so lucky when they interrupt the man in the middle of digging a grave to hide the body. Sue Ellen reaches Patty, but their attempt to find help is hindered when Sue Ellen is bitten by a dog and they are arrested by young Deputy Scott (Tom Law, MASTERBLASTER) for attempted breaking and entering while trying to get to a phone. The deputy gives little credence to their story, but the girls find themselves deep in hot water when Sue Ellen recognizes the sheriff as the murderer who is using his investigation as a means of covering his tracks, including silencing any witnesses.

Not so much a slasher or a backwoods horror film, SHALLOW GRAVE favors suspense, letting the audience in on certain revelations before the protagonists, thereby increasing the viewer's fear about the safety of the surviving girls and anyone who may try to help them. While the MPAA crackdown on violence in the eighties meant that the film is not particularly gory, the filmmakers pull their punches with some nasty and grueling moments like the murder of one of the girls that seems to start out as a rape but becomes much more disturbing in its end result. The film moves relentlessly towards such a downbeat resolution that the film's decision to leave the ending ambiguous is no relief for the audience. Producer George Edward Fernandez's previous credit was CEASE FIRE starring Don Johnson, which was fairly successful because of the decision to hold the film back from release until just after Johnson hit it big with MIAMI VICE. Director Richard Styles' subsequent credits include the Roger Corman softcore pics MIDNIGHT TEASE 2 and SORCERESS 2. Although set in Georgia, the film was shot in Florida, and the cast includes some veterans of Filmirage and Florida-lensed Italian eighties exploitation.

Not to be confused with Danny Boyle's first international hit of the same name from a few years later, SHALLOW GRAVE bypassed theatrical release for a VHS from Prism Entertainment, the artwork of which aided in its collecting dust on the video shelves. Mastered from a new scan of the 35mm vault elements, the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer reveals a relatively slick-looking regional production with sunny exteriors, moody, diffused interiors, and fair to good detail in the textures of ripped clothes and blood-streaked or sweat-beaded skin. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track cleanly delivers a serviceable mono mix of sparse sound design and musical comment. Optional English SDH subtitles are included.

Two commentaries for such a minor film may seem like overkill, but the audio commentary by director Styles is a rather disappointing listen as he starts off well enough discussing the cast and the film's debts to Hitchcock, particularly the opening shower murder which is directly patterned almost shot-for-shot after the PSYCHO sequence with the addition of boobs. As the track continues on after about fifteen minutes, his comments become sparser and the silences longer. Fortunately, the audio commentary by podcasters The Hysteria Continues! is more than just a jokey riff on the film, noting how it straddles the body count formula of the decade and the previous decade's hicksploitation genre, noting that the film's scenario and use of humor is indeed Hitchcockian, but also providing a goodly amount of background information on the film (including the impact of MIAMI VICE on the cost of production in Florida and how that effected the film along with a very vocal anti-film population responsible for the state's fallow periods in between production booms going back to the silent era).

Styles is more lively in "Looking for Magic" (14:42), discussing working with Fernandez and Johnson on CEASE FIRE, and how he disliked the initial concept for what would become SHALLOW GRAVE when he was asked to replace the original director because it included aliens. He asked to do something Hitchcockian and credits Fernandez with crafting a script from his concept. Fernandez contradicts Styles in "A Visual Storyteller" (13:30), claiming that the film was inspired by the Jim Crow laws with a black couple witnessing a murder in a Georgia town before it evolved into the final product. One is not sure who to believe. The cover is reversible and the first 5,000 copies ordered directly from Vinegar Syndrome come with a special limited edition embossed slipcover designed by Earl Kessler Jr. (Eric Cotenas)

BACK TO REVIEWS

HOME