Happy Birthday to Me (1980)
(In French, On Cable TV, August 2020) You’ve seen simple Tuesday slashers, Friday the 13th slashers, Halloween slashers, Christmas slashers, April’s fool slashers, probably Easter slashers and Independence Day slashers—but what about a birthday slasher? That’s the gimmick adopted by Happy Birthday to Me, in which the friends of a girl about to celebrate her 18th birthday all start mysteriously dying. You may guess where this is going, but the filmmakers have a wild climactic plot twist in store. Never mind that it makes most of the plot impossible and meaningless—the original ending having been (correctly) judged too predictable, it was (incorrectly) reworked to make it less obvious no matter whether it still made sense. Production values are equal to what low-budget Canadian horror movies were capable of doing at the time: gritty, dark, fuzzy, slightly charming in their lack of polish. But since this is a slasher, the place of honour (and most obvious craft) is left for the kills, many of them cruel and unusual. It’s all fairly rote for a slasher, although the car stunts and whodunit mystery aspects are slightly better than other comparable films. Still, that doesn’t give it much of an excuse for being worth a look. Sure, Happy Birthday to Me is probably better than other films of the subgenre at the time but that doesn’t make ti a must-see. If you’re writing an encyclopedia on slashers, sure, have a look—otherwise, there are much better movies to see without wasting one’s life on an early-1980s slasher.