It's about time I covered something other than XXX, eh? I know that isn't to everyone's taste, so let's delve headfirst into a just as grubby '80s slasher. Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow's The Dorm That Dripped Blood.
Gathering some acclaim from a name drop in Wes Craven's Scream 2 (1997), it's perhaps better known as Pranks and almost entirely un-known as Death Dorm.

Starring: Laurie Lapinski, Stephen Sachs, David Snow, Pamela Holland, Dennis Ely, Woody Rollas and Daphne Zuniga.

Inspired, after recently attending screenings of Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980), the two young filmmakers set out to make a horror film of their own. Applying the tried and true Roger Corman / AIP (American International Pictures) formula to it; having nudity, sex or in this case graphic violence occur every 10 minutes, the duo created a movie that's very generous with the red stuff.

The Dorm That Dripped Blood is more or less a student film by Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow; shot over the Christmas holiday in December of 1980 and January 1981 on and around the UCLA campus, under the working title "The Third Night". The title was later changed by Carpenter & Obrow to "Death Dorm" once shooting had wrapped, only for it to be retitled again by the distributors. The movie was released into theatres as Pranks in 1982 and then re-released the following year under the newly minted The Dorm That Dripped Blood.

The collaboration between Stephen Carpenter & Jeffrey Obrow would continue for several years, with them making The Power (1984) and The Kindred (1987), before both branched off to other screen ventures. Stephen Carpenter went on to direct Soul Survivors (2001) and create the TV series Grimm in 2011, whilst Jeffrey Obrow made an adaptation of the Dean Koontz novel, The Servants of Twilight in 1991 and made several television and low-budget horror movies.



Can The Dorm That Dripped Blood be crowned "the most nihilistic and mean-spirited slasher from the Golden Age"? Possibly. Though, there's a handful of contemporaries that could proudly sport that title including; The Toolbox Murders (1978), Maniac (1980), The Prowler (1981) and Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984), but each of those, save for the culminating lunacy of Maniac, ends with the wrongs kind of being righted and the killer facing a comeuppance. It might be spoilery to say it outright, but The Dorm That Dripped Blood does not feature a comfortable ending. In addition, there's an aura of infamy surrounding the film as whilst distributed under the title Pranks, it was caught up in the 1980s video panic of Great Britain, being branded a "video nasty" and landing a spot on the Section 2: Non Prosecuted list.

I can distinctly remember watching this for the very first time and absolutely hating everything about it; the shortcomings of a shoestring budget, the awkward-wooden acting, the plot (or lack of), and predominantly the ending, but after revisiting multiple times over the years my opinion has changed. I stopped approaching the movie the same way I would with other slashers. The Dorm That Dripped Blood subverts viewer expectation during the finale by actually killing the final girl, an act which initially made me loathe the movie, a little more on that later. I also remember a more recent viewing with a friend, who at the time was getting into this kinda movie, when it came the closing moments I was just sitting there grinning from ear to ear. That was the moment I knew I loved it and since then it's become a title I regularly revisit and one that I'm quick to recommend to anybody wanting to broaden their slasher horizons. It's an exemplary title from what many would consider "bottom of the barrel" filmmaking, but if you dig it there's a plethora of titles you'll surely enjoy too. Except for Home Sweet Home (1981), really does anyone honestly like that flick?



The plot is incredibly simplistic; a group of college kids decide to stay on-campus over the Christmas holiday period to clear out a condemned dormitory. It's all fun, games, and pranks until someone starts stalking and murdering each of them in a variety of inventive ways. The bodycount, I mean the cast, is surprisingly large with most of the characters acting as mere cannon fodder for the killer. The movie boasts a whopping 10 kills with each of them as memorable as they are gruesome. I'm not kidding, within the first 20 minutes a young girl and both of her parents are grotesquely murdered in cold blood by the psycho. The killer uses an array of resourceful weaponry including a spiked bat, a power drill, a giant pot or cauldron; in which a coed is effectively "cooked" to death - a scene which no doubt inspired the art & tagline seen on the Pranks poster, "the villain makes coed stew."
Not even a table is safe from the maniac in a scene where an unseen assailant viciously takes a spiked bat to an innocent, unassuming dinner table. There are several clues throughout the film as to the identity of the killer; some a little more obvious than others, along with several red herrings to keep you guessing.



The Dorm That Dripped Blood, or Pranks if you prefer, features a genuinely wonderful stringy score by then-first time composer and orchestrator Christopher Young. It neatly riffs on familiar notes from Bernard Herrmann's work for Psycho (1960) and the fright-inducing stingers of Harry Manfredini's Friday the 13th (1980), while managing to remain unique and memorable. The musical cues are a welcome recurrent motif, reinforcing the maniac's diabolical mischief and though regularly used, it narrowly avoids becoming something to make your eyes roll.
Christopher Young would go on to have a very healthy career in the business, scoring music for several notable horror titles over the decades including: Hellraiser (1987), The Dark Half (1993), Species (1995), The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), Pet Sematary (2019) and most recently The Empty Man (2022).

When compared with its contemporaries The Dorm That Dripped Blood is certainly a lower-tier slasher, but only on paper; given the meagre budget, the filmmakers, cast, and crew really make the best of everything at their immediate disposal. Making full use of the campus location; the tight and claustrophobic boiler room tunnels seen during the finale are incredible, you anticipate the killer to be lurking in any darkened corner or shadowy walkway. Unfortunately, a few scenes do come off a little too dark which could be down to the filmmakers inexperience with shot composition.



The cast performances are surprisingly good, although the characters lack any real level of depth they still feel like they're their own person. Laurie Lipinski steals the show as Joanne, a total stand out, Lipinski is so likeable as the not-so-final girl that after watching everything she's been through, when she does get killed, you're overwhelmed with emotion; simultaneously driven into grieving and indignantly yelling at the screen when she meets her unjustified end.

The special effects and makeup were created by Matthew Mungle; who had previously only worked on three titles, including Jeff Lieberman's backwoods slasher Just Before Dawn (1981). Although a bit dated, his work still pack a right wallop; the head bludgeoning and the skull-drilling scene never get old, its prolonged build up is extremely effective so that when you finally see the drill connect with the back of the guy's head you're either catatonic with shock or cheering "hurrah!" Matthew Mungle has also gone on to have a long career in the business, working on numerous titles over the following decades.



The visuals and cast performances combined with Christopher Young's stringy score really coalesce to strengthen the overall production value of the film. The end result is an enjoyable and decidedly nasty affair filled with an ice-cold atmosphere, gory kills and a downbeat ending to top it all off.
The main reason I hated this movie so much the first time around was because of the ending, I couldn't believe they wanted the menacing bastard to get away with it, but I finally came to love this movie by learning to root for the killer, and I believe the ending is truly what sets The Dorm That Dripped Blood apart from its slasher brethren.

Essential viewing for slasher fanatics and a great place to start for those wanting to deviate from the mainstream studio-backed horror / slashers.