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Co-directors Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow’s The Dorm That Dripped Blood aka Death Dorm aka Pranks was a minor little horror gem from 1982. Perhaps best known for launching actress Daphne Zuniga’s career, the film was mercilessly gutted of its gore by the MPAA and never fully restored to it its original running length and intended content. That wrong has now been corrected. Debuting in the HD format, the original cut of the film has now been released courtesy of Synapse Films on a combo Blu-ray/DVD package.
The narrative of The Dorm That Dripped Blood isn’t all that original. A small and seemingly wholesome group of college teens are staying behind on their break to oversee the closing – and eventual destruction (no, they don’t get to oversee that) – of their dorm. They spend their time making sure rooms are clear of furniture and items, yet an unwanted person is clearly still lingering about in the halls and rooms of this darkened dorm. Stereotypically, you have the alpha female, Joanne (Morgan Meadows Hall), the innocence of Debbie (Zuniga), the wise-cracking antics of Craig (Stephen Sachs) and the weirdo, John (Woody Roll) all at play in the part of the victim or the killer. You never are for sure until the very and very unsettling ending.
Let’s call a spade a spade, though. This is a bare-bones slasher picture from the early 1980s. There really are few reasons – beyond the excellently created make-up FX by Matthew Mungle for the kill-shots – to actually sit through the film. It’s a student thesis, so expectations for actual greatness are to be lowered. Yet, in spite of a zero budget atmosphere and a simple slasher narrative, the film delivers a surprisingly chilling account of paranoia, isolation, and an effective use of shadows. You just have to keep watching in spire of the one-note performances from damn-near everyone.
The bloody sequences which originally got this film banned in the UK and blacklisted in other countries have all been restored and they are grisly. One features a spiked bat murderously being used against a poor man’s noggin time and time again. The camera never flinches, but we do. Another features a car running over a student’s head until it bursts; maybe more effective because it leaves more to the imagination. Yet, another – the classic drill through the skull routine – is an applauding spectacle of 80’s physical make-up and gore and certainly rivals any of the film’s contemporaries.
The Dorm That Dripped Blood also succeeds in delivering a twist ending guaranteed to make you chuckle at the writers – also Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow – cleverness and macabre sense of humor. That, along with its spiked music cues courtesy of Christopher Young, makes a pretty chilling and respectable walk through the trashed halls and utterly disposable teenage culture that once was known as the 1980s.
MPAA Rating: R.
