Happy Birthday to Me (1981)

Day 40 of Sobriety. 

I have never particularly thought of myself as a much of a fan of “slasher” films, but I have had such a good run on them recently that I was beginning to change that assessment. In recent months I have watched (or re-watched) Manaic (1980), The New York Ripper (1982), The Burning (1981), Friday the 13th Parts 1 and 2 (1980, 1981),  Sleepaway Camp (1983), and probably some others that I can’t remember right now. Sadly, that good run has now ended with Happy Birthday to Me, which I didn’t really have much of a great time with at all.

So, where does Happy Birthday to Me fail where those others succeed? Well…where to start?

The first thing I noticed about the film was its running time. One thing I really appreciated about, for example, Sleepaway Camp was that it packed itself into a taught 84-minute running time. This resulted in a lean fast-moving film. In contrast, Happy Birthday to Me is a ponderous 111 minutes—and it felt it. This was especially noticeable as the plot was so convoluted and presented in a needlessly fractured and opaque way. The film is famous for its bizarre twists and red herrings, but it was just really hard to follow what was going on. Especially as most of the cast are generic and interchangeable “high-school students” (although they all looked to be in their mid-twenties). It was very hard to care about any of them, and I kept losing track of who was who. I had to rewind several times during the film to check what was happening and why.

The absurd plot twists go into hyperdrive in the last ten minutes of the film. From what I gather this is something that the film's fans actually like about it, but by that time I was really beyond caring what was going on. I had been pounded into a stupor by the drawn-out tedium and pointlessness of it all. In some ways it reminded me of some of the worst giallo films I’ve seen: hopelessly convoluted, tedious, and dull.

One of the film’s taglines is “Six of the most bizarre murders you will ever see,” but the unfortunate thing is that you don’t really get to see any of them—despite the false promise of the film’s famous kebab-swallowing poster. Like the numerous of the lamer entries in the slasher subgenre (including several of the Friday the 13th films) the kills ether happen off camera, or are flashed on the screen so incredibly briefly (literally a blink) as to be meaningless. I don’t think a horror film needs to be gory or violent to be effective—not at all, but when a *slasher* film is made with that level of coyness, it is just highly irritating. You start to wonder what you came for. You feel conned.

So, anyway. Today was my 40th day of sobriety, which is the longest I have been sober for decades. A couple of years ago I managed 39 days—six days short of a planned 45-day period of abstinence. on that occasion, I caved in early because my wife and daughter were staying out of town visiting the grandparents, and I was “home alone.” That seemed like a perfectly justifiable reason to throw in the towel early—after all, I had ground it out for 39 whole days!

Things are different this time, though. I have no predetermined period for my sobriety. I don’t need “a break” from drinking—I’m beyond that. I need to stop. I have.

 

So, it’s a shame I didn’t have a better flick to celebrate my personal record with, but c’est la vie. The odd turkey is all part of being a horror fan, and one man’s turkey is another man’s golden goose. I know that even Happy Birthday to Me has its fans.