THE PROWLER (1981) *
Describe The Prowler in one word.

Excess.

Yes, indeed, director Joseph Zito goes for an excess of false alarms and jump scares. It seems like there’s a scene like that every couple minutes. I mean, for crying out loud, somebody (usually her policeman significant other) sneaks up on our main female protagonist alone at least five times. Keep in mind The Prowler (hopefully not confused with the 1951 Joseph Losey thriller) earned Zito the opportunity to direct Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

Tom Savini’s gore effects ran into considerably less interference than earlier 1981 slasher films My Bloody Valentine and Friday the 13th Part 2, both released in the immediate aftermath of John Lennon’s murder and the subsequent MPAA tougher stance against graphic violence. Savini’s effects are quite frankly almost too good for their own good, as the blood gushes like a geyser at regular intervals. I found them a little much, just as I did in Maniac, and I usually love Savini’s work, especially Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead.

In addition to all the false alarms and jump scares, The Prowler relies too much on cat-and-mouse or a ‘contrived action involving constant pursuit, near captures, and repeated escapes.’ The main female protagonist and her dashing cop significant other recall Nancy Drew and one of the Hardy Boys. At one point late in the picture, she even attempts the old hiding underneath the bed with a deranged, psychopathic killer nearby trick.

The Prowler begins with a 1945 newsreel and a ‘Dear John’ letter, before getting down to brass tacks with a double homicide in the distant past that will trigger a present-day murder spree. After the success of Halloween, this flashback style of storytelling to start the whole shebang in style became the vogue for slasher films. Let’s see, Friday the 13th, Prom Night, Terror Train, and The Burning all started up this way and Happy Birthday to Me and My Bloody Valentine were both not too far behind with tours of the past. The plots of The Prowler and My Bloody Valentine have striking parallels, especially the overall look of the killer.

The Prowler conceals the identity of the killer until nearly the end of the movie and that’s probably best … but, who are we kidding, since I found some or even most of the Prowler’s behavior laughable even before the unveiling that calls into question every murder in the past hour. Fortunately, though, we have only a brief unmasking and then our heroine unceremoniously shotgun blasts the Prowler’s head to smithereens. We are spared any big speech or further character motivation and the frenzied scenery chewing of, let’s say, Betsy Palmer late in Friday the 13th. Unfortunately, we are not spared yet another jump scare in the film’s last scene, as if Zito received a bonus for overloading the picture with jump scares. Jump scares are cheap, though, and eventually some audience members turn against any picture that abuses jump scares, false alarms, cat-and-mouse, flashbacks, and dream sequences or whatever combination of them.

Casting Farley Granger as Sheriff George Fraser proved to be a strike against The Prowler, because I flashed back on two of the greatest thrillers ever made, Rope and Strangers on a Train, directed by none other than the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. All the marvels of modern cinematic technology like nudity, gore, and profanity galore cannot make up for the difference between Zito and Hitchcock or the difference between a hack and a master.