Day Of The Reaper (1984)
Published at bleedingskull.com
Directed by Tim Ritter
Sub Rosa VHS
THE FILM
First, I want you to know that I waded in the Pacific Ocean for the first time last year.
Second, I want you to know that Day Of The Reaper is about a cannibalistic, black-hooded nasty roaming around nondescript suburbs and killing people who wear bikinis and white short-shorts.
Third, I want you to know that you may despise Day Of The Reaper for the very reasons that I enjoy it. Unless you're into wading.
This film's potential is contingent on what you bring to it. Shot in Florida for $1000 on silent Super 8 by teenager Tim Ritter (Truth Or Dare?, Killing Spree), Reaper is a psychotropic daymare as captured through the lens of a malfunctioning Kodak Instamatic. There's a simplistic, yet incomprehensible through-line. Humans communicate, but never connect. Events unfold for unknown reasons. Most of the time, it's just people sitting on couches or on beaches or in shabby motel rooms. And then they die. In a sense, Reaper is a gore-trash variant on Andy Warhol's bewildering Empire; we don't know why we're watching this film, or why we'd even want to, but the cumulative dreamlike state that results is undeniably remarkable. Yet again, it all depends on you.
Day Of The Reaper was made by, and stars, teenagers. People who weren't fully formed, whose minds had no inkling to fathom anything other than what was happening right now, this very second. As with the work of Nathan Schiff, this inseparable component is important. Because if adults were making Day Of The Reaper, they'd think about it. They'd plan things out and structure the process and do it "right". But Ritter didn't know any better. He just pointed the camera and let it run, smear, and bleed all over the place. That unrestrained enthusiasm took the form of a drowsy, relentlessly displaced tribute to whatever horror films excited the filmmaker during the summer of '84. For me, it doesn't get much better.
I see a lot in this film. I see Ogroff with less perversion and less mystery. I see a sexless Sinthia, The Devil's Doll that swaps easy-listening kitsch for restless synth-stabs. I see perceived mistakes that do nothing for my mind, but everything for my eyes. And unlike S.F. Brownrigg's Keep My Grave Open, Reaper's strange sense of design isn't drowned out by vacuity. Ritter's age prevented that; he simply didn't have the awareness to hassle the film with unnecessary complications. Now, someone else might see something totally different. Reaper could easily be interpreted as a dredging, puerile exercise in exhaustion by folks who feel that this type of thing is 100% junk. See how it works?
Day Of The Reaper is 70 minutes of makeshift slasher-trash, backdropped with a inadvertantly warped, and often beautiful, visual aesthetic. It's the kind of illusory experience that can only be realized by people who don't know what they're doing. Or teenagers. Or Andy Warhol. And it's the type of illusory experience that I could wade through all night.
AUDIO AND VIDEO
Lovely. Edited on video after being transferred to tape via shoe box projection, Reaper encompasses a look that I often romanticize, but rarely witness. It looks like someone magically invented a motion picture Polaroid camera, stocked it with expired film, and made a movie. Then, they placed the negative in a grocery bag, and placed that grocery bag in a garage, where it sat for 20 years. Then, they found it.
EXTRAS
For this, the film's first major VHS release in the early 00s, Tim Ritter added a running text commentary at the bottom of the screen. The technical tidbits are great, but I'll pass on the frequent self-deprecation. If this was a DVD and the text was optional, it would be awesome. As is, it's somewhat distracting.
FINAL THOUGHTS
So, that day at the ocean? I was dared to run to the edge of the foam, jump, and land on a rock about five feet out. All without hitting the water. I jumped. And I made it. Looking back, it was pretty insignificant. But in the moment, I felt exhilarated. There's a connection here. I suggest you track down Day Of The Reaper and find out why.
— Joseph A. Ziemba, 02.10.11 |
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