The Comeback

An American pop star, planning his comeback, goes to a secluded British estate to work on his new material. Instead, he's drawn into a late 70's style slasher-y/mystery type deal.

Slowly but surely I'm getting around to seeing the films of Pete Walker, a British horror director who had his heyday in the 70's. Walker's films are distinguished by being a little sleazy, provocative and exploitation-y while being surprisingly beautifully crafted on a technical level. My favorite so far is probably House of Whipcord, about a group of right-wing psychos who run an illegal women's prison (!) where they abduct and punish those whom they deem to be delinquent. It's got all the sick and pervy and lurid stuff you'd expect from this sort of weird twist on the women's prison genre, but it's wonderfully constructed, has some excellent suspense sequences and is a pretty engrossing offbeat horror movie. It even sneaks in some sly social commentary.

The Comeback is a pretty good slasher/mystery/thriller from the era, mostly held back by slowing down too much during the middle and losing whatever suspense it had been building. It also doesn't help that the main character's music is some awful, unlistenable, sub-Barry Mannilow bullshit that the audience is forced to hear just a little too much of. I mean, how can we like this guy and want him to survive when he's making the world a worse place by writing and releasing this horrible, dickless, Christopher Cross horseshit? Seems like if the killer bumps him off, it'd be a net win for humanity.

Rating: B-