Kay has been having strange nightmares for her entire life. Sometimes her nightmares show her of a desolate location and other depict her friends being murdered. Her husband takes her on a vacation alongside her brother and his wife to an abandoned island. Kay recognizes the island from her dreams. As the days pass on, Kay's family is murdered one by one all as she sleeps.
The Slayer is a dark and eerie slasher film when it's time for a murder scene. These sequences are filled with creepy music and fantastic suspense. There is ample blood shed and some neat special effects that landed this on the Video Nasties list in the 1980's. One particular scene depicts Kay and her husbands decapitated, bleeding head sharing a passionate kiss. The kill scenes aren't exactly ground breaking but are effective in their realistic depictions.
As great as these kill scenes are the film hardly has a chance to showcase them. The main cast is only four characters deep. What's worse as that these four characters are devoid of any sort of entertainment value. They simply plod along with the plot having mostly uninteresting conversation until they are killed. One random island fisherman adds the body count but it isn't really enough to save the slow pacing of this film. There are only a couple brief moments of excitement before the climactic 20 minutes.
I liked The Slayer, but I find myself disappointed in its squandered potential. With its ambiguous narrative, creepy atmosphere, and excellent murder scenes, it could have really benefited from having more characters to kill off. Adding a little intrigue or charisma to the characters couldn't hurt either. The Slayer is worth a watch, but it's bad pacing is sure to limit any revisits.
Side Note: Arrow recently released this on Blu Ray. Until then it was not available on any other format in the US aside from VHS.
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