Welcome to Cultoween! We’ve taken a few Halloween years off but we felt it was high time we got back into the spirit of the holiday. Since there are a finite number of Halloween-themed movies, it’s always hard to come up with a specific topic or series of films to cover. For this year’s festivities, we are using this Random Movie Generator to suggest movies to watch for our Halloween season, and then we’re going to let you know if they’re worth watching, how Halloweenie they are, and anything else we think you should know. Effectively we are putting in no values except the movie must be horror, and if we’ve already covered it we’re throwing it back. We hope you enjoy the coverage and stick with us throughout the season!
1973’s The Severed Arm is a proto-slasher film with a pretty intriguing presence: after a group of men are trapped in a mine cave-in, they decide to result to cannibalism after days of starvation by drawing straws to pick the unfortunate loser. And unfortunately, they’re all saved only after they’ve lopped off the arm of a poor sad sap. Later, the group of men are targeted by a mysterious killer who they believe to be the aforementioned armless victim.
Honestly, The Severed Arm is a surprising find. In 1973, it’s sort of ahead of its time in terms of its focus on slasher-esque aspects; we get a number of the genre’s later elements like following the feet of the killer, drawn-out stalking sequences, and the overall setup of a group of individuals whose early actions drive the overall motive of the killings. There’s even a very early “call from inside the house” trope here that plays out pretty well, at a radio station no less.
With that said, there are extremely lengthy staid moments throughout that are meant to develop characters but overall run fair too long. The film’s opening flashback sequence is quite suspenseful in the way it draws out resorting to cannibalism and its impact on the unlucky loser. But director Tom Alderman often confuses excruciatingly slow for tense, as many of the film’s later stalking sequences take too long to play out. It leaves an uneven pacing to this movie, even despite the grisly finale and reveal of not one but two killers.
But even with its low budget and pacing issues, The Severed Arm is worth a watch. As a proto-slasher it has a shocking amount of the genre’s later ideas, and despite its languishing as an underground film, the movie does enough right to garner a recommendation. It gives me the same feeling as seeing something like Just Before Dawn so many years ago – the discovery of a truly interesting and unique take on the slasher despite its flaws.
You know, on the surface it really doesn’t share anything with Halloween. But the film’s cold, atmospheric setting, the visceral horror of being trapped in a cave-in, and the sparse but moody synth tones all give this a particularly festive feeling. My vote is Yes!
Watch it this Halloween!
I think in the right mindset, for slasher fans, this one is a surprisingly good time, and you can find it on Blu-ray thanks to Vinegar Syndrome.
