13th Floor, The (1988)

... aka: 13º, o Andar do Pavor (The 13th Floor of Dread)

... aka: Electrocutor 1

Directed by:

Chris Roache

Aussie producers David Hanney, Charles Hannah and Tom Broadbridge produced four genre films for the international video market in the late 80s. The best known as these now is James Bogle's Kadaicha (1988), which was re-titled Stones of Death for its U.S. video release and was given another chance at life thanks to inclusion in that popular Severin "All the Haunts Be Ours..." folk horror box set a few years back. And then there was Karl Zwicky's To Make a Killing (1988), a sharply-written, surprisingly nasty coming of age drama / home invasion horror, which was appropriately re-titled VICIOUS! (1988) for video and deserves another look. Brian Trenchard-Smith's Out of the Body (1989), which involves a psychic's search for a serial killer, hasn't seemed to build up any kind of reputation whatsoever over the years and is the most difficult of these to find. And then we have The 13th Floor, which was a very well-circulated tape here in American and is still easy to find now on numerous streaming sites since Umbrella Entertainment is handling it. It's currently doing the rounds on Shudder.

At a high rise construction site, young Heather Thompson (Kylie Clare) witnessed her father, Robert (Tony Blackett), and two of his goons kill a man who owed them money, along with the man's young son, who was electrocuted. Twelve years later, now-grown Heather (Lisa Hensley) may have blocked out all of the details from that fateful evening, but the psychological scars remain. As a result, she fell in with the wrong crowd, started doing drugs, dropped out of college and is now living on the streets.

Heather's evil father wants her back home ASAP, not necessarily because he's worried about her but because he's now running for political office and fears what having a troublesome daughter is going to do to his reputation, and thus his chances at winning the upcoming election. Not only that, but prior to running away Heather stole some potentially-incriminating documents that could get him into a lot of trouble. Robert hires sadistic private detective Brenner (Vic Rooney), who has a reputation for violence and getting desired results whatever the means, to find her and the documents.

A completed and functioning high rise building now stands at the same site of the previous murders, only use of the 13th floor (the exact spot of the deaths) has been prohibited. Any business that has attempted to set up shop there in the past has been plagued by problems, namely electrical ones. Since they need a place to stay, Heather, who's now clean, and her best friend Rebecca (Miranda Otto), who's still using, decide to make the 13th floor their new home. They receive help from a friend named Nick (Paul Hunt), who's recently gotten a job there as a night shift janitor. He swings by after hours to bring them food, wine, a TV, pillows and such, and even sneaks some naps in. The girls find another ally in John Burke (Tim McKenzie), who works in the social security office there. He takes such a fancy to Heather that he's willing to break the law and falsify documents just so she can collect a welfare check under an assumed identity.

Brenner ends up catching up to Heather outside the building late at night and chases after her. She eludes him long enough to fall into the clutches of chubby, horny, Schwarzenegger-worshiping live-in security guard Bert (Jeff Truman), who shows her his porn magazines and attempts to coerce her into going skinny dipping. Instead, she pushes him into the pool, steals one of his guns and runs back up to her 13th floor pad where Brenner is already waiting for her. He punches her, pins her down and tries to burn her with a lit cigarette, but she elbows him in the crotch and runs off. Since it's now 40 minutes into this and we've long ago forgotten this was supposed to be a horror film, it then comes as a mild surprise when electric bolts shoot out of a utility closet and Brenner falls to his death down the elevator shaft.

Some other stuff happens, but little of it has to do with the haunting. John's bossy, effete colleague keeps nosing into his business and almost busts him falsifying records, Heather and John have sex and Rebecca, who has an unrequited girl crush on her friend, get jealous and then later overdoses in the bathroom and the dad sends a bunch of violent thugs to break into Heather's records and rough John up. There's a surprise twist toward the end (that actually IS a surprise) and a lively final showdown, but it's difficult to make it there after an entire hour of slow-paced tedium.

One gets the impression that the writer / director wasn't particularly interested in making a ghost / horror movie but because that's the product the producers wanted, he kinda, sorta obliged. He mostly just made a drama here but the characters aren't particularly likable or interesting, the plot meanders and the supernatural stuff all feels like it's thrown on the side. And that's a real shame the first hour is mostly a slog because this eventually does go somewhere interesting. There's some style. It's often quite colorful (lots of blue, green, red, purple and neon) and visual stunning, thanks to cinematographer Stephen Prime. Performances are generally fine, though I'm not sure why every man looks like a broiled lobster. 

Though you'd never predict it watching her here, Otto became the breakout star and would go on to appear in several Lord of the Rings films, Spielberg's War of the Worlds, The Thin Red Line and many others. For some reason, there's also ample coverage given to an issue of the men's magazine Mayfair, which features future B-movie star Gail Harris / Thackray (SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE II) as the cover model.

In the U.S., this was given a VHS release from Paramount in 1990. Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Greece, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain and the UK also got to share our pain with a release of their own. If there's an official Blu-ray or DVD release, I'm not aware of it.

★★

Watch the Sparrow Bleed (1989) [short]

Directed by:

Gareth Jackson

You've heard of wearing your influences on your sleeve? This one has them tattooed on its forehead. Opening with Texas Chainsaw-style flashes of corpses and miscellaneous bloody body parts, accompanied by pilfered music from an Argento classic (Goblin's familiar main theme from DEEP RED), this backyard SOV amateur short from the UK is a valentine to all those films gore-loving, Fangoria-reading, video-store-horror-section-haunting 80s kids couldn't get enough of back in the day. Though primarily filmed in 1989, this had some later additional work done to it to create a "final 2013 remastered edit" and get it all spruced up for YouTube. And by spruce it up, I mean mostly adding text to provide something of a loose structure to tie all of the amateur gore scenes together. Obviously no one is gonna be watching this for the story. We're here instead to have a warm, nostalgic chuckle seeing the stuffing fly out of a papier-mâché severed head as someone kicks it, and other such assorted sights.

The year is 1988. The setting is a nameless small town in northwest England, where mutilated corpses left in "lonely places" have been turning up. A long-haired serial killer is busy at work and we get see him in action as he beats his latest victim with a rock, slices his face up with a utility knife, decapitates him with a saw and then stuffs a gasoline-soaked rag into the severed head's mouth and sets it ablaze. A posse of teenage locals wearing white hoods then hunt him down and stone him to death while the FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III disco music plays.

A year later, the killer emerges from his shallow grave in the woods as a skull-faced zombie looking for revenge. As snippets from Goblin's DAWN OF THE DEAD score play, he pushes his first victim's head down on a spike, which then pops out of his mouth. The next guy is chased down and gets his eyeballs poked out. The zombie then ventures on over to a house to gather some weapons, including a hatchet that he uses to chop up a sleeping teen right after he rips off his dick off with his bare hands and shoves it in his mouth (!) The boy's mother (played by Doreen Jackson, probably the director's real-life mother) finds his body, grabs a shotgun and prepares to get her own revenge.

Before mum can blast the bad guy, the zombie gets to slaughter a few other folks. A girl gets her throat cut with a knife as exaggerated amounts of blood pour from the wound. Her boyfriend has his tongue ripped out, is stabbed repeatedly and then has some internal organs yanked out. And, naturally saving the "best" for last, the killer attacks a young mother and her newborn baby. He power drills the babies eyeballs out, rips it in half and then uses its intestines to strangle the mother to death (!) So, I'll at least give this props for going places most other films would not back in 1989 (except maybe Troma), even if they didn't bother creating any fx baby and just used a regular ole baby doll instead.

Aside from not having much of a story, this also thankfully doesn't have much dialogue either. And good thing for that! You think Brit teens are difficult to understand without subtitles? Well, try Brit teens being recorded from too far away by a VHS camcorder's built-in microphone as stolen music blares on top of that. And while this has all of the technical ineptitude one may expect from a home movie, some of the camerawork, camera placements and editing choices are actually not too bad. The gore make-up (also done by the director) ranges from terrible to passable. Much of it is really no worse than what can be found in many of the Italian films this took inspiration from.

Other scores used include HALLOWEEN, THE FOG and TENEBRE, so even though the taste levels aren't too high overall, at least the taste in borrowed music is. How do you even rate something like this?

★★