Off Script: Cherry Falls

Films: Cherry Falls
Format: Internet video on laptop.

You know the basic horror movie tropes. One of the basic tropes is that for all of their blood and guts, horror movies are incredibly conservative in terms of sexual politics. Anyone who has sex dies. Cherry Falls turns that basic trope on its head. In this film, the opposite is true. Our killer is targeting virgins. It’s a hell of a fun spin on one of the basic rules of slasher movies. In a sense, it’s a bit like Scream in that respect, although it lacks the overall cleverness of Craven’s franchise.

Aside from that change, though, Cherry Falls follows the basic horror movie story. A young couple gets killed, sending shockwaves through the small town of Cherry Falls, Virginia. Meanwhile, life in the high school seems to go on as normal. Jody Marken (Brittany Murphy), daughter of the local sheriff (Michael Biehn) breaks up with her boyfriend Kenny (Gabriel Mann) and mourns the loss of a couple of fellow students. Of course, the killings aren’t going to stop there. Another student is killed brutally, and the police let slip that all of the victims have had the word “virgin” carved into them.

Hate Crimes

Film: Romper Stomper
Format: DVD from personal collection on big ol’ television.

If one assumes that all of the World War II films about the Holocaust are, on a deeper level, about race, then race relations are the most frequently filmed topic on The List. Naturally, when it comes to film, mixing it up with various races isn’t apple pie and ice cream. With a film like Romper Stomper, race is front and center, and what happens is pretty damned ugly.

I’m going to guess that most of the readers here are more familiar with a couple of other films, one older and one newer than Romper Stomper, but it’s the best comparison I can think of. A great deal of this film comes across like A Clockwork Orange had a lovechild with American History X. We have the sort of random gang violence of Kubrick’s film, the thoughtless crime and rampant destruction for no purpose other than to destroy something. All of this is motivated by race, though, since the bulk of our characters are Australian white supremacists. What this means for those of us watching is that there’s plenty of Nazi regalia and lots of swastika tattoos. The violence tends to be perpetrated against the Vietnamese—a bit of a change from what Americans might be used to—but it ultimately results in the same thing.