The Redeemer (1978)

The Redeemer could have been a normal pro-slasher if it wasn’t for that it begins with a boy walking up from some kind of lake, walks into a mans bedroom and uses his power to make that man grow an extra thumb. Except for that, it’s quite a normal slasher with some violent deaths and a very ambiguous twist. Normally I wouldn’t care much to write about a movie like this, but it has a special atmosphere and an interesting cast of characters with more depth than usual.

Maybe this is because it came before the big slasher-boom and allowed the script to be more interesting than demanded from the bodycount-hungry audience. The problem is that it has problems making everything come together in the end. Is the killer doing a good thing, if so this is clearly a extremist right-wing movie with no redeeming qualities what so ever? Or is a demon using a priest to perform evil deeds in the form of divine punishment? Yeah, the question actually makes me feel more and more unsure how to interpret the message. Maybe it doesn’t have a message? Maybe it’s just a silly slasher movie with some ideas that looked cool on paper but didn’t work out in the editing? Really, should I care?

Because the movie could just be a way to show people getting killed in creative ways, I and choose to see it that way. Not that it’s extremely gory, but it has its share of blood – which the knife in head is the showstopper. The other killings are more visual than gory, like a very drawn-out beating in toilet or the well-made burning man. The atmosphere is nice and the direction is competent, but you never sense danger. Its way to easy to escape the house and outside its just pure stupidity that makes people run right in the arms of the killer.

In the end The Redeemer is a flawed movie, but well worth watching for a couple of creepy moments and bloodshed. The DVD from Code Red is a bit rough, but adds to that Grindhouse-feeling the kids like so much nowadays. It’s just sad that Code Red themselves seems too loath the movie by putting to very negative quotes on the cover and name their own trailers “pointless”.

For us who loves movies like this, it’s never fun to be told that our taste suck directly from the distributor. But even because of this, Code Red is one of my favourite companies and I recommend everyone to buy their releases and support a small company that releases movies only a few of us really enjoys.