The Dawn of “Real” Home Video: ‘Slegehammer’

It’s almost here. In another decade, if not sooner. Before, culture was contained within a small box of presumed scholarship, writers in differing fields formulating classicism based on a small, selective frame of reference and a wide berth of personal experience – nowhere more so than in film. With its territorial restraints, limited availability, and lack of realistic replay value, movie consensus was created out of festival attendance, scholastic investigation, journalism, job, revivals, revisions, and that rare glimpse of lost genius on the late, late movie. Music had a broader basis, and print just seems to linger forever. But it wasn’t until the dawn of the VCR where cinema got a chance to open the artform to (almost) everything available.

Of course, a lack of exclusivity has also lead to a far more mainstream set of standards. Appreciation can and was ladled onto often undeserving entries, while others demanding attention remained caught in the cult (or, more often, complex rights issues). And then there is the generation for whom life without a VCR – and by extrapolation, without the ready access to any and all film – never existed. For them, a weird combination of nostalgia and knowledge drives their obsessions and aesthetic conclusions. In addition, scarcity and the ability to reconnect with a beloved artifact from said formative years can also function as a final conclusion. Such is the case with the first “direct to video” horror film Sledgehammer. Many have been waiting for this rarity to hit DVD since it made the rounds way back in the early ’80s. Clearly, they see something here that contemporaries will mock as meaningless.

The main premise of the film has an adulterous wife locking up her bratty little boy in a closet before spending a sexy evening with her callous lover. During their pre-bed embrace, a sledgehammer comes out of the shadows. It cracks his head open and smashes her to death. Ten years later, a group of college kids (?) head up to this notorious location for a little beer-fueled R&R. After a lengthy time spent throwing food on each other and trying to hook up, a blond himbo who can’t seem to locate a shirt tells the party about the killings, and the MIA status of the child.

BAM! One character gets a knife through the neck. Within minutes, a copulating couple are victim of the title beat down. As our survivors run from room to room, trying to make the director’s apartment look like a large country home, our masked murderer shapeshifts, turning from puffy adult nerd to smart-alecky little boy and back again, each one adorned with a lame plastic face mask fixture. Eventually, the plot hints at Satanism, revenge, and the vast majority of the paranormal payback motifs. In the end, nothing is every explained. Blood is spilled and bodies pile up – but that’s about it.

For those like yours truly who find themselves immersed in the homemade horror scene for over a decade (as critical connoisseur, not creator), Sledgehammer is really nothing new…or very good. Or sure, it has the patina of a lazy Saturday night running down to the local Video View to see if anything watchable arrived on the often under-stocked shelves. It’s got that solid last box along the bottom wall worth that, for someone just discovering themselves in the era, would equate as a rite of passage. Is it fair to hold this film up against the rest of the genre’s current camcorder crop? No – but then Sledgehammer isn’t really being sold that way. It’s being offered as an example of where the direct to video market started, and by inference, how far it’s come.

In his commentary and interview, director David A. Prior makes it very clear that Sledgehammer was part of a faux film school learning curve. How else do you discover how to make movies unless…you make a movie? Oddly enough, he also admits that he learned everything he needed on this low rent slasher rip-off…except how to actually shoot on celluloid stock. Part of Sledgehammer‘s value does come in seeing how early VHS technology could be used to manipulate material. Prior indulges in freeze frames, slow motion, optical wipes, and just about any other pre/during/post production process he can to achieve something akin to suspense and dread. It doesn’t always work, but it tends to give the final result an unusual look and fever dream feel.

Then, of course, the crappy acting steps in to screw things up. Prior admits to casting friends and family – as well as a couple of ‘names’ that had no business being above the marquee – and laments their lack of thespian chops. While horror films rarely provide layers of performance excellence, Sledgehammer clearly suffers from shirtless muscle dork Ted Prior’s pectoral-based heroism, Steven Wright’s arched eyebrow mugging, and last girl Linda McGill’s scream queen-less-ness. Your average 2011 shot on spec zombie flick has more polished acting than something like Sledgehammer. For some, it will be part of a “so bad, it’s good” determination. Others will just sit back, slack jawed.

In fact, the real fun that can be derived from the digital archeology of this film is to hear the various enthusiasts, now part of the nu-media Messageboard uprising, discussing their connection to, and kinship with, this otherwise middling effort. For them, Sledgehammer sits at the start of their basement viewing appreciation armature, a piece of a puzzle still being fitted and framed. Their insights and implications turn what is more or less a visual and narrative mess into a litmus test of temperament and future fandom. Even the distributor, Intervision, wallows in the worn out graphics and chroma-key designs of decades long gone by, cementing the work’s wistful aura.

One can easily envision a discussion, an advancing Internet in the making, where movies like this sit right alongside known quantities and the standard artistic accord. For now, Sledgehammer is a curiosity carved out of a still structuring dynamic that sometimes confuses more than it concurs. For many, this movie will indeed be nothing special. For others, it stands at the crossroads when movies went from elitist to everywhere, for good and for bad. The same is definitely true of this otherwise ordinary bit of slice and dice.