Theme Song:
“Untitled NWOBHM Jam” by Unknown. This scorcher plays as a woman returns home to find her boyfriend working out on a weight bench in the middle of the living room. He’s just pounding metal while listening to metal in a brown-carpeted living room that clearly has no room for the bench. After acknowledging her genitals need a refresh before they can have “dessert,” she sends him downstairs to retrieve 6-packs of beer. This guy deserves all this awesome treatment because he immediately dies. But man, in his last moments, as he wiped the sweat from his mustache, he probably thought to himself, “This song jams. Life is a pretty sweet fruit.”
Interesting Dated References: Shelved movies being re-released and re-edited years after their initial production to cash-in on popular and rapidly-emerging popular VHS genres.
Best Line: Lots of sadistic heavy breathing at the hands of a crank phone caller/serial killer.
Social Context: Footage for Shadows Run Black was filmed in 1981 after the producers of Malibu Hot Summer decided to use leftover resources from their sex comedy to film a slasher. What was shot languished on the shelf until 1984, upon which it was then released to cash-in on the slasher home video craze. As an added bonus, among the cast is Kevin Costner, who would strike box office gold a few years later.
Summary: Co-eds are being killed on an anonymous college campus by a killer named “The Black Angel.” Let’s just get this out in the open right away:
There’s a lot of nudity in Shadows Run Black. If this interests you because you are a huge perv, then by all means check the movie out. Outside of that, the plot is confusing and the characters don’t seem to make a lot of sense.
Costner appears as Jimmy, who becomes the prime suspect after his girlfriend is murdered. But there’s also Judy, whose overbearing brother, Morgan, hates her interracial relationship with Billy. Rounding out the plot is an overzealous detective played by William Kulzer (Murderlust).
Some of these storylines have genuine moments of good acting. There’s a good slasher somewhere in here, but it didn’t all end up on film. As far as I can tell, they took an unfinished ‘80s slasher, padded it with a bunch of nudity, and released it. There are moments of mood on par with The Dark Ride, but those quickly fall apart.
Oh, and if you care, it was the controlling cop doing all the killing because he viewed women as impure and was getting vengeance for a daughter who died because she was a hooker. He is killed by Billy, who rescues Morgan after he is seemingly killed by her racist brother. Pretty progressive subject matter for 1981.
Worth Mentioning:
– Adult film actress Susana Britton/Barbara Peckinpaugh (Blonde Goddess) has an extended nude scene in which she runs around the house naked looking for her baby and lazy roommate only to get killed once she gives up and gets back into the shower. She never interacts with anyone else in the cast, so I’m certain this scene was shot after the fact in order to bump up the boob-and-butt factor.
– Costner has a heavy community theatre vibe going on throughout. This pre-dates some of his early effective turns (Testament), so it’s definitely interesting to see someone so green.
– There’s a fucking party scene that goes on forever and here’s the set-up: A bunch of people sitting in a room with no background music. A magician starts doing card tricks while a guy plays stand-up bass and the crowd is RAPT. No talking, singular focus. This goes on for literally 5 minutes. Costner barging in drunk on Coors Banquet doesn’t even pull their attention away.
Poster and Box Art: Very typical slasher-cash-in Vestron cover for this one.
Well-executed, but definitely not what you get when you pop the cassette in.
Availability: Streaming on Prime