John Carpenter’s Halloween inspired many slasher movies. Some
were homage, many were rip-offs, but this early slasher follows the Halloween
template so closely it’s more like a cover version.
A maniac known as the Wedding Night Killer is stalking suburbia, his
modus operandi simple: he only murders brides-to-be before their impending
nuptials. His motivation, hastily sketched in flashback, is even simpler:
he was jilted and killed his former fiancée on the day she was
due to marry her new love. Her new love was a police detective and he’s
the one who now relentlessly pursues the killer in a single-minded crusade
that has more than a cursory resemblance to Dr Loomis in a certain Carpenter
classic.
With this basic premise swiftly established we then meet Amy Jensen,
another blushing bride waving her boorish fiancé off on his stag
weekend. As he sets off to screw everything that will stand still long
enough, she’s invited over her gal pals, and their pre-wedding
craziness consists of…ballet lessons and trips to the fun fair.
You go girl!
Obviously, our slash-happy antagonist has other plans and, to spin the
story out a little longer, he expands his repertoire to include pretty
much anyone involved in the wedding in his rampage. The old man making
the wedding dress gets scissored to death. Amy’s friend gets stabbed.
Hell, even the college professor her friend is having an affair with
takes a blade to the torso, and it’s a fair bet he’s not
even on the invite list.
The 24-year-old Tom Hanks, making his acting debut, turns up about an
hour into the film as a mop-topped psychology major with a crush on Amy’s
surviving friend, Nancy. According to the movie’s logic, this should
place him firmly on the killer’s “to do” list. He even
delivers a convenient lump of clumsily subtextual chatter about how Amy’s
stalker is just a manifestation of her pre-wedding nerves – a sort
of commitment-based bogeyman from the Id.
So Hanks must die, right? Hell, Nancy even remains home alone in order
to have dinner with him, and indulges in two of the activities guaranteed
to attract slasher movie killers – she has a shower and then smokes
a joint while wearing headphones. Bizarrely (and disappointingly) Elliot
is actually never seen again. Before he can show up the killer enters
the house and dispatches Nancy – leaving her head in the fishtank – and
then begins the traditional end-of-movie chase as he finally sets his
sights on Amy.
In the movie’s defence, it stays so close to the Halloween format
that it almost can’t help being an above average (and mostly bloodless)
psycho-thriller. Even the music is the same as Carpenter’s iconic
and eerie synthesiser score, simply played in a different key. It helps,
of course, that the cast do a good job of creating likeable characters
from the thin script, and Hanks in particular exhibits the everyman qualities
that have propelled him to the top of the Hollywood tree, making an impression
in his five minutes or so of screen time.
Need to know: The opening scene, in which a victim is stabbed to death
in a cinema during a horror movie, her shrieks masked by those of the
audience, was appropriated for the start of Scream 2 (see: Jada
Pinkett-Smith).
Other familiar faces in the film include Paul Gleason, best known as
the fun-squashing principal in The Breakfast Club, and James Rebhorn,
who plays the student-shagging college professor and went on to enjoy
a successful career as a character actor with small parts in blockbusters
as diverse as Independence Day, The Talented Mr Ripley and Cold Mountain.
Honourable mention: Hanks followed He Knows You’re Alone with the
lead role in the 1982 fantasy drama Mazes & Monsters, a hilariously
ill-informed expose on the dangers of role-playing games. It was based
on the book by Rona Jaffe about a young man who becomes so immersed in
the world of 12-sided dice and +1 Staffs of Illumination that he becomes
psychotic. A crude attempt to cash in on parental anxiety in an era that
had yet to experience Grand Theft Auto, it’s not without comedy
value.
Availability: He Knows You’re Alone only came out in the UK on
video, way back before the certification system was even in place. Old
copies can still be found. A DVD edition is out in the US for those without
patience.
