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Deadly Games AKA Who Fell Asleep? AKA The Eliminator (Blu-ray)
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - United Kingdom - Arrow Films Review written by and copyright: Paul (4th March 2022). |
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The Film
  Deadly Games (Scott Mansfield, 1982)
Linda Lawrence (Alexandra Morgan) is murdered in her isolated home. Linda’s step-sister, music journalist Clarissa ‘Keegan’ Lawrence (Jo Ann Harris), returns to the hometown that she left for life in the big city. There, Keegan reunites with old friends, and rivals, from their school days: these include Chrissy (Christine L Tudor), Randy (Colleen Camp), Carol (Robin Hoff), and married couple Mary (Denise Galik) and Joe Adams (Dick Butkus). Keegan also encounters the snooty Susan ‘Sooty’ Lane (Jere Rae-Mansfield), who is married to the hunky town sheriff, Vietnam veteran Roger Lane (Sam Groom), with whom Keegan quickly becomes smitten. Roger is friends with Billy Owens (Steve Railsback): in Vietnam, Roger saved Billy from a grenade blast. Billy suffers from a variety of complaints, including chronic asthma; he is regarded as strange by some of the other members of the group, and he works and lives in a huge, seemingly-deserted cinema where he and Roger watch 1930s horror movies and play bouts of a board game based on the Universal monsters. When the female members of the group begin to die under mysterious circumstances, murdered by a balaclava-wearing killer, Keegan finds herself in the middle of a mystery. Which of her friends will die next, and which is the killer? Though completed in 1980, Deadly Games wasn’t distributed until 1982 – and even then, on television first, before finding a limited theatrical release. The film was shot under the title Who Fell Asleep?, apparently inspired by writer-director Scott Mansfield’s encounter with that phrase on a headstone during a trip to Britain (as in ‘Remembering …., who fell asleep on…’). The film very loosely conforms to the template of the then-popular US ‘slasher’ movie – in the sense that the whodunnit plot features a maniac on the loose, a finite roster of (female) victims, and a ‘final girl’ – though sits outside that paradigm for a number of reasons.  The film’s chief area of distance from the contemporaneous slasher films is in the ages of its cast/principal characters – all of whom are around 30. This results in a milieu that is very different from the likes of teen-focused slasher pictures such as Friday the 13th, Prom Night, and My Bloody Valentine. Deadly Game’s lead female character, Keegan is an independent woman, a music journalist who has moved away from her hometown in order to make a name for herself, before returning following the death of her step-sister, Linda. Keegan is obstinately single, though begins a tentative affair with the married Roger – whose ‘my wife and I don’t get along’ shtick wins her over. Her propensity to crack wise is somewhat reminiscent of the screwball comedies of the Thirties, and in some ways her character is reminiscent of the kinds of roles Katharine Hepburn took in those pictures.
Though the above might suggest something of a progressive depiction of womanhood, Deadly Games features some off-kilter sexual politics. In the film’s opening sequence, Linda returns home after a night out. Her house is isolated, and bathed in the blue light of the late evening. She senses she is being watched, and stands in the open doorway of her house, removing her clothes. She basks in the waning light and cool breeze, caressing her body sexually. She received a telephone call from a mystery caller: ‘Linda, I love that coral blouse’, the voice hisses. Linda puts down the receiver. Shortly afterwards her boyfriend, Bobby, calls; she tells him about the previous phone call, commenting that ‘I had the strange feeling I was being watched. But it was all right [….] And then I slowly took off my clothes. Actually, I think the whole thing is kind of sexy. You know, someone watching me slowly undress’. When Linda is cornered by the killer, who has broken into her house, she pleads with him: ‘Do you want to rape me? It’s okay, I can make you feel real good’. It’s easy to dismiss this as simply retrograde sexual politics, but in 1980 – in the midst of the Women’s Lib era – this seems just as out of place, especially in a film that is so heavily female-focused. In films such as Bill Lustig’s Maniac or Robert Hammer’s Don’t Answer the Phone, with their focus on male killers who victimise women, it perhaps wouldn’t feel so jarring; but in Deadly Games, this material feels either culturally tone deaf, deliberately provocative, or both.  Speaking of the film’s exploration of sexual mores, it seems pretty clear throughout the film that Billy not only hero worships Roger but also lusts after him. During an impromptu American football game amongst the male members of the friendship group, which Billy watches from the sidelines (owing to his health complaints), Mansfield cuts from shots of the girls talking about the sexual prowess of their menfolk, to close-up shots of Billy’s face. In the large, reflective lenses of the aviator sunglasses he is wearing, we can see what Billy is watching: the men, hunched over. It’s a gaze of objectification. The dialogue seems to foreground this, with the women discussing the physicality of the men’s game. Carol asks the others why the men ‘always slap each other on the rear end’. ‘Homosexual tendencies’, Keegan answers dryly. ‘I’ve heard there’s a lot of that going around’, Carol say. ‘They’ve all got ‘em’, Mary adds. At the end of the game, Keegan introduces herself to Billy; as they converse, Billy looks back and forth between Keegan and looking at Roger. As Keegan runs playfully away to join her female counterparts, Billy comments ‘Nice ass’ – but it’s unclear whether he’s referring to Keegan or to Roger.
Billy and Roger’s relationship is close, which seems fitting considering that Roger saved Billy’s life when they were both in Vietnam; but the two men are mirror images of one another. Roger is virile, and the womenfolk lust after him; Billy, on the other hand, is regarded as a ‘creep’ and pariah by all except Keegan, and is ‘weakened’ by his chronic asthma. (The film uses the women’s judgmental attitude towards Billy as an index of their immaturity.) Whilst Billy’s love for Roger seems a little other than platonic, it’s unclear whether or not Roger is aware of this – or if it is indeed reciprocated. Notably, in many scenes Roger and Billy appear together almost as if they were a couple: certainly, Roger is closer to Billy than to his own wife, Sooty. In one of these scenes, Keegan joins Roger on a ‘date’ to the near-derelict cinema that Billy owns and maintains. There, Keegan watches a 1930s horror film with the two men, one seated on either side of her. Afterwards, she joins in with the board game that the two men share – which is based on the monsters of the Universal horror films. (Watch out for the closeup of the board game in which Frankenstein’s name is misspelled as ‘Frankenstien’.) The abandoned cinema is a strong, memorable location within the film, anchoring its Mario Bava-esque final sequences – in which Keegan becomes disoriented and stumbles into a room filled with mannequins that have presumably been used as props in front-of-house displays.  Deadly Games has something of a janky structure, with jarring shifts in tone – from romance, to horror, to stalk-and-slash weirdness, to something that resembles screwball comedy. Also bubbling away beneath the murder mystery is a subplot about ‘swinging’, and the sexual mores of the townsfolk. Married to Sooty, Roger openly has affairs with other women; and Randy, it seems, will sleep with anyone. At a pool party, Joe explains to Keegan that her friends’ sexual relationships are, to say the least, complex: and even the sweet Mary, who to that point seems to be devoted to Joe, has a wandering eye which is confirmed in a later scene that depicts her giving Roger the ‘come hither’. With knowledge of this, the portly Joe tells Keegan that he only married Mary because he has an inferiority complex and feels that no other woman would want him.
Some of this material developing the characters’ relationships seems to have been removed by the distributor from the final edit of the picture, something that offended Scott Mansfield – as confirmed in the interview with Jere Rae-Mansfield that is included on this Blu-ray release of Deadly Games. There is no confirmation in the extra features on this disc, but the film’s final sequence feels curiously compacted and out-of-left-field, as if it too is the victim of some heavy post-production interference. It ends on a particularly memorable freeze frame that is comparable to the freeze frame endings of the likes of Jack Starrett’s Race with the Devil (1975) and Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977) – though its closest parallel, in terms of genre, is perhaps with the shocking freeze frame ending of the 1983 slasher movie Sleepaway Camp (Robert Hiltzick).   
Video
 Uncut and with a running time of 95:13 mins, Deadly Games is here presented in a 1080p transfer that uses the AVC codec. The film fills 27Gb of space on a dual-layered Blu-ray disc.
Presented in the film’s intended aspect ratio of 1.85:1, Deadly Games’ 35mm colour photography is carried very well in this presentation. The film’s photography (by R Michael Stringer) contains some delicate lighting schemes and use of chiaroscuro, and also makes use of split dioptre lenses. (If this writer recalls correctly, Stringer’s work on William Byron Hillman’s 1982 thriller Double Exposure also featured similar use of split dioptres lenses.) The presentation on Arrow’s disc is based on a new 2k restoration sourced from the original negative. The level of fine detail throughout the film is very pleasing, and colours are consistent and naturalistic. For the most part, contrast levels are good, with balanced highlights and, for the most part, a reasonably satisfying drop into the toe of the exposure. Low-light scenes sometimes look a little rough, and it seems these were deliberately underexposed: by all accounts, they were near-impossible to comprehend in the film’s previous videocassette incarnations. Here, it seems in these low-light scenes as if the film has been ‘pushed’ in development, with the result of a very ‘thin’ negative: crushed shadows that appear like dark, faded grays, with a very coarse grain structure. That said, this is always a very filmlike presentation, with no evidence of harmful digital tinkering. The encode to disc presents no issues, and the overall presentation retains the structure of 35mm film. NB. Some full-sized screengrabs are included at the bottom of this review.  
Audio
Audio is presented via a DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 track. This is rich and deep, with pleasing range. Optional English subtitles for the Hard of Hearing are included, and these are accurate in transcribing the dialogue, and free from errors.
Extras
 The disc includes the following contextual material:
- Audio commentary by The Hysteria Continues. The Hysteria Continues podcast crew (Justin Kerswell, Erik Threlfall, Nathan Johnson, and Joseph Henson) discuss Deadly Games. The group comment on some of the strange detours in the narrative and tone, with Kerswell describing it as ‘schizophrenic in many ways’. ‘It’s an odd movie’, Kerswell says, which is ‘very atypical of its time’. They also explore how the film takes an askance look at sexual mores, with its focus on ‘swinging’ and infidelity: the slasher scenes in some ways seem ‘out of place’, they argue. The group also highlight how the film’s slightly older cast sets it apart from many of the more popular slasher movies of the era, which focused on teenagers. Kerswell suggests that some elements of Deadly Games may have been influenced by Dennis Donnelly’s The Toolbox Murders (1978). The commentators explore the circumstances surrounding the use of footage from Deadly Games in George Edwards’ The Attic (1980), which was released before Deadly Games itself. They also highlight the interesting narrative similarities between Deadly Games and Wes Craven’s later Scream (1996). - ‘Sooty’s a Sh*t’ (24:15). This is a new interview with Jere Rae-Mansfield, who plays Sooty in the film. Mansfield talks about shooting the film under its original title, ‘Who Fell Asleep?’ This title, she says, was inspired by an inscription on a headstone that Mansfield saw whilst on holiday to the UK. However, the film was quickly retitled Deadly Games, which was seen as being a more ‘commercial’ title. Mansfield reflects on how she became cast in the picture. She discusses the dynamics amongst the female characters in the film, and talks about her role as Sooty – and her approach to playing this character. She also discusses how the film was heavily re-edited before release; amongst the footage removed from the final edit was material focusing on Sooty’s relationship with Roger; and footage showing the relationships during the game of American football. Scott Mansfield, she says, was unhappy with how the film was re-edited, and the fact that it didn’t get a wide theatrical release in the US. The experience led the Mansfields to founding Monterey Media. - ‘Practical Magic’ (21:39). John Eggett, who designed the film’s special effects and worked as stunt co-ordinator on the picture, talks about his role in the production of Deadly Games. He reflects on how he became involved in filmmaking, and discusses shooting some of the stunts on Deadly Games – including Randy’s death in the swimming pool, and the film’s final stunt. (Eggett offers a highly amusing anecdote about the preparations for the latter.) He also discusses his praise for Scott Manfield’s approach to directing a picture. Eggett talks about the film’s production (in 1979) and the use of clips from the film in The Attic (George Edwards, 1980) before Deadly Games was released. He reflects on how special effects have changed in the age of CGI. - Image Galleries: Promotional (32 images); Behind the Scenes (64 images) - Trailer (1:58)
Overall
 Deadly Games is an uneven film, but an interesting one. There are atmospheric sequences, including a chase through fog-filled woods that seems to pay homage to the pivotal chase sequence in Sergio Martino’s Italian-style thriller I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale/Torso (1973). The film’s final reel makes little sense, though the use of the labyrinthine deserted movie theatre in the climax is memorable. Ultimately, Deadly Games is less than the sum of its parts, seemingly the victim of some heavy postproduction interference by the distributors. (It’s a shame the excised material couldn’t be located for inclusion in this Blu-ray release.) Nevertheless, it’s an entertaining film, and Arrow’s Blu-ray release is superb, containing a very strong, filmlike presentation and some brilliant contextual material. (The commentary by The Hysteria Continues is worth the ticket price alone, for those interested in the historiography of American horror/thriller cinema.)
Please click on the screengrabs below to enlarge them. 
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