Joseph Zito’s The Prowler is a refreshing work. Whereas every World War II vet I’ve encountered mistakes something as insignificant as a friendly nod of the head and respectful smile as “tell me your life story in long, agonizing anecdotes, and spare no details,” the Dubya-Dubya-Two vet here doesn’t speak at all. Plus, you can’t see his face, so you aren’t distracted by liver spots. So what if he also carries a big bayonet? Doesn’t that trump having to hear yet another yarn about fapping to Betty Grable pin-ups in the barracks?

It does, even if this vet holds quite the grudge (or, ju-on, if you prefer). After receiving a Dear John letter from his best gal while he’s overseas, the guy returns home to find her necking with a new beau at the graduation dance, so our vet puts a pitchfork right through ’em both. That’ll show ‘er!

Thirty years later, the town holds the dance again for the first time post-body count, and wouldn’t you know it? The vet is back, and he’s got a hankerin’ to kill all those meddling kids! Perhaps most notably, a busty co-ed gets all points of a pitchfork in her tummy while she’s soaping up in the shower, and Zito doesn’t dare puss out by cutting away.

That’d mean squat if the effects sucked, but they do anything but. Tom Savini outdoes himself here, crafting practical gore scenes that look so realistic, the payoff they provide is worth Zito’s sometimes too-long build-up of suspense. The director next did Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, arguably the best of that series, and the rest is splatter-flick history. —Rod Lott

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Admittedly, The Phantom of the Opera is among Dario Argento’s worst films. Even still, I didn’t find it to be that bad, even if Joel Schumacher’s musical version of Phantom is better. It’s not like the movies needed another version of Gaston Leroux’s 1910 classic novel, but at least Argento puts his own bloody stamp on things.

The story is pretty faithful to its source material: A man who lives in the tunnels underneath the opera falls in love with one of its young singers, to the point where he’s murder everyone else to see her front and center with the leading part. Argento’s big turn is that his Phantom (Julian Sands) isn’t horribly disfigured and, thus, doesn’t wear a mask. He does, however, have rock-star hair befitting a metal band.

The Christine of his dreams is played by Asia Argento, and she and The Phantom get down and dirty a couple of times. (Once more, it’s a little unsettling to see her disrobing for sex scenes for her father to shoot, especially since The Phantom likes it doggy-style.) The Phantom so wants Christine to star on the stage version of Romeo and Juliet that he assaults the “fat cow” leading lady by clawing deep gashes into her left udder.

In between all the talky-talky that goes on, we’re given scenes of rats feeding on a man’s hand caught in a trap, a decapitation of a man riding around on some steampunk rodent-catching vehicle, The Phantom pulling out a woman’s tongue with only his teeth, and so on. If only it didn’t look shot on video and extremely cheap, viewers would be kinder. After all, they certainly were when Argento visited Opera in 1987, but there was no question that deserved it. —Rod Lott

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