'Scalps' (1983) - Fred Olen Ray.

Back in the video daze, I initially heard many beguilingly gore-slathered rumours about, Fred Olen Ray’s evil-sounding, plasma-soaked ‘Scalps’ long before actually seeing it. After watching an uncensored copy, it became Scalpingly obvious why there had been so much vociferous B-Movie ballyhoo about this independently made, hugely atmospheric, forelock flaying 80s shocker! While conspicuously low budget, and lacking much in the way of filmmaking refinement, writer/director Ray’s explicit, frequently eerie, crudely entertaining, skull-splinteringly savage 80s slasher certainly maintains its kookier-than-thou reputation!

A group of amiably lackadaisical archaeology students boisterously undertake a blisteringly hot road-trip in order to begin their morally dubious excavations for indigenous artefacts. Following a 'colourful' interlude with doomy old foreshadowing mystic, Iron Feather, they fatefully alter their itinerary to the desolated, off-grid, entirely forbidding locale known locally as ‘The Black Trees’. Once these misguided students have enjoyed the prerequisite pre-scalping campsite frolicking, one of their more mystically orientated, overtly sensitive members, D.J (Jo Anne Robinson) becomes increasingly unsettled. D.J's frantic prognostications auguring the controversially hair-raising elements of this supernaturally schlocky wig splitting nightmare!

Scalps myriad quirks include a cutesy cameo by horror icon, Forest J. Ackerman, amusing turns by, Kirk 'Superman' Alyn, and Carroll 'Mark of The Vampire' Borland, and, Drew Neumann & Eric Rasmussen menacing electronic score is an unheralded masterpiece. While fitfully engaging, nothing witnessed in the breezy first act prepares you for the stark grisliness, manifest weirdness of no budget maestro, Fred Olen Ray's sun-baked splatterfest. The excruciatingly bloodthirsty retributions our misguided, grave violating students have inadvertently unleashed upon their ill-protected heads proves memorably gruesome!

Often discredited, or blithely disparaged, Fred Olen Ray’s idiosyncratic ‘Scalps’ arguably contains one of B-Horror's more visually striking bogeymen. Black Claw's (Richard Hench) ruthless, ferociously follicle-depleting modus operandi egregiously trimmed under the absurdly censorious scissors of the BBFC is now restored to its almost pristine crimson-hued gory on Blu-ray. Rabid slasher fans can finally hail the infamously brutal return of ‘Black Claw’, and bemoan the sordid fact that the infamous kills are, frustratingly, culled from fuzzy VHS sources. Print discrepancies aside, this altogether grislier edition of 'Scalps'is far preferable to the miserably declawed version of old.

‘Before low budget impresario, Fred Olen Ray manifested his gruesome folk horror oddity ‘Scalps’, hair-raising was just a figure of speech!’ - Wierdling Wolf.