Happy Birthday to Me (1981) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 24

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This year, murder is the gift that keeps on giving!

Happy Birthday to Me is another in a long string of early 80s slasher films centered around events or holidays. It features the film debut of Melissa Sue Anderson in an overall mediocre entry in the genre.

Before Viewing

This trailer does something no other has done before, it tells the viewer how many people will die. Someone is hunting the “top ten,” a group of snobs at the local high school. The narrator says that six of them will die. The birthday cake, featuring the name of the film, suddenly has an axe strike the middle. This looks like a lower budget slasher film, so prepare the party favors and get ready to sing Happy Birthday to Me.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

At the Crawford Academy one night, high school senior Bernadette (Lesleh Donaldson) is walking to the local pub where she and her group of snobby, rich friends–called the “Top Ten,” congregate. She bumps into Mrs. Patterson (Frances Hyland), the principal of the academy, who gives her grief about their group, before being strangled in her car by an unseen assailant wearing dark gloves. Bernadette feigns unconsciousness and when the killer lets up she runs. She hides in the parking lot and runs into someone she knows. Relieved she asks them for help, but they pull out a straight razor and slit her neck.

At the Silent Woman Pub, the other students are joined by Virginia (Melissa Sue Anderson), a new member of the group. After leaving the Pub, the group plays chicken on a rising drawbridge which freaks Virginia out as Greg’s (Richard Rebiere) car almost doesn’t make it over. She stops by her mother’s grave on the way home, and is followed by Etienne (Michel Rene Labelle) who sneaks into her house and steals a pair of her underwear. The next day during a science class experiment, Virginia has a flashback of a medical procedure she hadn’t previously remembered. After a motocross race that Etienne competes in he is killed when someone wraps his scarf around his motorcycle’s rear wheel, strangling him.

Virginia and her best friend Ann (Tracey Bregman) go over to Alfred’s (Jack Blum) house, a nerdy member of their group who has a crush on Virginia. They find Bernadette’s head in a tray, but Alfred appears and shows them it’s just a realistic effects prop. That evening Greg is killed at home, crushed under his weight lifting set. Rudi (David Eisner) and Virginia are going to play a prank at the local church, but Rudi pulls out his knife and walks menacingly towards her. The next day she has no memory of what happened, and when Rudi is reported missing Virginia worries she did something. Fortunately he is just late to class, having cut himself on the knife during the prank.

Virginia’s therapist, David (Glenn Ford) is worried that her friends are having an adverse effect on her emotional state during her recovery. Fortunately she keeps getting more and more of her memory back. Alfred follows her to her mother’s grave one night when Virginia turns around and stabs him. On the weekend of her birthday, her father (Lawrence Dane) has to go out of town and promises to be back Sunday afternoon in time for her celebration. Virginia dances with her friends at a local disco and then takes Steve (Matt Craven) back to her place for shish kabobs by the fire. She rams a kabob skewer through the back of his mouth.

Ann comes over the next day at noon, but Virginia doesn’t remember a thing about the previous night. Another of her flashbacks reveals that her mother and her were driving in the rain when they crashed on the drawbridge. Her mother drowned so that Virginia could safely make it out. Virginia was hit in the head by a boat propeller as she surfaced causing memory loss. She awakens from her blackout and believes she killed Ann. David comes over to prove that it was a hallucination, as Ann is nowhere to be seen. A final flashback shows that Virginia’s mother (Sharon Acker) was upset that none of Virginia’s friends came to her birthday party, but instead went to a party at Ann’s. She vows to make them pay.

Virginia awakens and bashes David in the head with a fireplace poker. Her father returns and can’t find his daughter. He checks the guest house and finds all the dead Top Ten members, plus his wife’s corpse seated around a birthday cake. Virginia arrives and slits her dad’s throat. She sits Ann’s body up, which has slumped on the table, revealing the real Virginia. The two struggle and the real Virginia tears off a realistic mask from the “other” Virginia, revealing Ann’s face. Ann is her half sister, who is bitter with Virginia’s mom for sleeping with Ann’s dad. She dressed up as Virginia, drugged her to make her black out, and committed each of the murders. Virginia regains her composure and stabs Ann, when she comes for her, just as a police officer arrives, asking, “what have you done?”

“I must admit some of your friends have a macabre sense of humor. I just hope these kids aren’t having an adverse effect on you.” – David

Happy Birthday to Me was one of many early horror films from 1980 and 1981 that capitalized, seemingly, on the success of Friday the 13th (1980). In truth, many of these films were started prior to the release of that film and were more likely reactions to the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) instead. The films all seemed to take their cues from the event or holiday based nature of those original movies, so audiences saw titles such as Terror Train and New Year’s Evil (both 1980, New Year’s Eve), To All a Goodnight and Christmas Evil (both 1980, Christmas), He Knows You’re Alone (1980, wedding), Prom Night (1980, Prom), Mother’s Day (1980, same), Home Sweet Home (1981, Thanksgiving), and My Bloody Valentine (1981, Valentine’s Day). There was also a spate of Canadian horror films released in the early 80s, known as “Canuxploitation” films, which featured movies such as Visiting Hours, The Incubus, Humongous, and Curtains, as well as the aforementioned Prom Night and Terror Train. And, of course, this film.

It was directed by veteran Hollywood filmmaker J. Lee Thompson, who was known for the World War II action film The Guns of Navarone, the 1962 thriller Cape Fear, two of the Planet of the Apes sequels, as well as a number of Charles Bronson films including St. Ives, and Death Wish 4. His involvement seems odd considering his background of more “serious” films, but reportedly he was drawn to the characters and events, and had wanted to direct a modern thriller for some time. The producers had started both this film and My Bloody Valentine around the same time, completing the previous film for a February 1981 release date. Star Melissa Sue Anderson was known at the time for her starring role as Mary Ingalls on the television series Little House on the Prairie, and filmed this movie during time off from that show.

Watching Happy Birthday to Me in a modern context, with the backdrop of all the other slasher influenced horror films from the last 40 years, makes the film come off as trite and a bit confusing. For slasher movies of this time, it was often on par to create a mystery surrounding the identity of the murderer. Or if the murderer was a known entity, why was the person committing these heinous acts? If Thompson was attracted to the characterizations of these students, then maybe something changed between the script and the final edit. The group of students, the “Top Ten” is a self-proclaimed clique of vapid, rich teenagers that don’t seem particularly nice, or a character that audiences might identify with. They start brawls in public restaurants, sass back at authority figures, speed along streets to jump rising drawbridges, and are just nasty to each other in general. The question is not whether one character or another should have been killed, it’s why weren’t they killed sooner?

That’s not really a joke. Happy Birthday to Me also has a longer runtime than normal for a film in this genre. Slasher films from this time have an average runtime of 90 minutes, with a body count in the double digits. This film runs almost 20 minutes longer with a body count of only eight characters. It just takes a while to get moving and does not keep any of the suspense between killings since the film changes who it presumes the killer to be. Sometimes it seems as if Alfred is the killer, but then suspicion switches to Etienne. But there are also moments when Virginia seems like she may be the killer, which is where the film decides to stick about half-way thru, when the viewer actually sees her commit murder. But is it due to her brain damage? Something else? It just gets overly confusing for a generic themed slasher film.

Add to the confusion, the contrived backstory for Virginia that plays out through small flashbacks in the film. Audiences see the most recent elements first as the history plays out in reverse chronological sequence. The first memory Virginia recalls is the twitching of her body as they stimulate the area of her brain which causes her brain tissue to regenerate. The machine reproduces the electric field of a salamander in human beings, causing this miraculous regeneration. That’s pretty far fetched considering brain cells are the one thing in the human body that doesn’t grow back once it’s damaged. That puts a bad taste in the mouths (and minds) of critical thinkers as the first explanation of why Virginia is like she is. Eventually it’s revealed that she suffered massive head trauma in a car crash and having a boat hit her head, which helps to explain the blackouts and possibly the dual nature of the character, but it’s not convincing enough.

The reveal of Ann being disguised as Virginia as the “true” story behind what happened comes off as laughable and unbelievable. Firstly, that Ann could have had a mask made (presumably by Alfred) without anyone else finding out seems suspect. Her ability to know where and what Ginny would be doing so that she could 1) be there, 2) chloroform her, and 3) step in to commit the murder is also beyond ludicrous. The moments put to film of the murders give no hint of this alternate reality that the denouement of the film would have viewers believe. Ann’s initial reasoning for choosing to commit these murders is supposedly because she’s angry with Virginia’s mother for sleeping with her father. Virginia is Ann’s half-sister, by Ann’s father? It’s not that clear. And to show Virginia how much that hurt her, she’s going to kill all these friends of theirs that attended a party for Ann four years ago (instead of Virginia’s birthday), and then kill Virginia. What? Saying that’s crazy would be accurate, but…it’s crazy for filmmaking. And why does no one remember Virginia (beside Ann), if she was around four years ago? There’s just too many gaps in the narrative to be as fun and cohesive as some other films from the era.

Happy Birthday to Me does have some fun moments, including a couple of clever deaths and some interesting stunts. But these do not forgive the other strange choices made in the writing and filming of the film. The producer’s previous film, My Bloody Valentine, has some awful lapses in characterization, but stands out as a much more fun and attractive entry in the pantheon of early 80s slasher films.

Assorted Musings

• Classic film actor Glenn Ford, who appeared as Pa Kent in Superman: The Movie two years previous, appeared to be angry in all his scenes, as if he was not actually enjoying his time on the film.
• The trailer might take a little bit of the fun out of the final film, by spoiling that six of the ten students will die. Place your bets and see how you do!
• The name of the Pub is The Silent Woman, whose logo is a barmaid with no head. Silent indeed!