3 bad seeds make for one Bloody Birthday

Combine The Bad Seed with early 80s slasher mentality and you get Bloody Birthday. An opening kill of a couple having sex in a grave makes this look (and sound) like another Friday the 13^th knockoff. But this is the only time the “killers” identities remain hidden.

See, there are these three brats born on the same day—a day that screwed up their astrological energy and made them evil little monsters (just like most children). Anyway, it’s their 10^th birthday and they go around killing family members, teachers, and dumb horny teens. There’s something almost comical about it all. One kid runs around with a gun shooting people (this movie kind of predicted the future), and half the time, he backs out or has bad aim. He really looks more like a kid playing with a toy gun than a cold-blooded killer.

Bloody Birthday is awesomely 80s and loaded with young horror veterans. Julie Brown is one of the teens, and dances around completely naked in her bedroom (unfortunately, it’s not to “The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun,” but perhaps this film was her inspiration for the song).

The leading lady Lori Lethan was in The Prey and Return to Horror High. KC Martel, the kid who plays her younger brother, was in The Amityville Horror and E.T. And if you don’t blink, you may spot Michael Dudikoff’s beautiful face in a couple of funeral scenes.

Then there are our three brats. The little girl, who suffers from serious bitchy resting face (which most likely scored her this role), was also in Hospital Massacre. The closest the blond boy came to horror after this was Disney’s Beyond Witch Mountain. But Billy Jayne, our gun-wielding brat, is an 80s icon! He was the bratty brother in Just One of the Guys. He was Blanche’s bratty grandson on an episode of The Golden Girls. He was in Hospital Massacre, Nightmares, Superstition, and of course, he was the concerned young owner of Cujo!!! Billy rules.

No real scares to be had, considering we know who the killers are and most of those scene are from their POV, but there’s some blood when they’re not using a gun, there’s a funny car chase scene in a junkyard (with one of the kids in the driver’s seat and donning a sack that would later be recycled for The Strangers), plus plenty of boobage and man butt. Bloody Birthday may not be what you want in a slasher, but it’s definitely 80s gold.