As fall turns into winter, and a chill enters the air, horror fans begin to feast on their favorite holiday horrors. Black Christmas, Gremlins, and Silent Night, Deadly Night are all seasonal staples, and more contemporary offerings, such as Krampus and Better Watch Out, have become new classics. Yet for additional helpings of festive frights, […]
Pictured: Jake Jones’ character gets the drill in The Dorm That Dripped Blood.
The usually bustling UCLA campus served as the desolate backdrop for this Christmas chiller. Carpenter and Obrow, who were students there at the time, made the most of their venue and captured that sensation of being left behind. In this case, though, the characters of The Dorm That Dripped Blood chose to stay put as their classmates headed off for the holidays. Their menial task of cleaning out a soon-to-be-demolished dormitory over winter break sparks no joy for either them or the audience, but in between these mundane parts are those requisite bursts of bloodshed.
An obvious appeal of any ‘80s slasher is the carnage, and The Dorm That Dripped Blood is average in that department. The slayings look tame through a modern and desensitized eye, however, it was gruesome enough to catch the spiteful hand of not only the Video Nasty brigade across the pond, but also America’s own MPAA. In all fairness, the uncensored version of this film is eye-opening, chiefly during the maintenance man’s death. Jake Jones’ doomed side character received a drill to the back of his head, and it is only in Synapse’s re-release does his ordeal — and the craftsmanship of future Oscar-winning makeup artist Matthew W. Mungle — seem coherent and palpable. An enthusiastic score, the first ever from now-acclaimed composer Christopher Young, certainly elevated this and other kills.
If not for the meager decorations spotted throughout, audiences would have a hard time remembering The Dorm That Dripped Blood is set around Christmas. Indeed, the directors didn’t play up the holiday element as much as they could have, but that mild attempt at festooning adds to the overall sadness of this film. That depressing ambience does more good than harm, especially as the story approaches its dark conclusion.
What The Dorm That Dripped Blood lacks in general memorability it makes up for in gloominess. This film has little in the way of charismatic characters, action, or set pieces, yet the outcome is quite wretched, even by slasher standards. The so-so story goes out on a brilliantly bleak note, one that deserves more recognition in conversations about grim Christmas Horror.
Pictured: Sullivan Hester defeats the cannibalistic miner in Trapped Alive.
Trapped Alive, which is also known as Forever Mine and simply Trapped, is an accurate temperature read of subsequent holiday horrors. By that, Leszek Burzynski’s 1988 film is more cheesy than scary, and is prone to misshapen whimsy. Whether or not Burzynski and producer Chris Webster wanted to make such a goofy Christmas Horror picture is beside the point, seeing as the end result is anything but serious, no matter how straight-faced the characters may act.
Even though Trapped Alive has the scent and look of a Canadian tax-shelter horror, it is, in fact, an American production, albeit one directed by a Brit. The film was also unreleased until the early ‘90s, where its VHS art — one featuring two women who aren’t even in the film! — is misleadingly erotic. Like its characters, though, Trapped Alive was buried and almost never seen again. Then in 2019, Arrow Video did the unexpected and unearthed a flick few had heard of, much less deemed a favorite.
Only a sundry of horror films have ever been made on Wisconsin soil, yet for a short time, Windsor Lake Studios had hoped to change that and turn the Northwoods into a horror hub. The ultra-indie studio itself played a hand in a couple of genre oddballs, including Severed Ties, Mindwarp and The Chill Factor, before finally closing its doors. And it was that very first production that set the tone for Windsor’s output. The execution of Trapped Alive becomes stranger with every new scene, ultimately making this one of the most bewildering slashers of its era.
For all its bizarre choices, which are plenty, Trapped Alive never disappoints as an offbeat and entertaining midnighter. The Christmas atmosphere firmly fades once the central characters, two damsels and three prison breakers, go from the snow-laden surface to the subterranean lair of a cannibalistic, Santa-esque miner. From there the film shifts between the usual steps of a cave-in scenario, plus the strain of a quasi-hostage situation, and the aboveground B-plot; an unfortunate cop and passerby (Randy Powell) gets mixed up with the caretaker of the mine, a screwy and horny housewife (Elizabeth Kent of Mindwarp), and its man-eating occupant. Merging these stories took less effort than predicted, and the culmination of everything — Kent delivering an unhinged, snot-dripping monologue about her character’s daddy while exploding the mine like a cartoon villain — must be seen to be believed.
While Trapped Alive struggles as a traditional slasher — too low of a body count, the miner killer is too minor of a threat — it excels as a kind of spectacle. That opinion stands to reason after everything is done and over with, seeing as viewers are likely going to ask themselves, “what the hell did I just watch?” The answer would be a film that, above all, embodies the almost indescribably weird and chaotic energy of classic regional horror.
Neither The Dorm That Dripped Blood nor Trapped Alive are going to replace any of the mainstays of Christmas Horror, let alone be reclassified as underrated gems, yet there is always room for more merry mayhem this time of year.
The Dorm That Dripped Blood and Trapped Alive are each currently available on physical media.
Horror contemplates in great detail how young people handle inordinate situations and all of life’s unexpected challenges. While the genre forces characters of every age to face their fears, it is especially interested in how youths might fare in life-or-death scenarios.
The column Young Blood is dedicated to horror stories for and about teenagers, as well as other young folks on the brink of terror.
