Scalps

Scalps (1983)

Directed by: Fred Olen Ray

Rating: 2.25 out of 4 Pentagrams

Reviewed By: Jeff Deth

Scalps is the story of a group of college archeology students who venture out into the desert searching for ancient Native American artifacts. Of course it all goes horribly wrong. Once their professor backs out on joining them at the last minute, the kids head out on the road planning for a weekend of drinking and fornication.

Normally that would have been great, but without him the bumbling teens unknowingly trespass onto haunted Indian burial grounds. But it’s not as if they weren’t warned. After all, the creepy town derelict at the gas station told them all about the scalpings, etc. going on in the Black Tree area where they were headed. But of course they were too busy buying their beer and planning to get laid to give a damn.

In a sense this film is derivative and formulaic. It reminded me of The Hills Have Eyes but with a Friday The 13^th cast of horny couples. Not that that’s a terrible thing. I give the film credit for introducing a new spin on an otherwise typical slasher story.

I expected the acting to be horrible given the low-budget. I was surprised and fairly satisfied with the believability of most of the characters under the circumstances. The budget was low but they did plenty of things right with it. The soundtrack was really good, setting a dark vibe throughout. I found the cinematography to be engaging at times as well, with some interesting shots being attempted. One aspect I could have done without was the dog-faced mask on one of the killers. Clearly it’s a mask and it doesn’t help that it was shot straight on in full light. They might have gotten away with it if they had heavily shadowed him.  On the other hand, the killings showed some quality special effects with some slashed throat and decapitation action. There is one full-on scalp that takes place but for a film called “scalps” you would have expected more.

I really like the idea of Native American ghosts haunting the desert as the basis for a film. Scalps, does an ok job of executing it but it could have been better somehow. I’m not going to put it down too hard because over-all it works and did more things right than wrong on balance.  If you’re a fan of the early work of Wes Craven you will probably appreciate Scalps. Or, you could just as easily find it to be a poor man's knock off all the same.