HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

-So this thing came out when I was ten, and I remember two things about its release: first, the poster declaring that it contained "SIX OF THE MOST BIZARRE MURDERS YOU WILL EVER SEE." Second, a little blurb on the ads that said that due to the bizarre nature of the ending of the movie no one would be seated during the last fifteen minutes of the film. Now this was toward the end of the period when audience members would just show up whenever for a movie, then stick thru the next screening until they were caught up to the point at which they'd entered. But in my fevered brain I imagined screenings of this movie being cleared with fifteen minutes to go, with an ending so terrifying that it would only play to empty houses. A potent thing in the imagination of a young cinephile.

-It wound up on cable a year or two later, and Dad and I watched it. I finally saw six of the most bizarre murders I would ever see, and was seated in the family room as that bizarre and unwatchable ending played out. And at the end I thought, well, that....wow, that's crazy.

-About twenty years after that I'm working at an arts center on the other coast, and I get it in mind to program a small retrospective of films by J. Lee Thompson (likely a tribute series, as he passed away around that time). The initial thought was his Oscar-nominated The Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear, and maybe a couple of the Bronson collaborations from the 80s. The series didn't come together, but over the course of researching Thompson's career I saw that he'd directed Happy Birthday to Me. And I thought, well, that....wow, that's crazy.

-Rewatching the movie now it falls in that interesting '80/'81 place where the slasher is taking off but isn't quite a franchise-ready model. So this shares the more overt murder mystery aspect of many of the more interesting movies in the subgenre at the time, and even though it reveals the killer about 2/3 through it still retains a trick or two up its sleeve. There's interesting and subtle social commentary as a bloody swath is cut among an elite clique of a hoity-toity prep school. And yes, it is startlingly violent, though I believe I've seen at least six other murders in movies that I'd consider more bizarre than those captured here. And none of the much-ballyhooed murders are anywhere near as genuinely disturbing as a protracted surgical sequence during one of the movie's numerous flashbacks.

But if you're looking for assurances that this thing was in fact helmed by a guy who'd been nominated for an Oscar, they're there. Thompson clearly studied/was aware of mystery and suspense filmmaking, including the nascent subgenre in whose ghetto he was working, and attempts to grasp the style of his contemporaries. (The black gloves worn by the killer suggested he'd given giallo a once-over as well.) His composer Bo Harwood had learned his craft alongside Cassavetes, but this isn't his first horror movie, either, and he delivers a fully-orchestrated and shaded score. And Thompson's old school enough to unleash castle thunder during the storm that rages outside the climactic birthday party.