By Geno McGahee
As a Native American, I am sometimes bothered by the way my people are depicted in horror movies. I’m not offended and I don’t get offended, but at times, I’m a little irked by the fact that Native Americans have only one purpose in these films. They have a link to nature and understand Sasquatch and other things that the white man or whoever cannot. It’s an easy way to explain things. Who knows about the huge killer mutated bear? The Native American guy does. He knows because he is supposed to know. Unfortunately, I do not possess any of these assets. Despite my Cherokee blood, I cannot locate a Sasquatch, help if there is a huge mutant bear attack, or assist anyone with the telling of local legends. Perhaps I’m not Cherokee enough.
In 1983, the slasher films were starting to kick in. Films like THE BURNING, MADMAN and FRIDAY THE 13th were making some noise and so why not capitalize on the new craze and create a slasher film that puts the Native American in a new role. We have “Black Claw”, an “Indian renegade that died 100 years ago,” and he is not happy about anyone disturbing his land. Remarkably, he takes lion form in the beginning of this film and does that lip thing that Elvis did. I don’t know why they used the lion head mask, but they did and I think they just liked the feature that the upper lip could move in such a way. It is the only time that we see this mask, but I didn’t need to see it again. I wanted to see Black Claw stir some shit up.
Professor Machen (Kirk Alyn) has a trip planned for his students to do some digging for ancient Native American treasures, even though it’s against the law. Unfortunately, he cannot make the trip, but his students elect to go and do what they planned to do. Ben (Frank McDonald), Kershaw (Roger Maycock), D.J. (Jo-Ann Robinson), Randy (Richard Hench), Louise (Carol Sue Flockheart) and Barbara (Ellen Corman), pack up the station wagon and head up into the mountains to seek out artifacts, but plan to go well beyond the map they have to discover items that have not been found. When Billy Ironwing (George Randall), a Native American guy with the shakes, overhears them at the gas station, he needs to say his piece. Of course, he’s the one that knows about all the crazy shit going down. It has to be the Native American guy. They had another guy named “Kyle” as the gas station that could have told them, but no. They had to put this on the Native American guy and then named him “Billy Ironwing.” Ironwing? What the fuck sort of name is that? This is another common thing in movies from around this time. They add “wing” to the end of a name and bam, you have a Native American guy.
As expected, the group doesn’t listen. They proceed to the dig site, but D.J. begins to have second thoughts and starts to have terrible visions of a Native American Halloween mask making strange faces. They must have bought it from the same place they got that lion mask from. She senses that there is true evil afoot and insists that the group exits immediately, but that is ignored. They continue and begin to dig up things, leading to the pounding of drums, heard by the group. Something weird is going on and that damn Native American Halloween mask is showing up all over the place now. I think it was supposed to be scary. It wasn’t. Not at all.
The film trudges along and Randy gets possessed by Black Claw. I wonder if Black Claw felt weird wearing jeans. When he was around, his junk whipped around freely, but here he is, possessing a dude in jeans. Randy takes on the facial features of Black Claw and goes on a killing spree, scalping poor Ben. The group systematically gets taken out and Black Claw has his revenge. I guess it’s revenge. Would it be revenge? Maybe not. I guess he’s just territorial.
SCALPS is written by Fred Olsen Ray and he is still active after all these years, primarily writing stories about Christmas. I haven’t watched any of them, so I cannot rule out a Native American evil spirit ruining the holiday in those films, but I make it unlikely. He did write JACK-O and EVIL TOONS, which weren’t bad films, and I hesitate to say that he wrote SCALPS. This really feels like a film that was half ad-libbed and half scripted. I get this idea of Olsen Ray sort of just yelling out lines at the actors and then saying “just go with it.” If it was scripted and held to the script, then it’s got bigger problems than I thought.
There are a few movies that I’m reminded of with this one. THE EVIL DEAD, CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS and SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED have similarities and are better films. SCALPS just has a lack of direction and a lack of structure. I liked Jo-Ann Robinson, but it was difficult to get through this. You can tell that the actors were trying hard to make this work but there just wasn’t anything to work with and there wasn’t much direction. This film was just capitalizing on the trend and they obviously didn’t have much of a budget. Even though this isn’t found footage, it has a BLAIR WITCH PROJECT sort of approach. These characters ramble on and on with dialogue that isn’t pushing the story forward and then the scares are dropped in.
I really really wanted to like SCALPS. I love the cover art and the trailer, but it lacks in just about every area. There’s a reason why this film is overlooked when speaking of 80s slasher films. It’s weak and forgettable.
Rating: 4/10
