Spine (1986) — Triskaidekafiles

SPINE:

WRITERS: Justin Simonds and John Howard

DIRECTORS: Justin Simonds and John Howard

STARRING: R. Eric Huxley as Lawrence Ashton

Janus Blythe as Carrie Lonegan

Antoine Herzog as Leo Meadows

Lise Romanoff as Leah Petralla

QUICK CUT: After his mother passes away, Lawrence looks for the nurse who helped take care of his mother in her final days.

THE MORGUE

Carrie - A young nurse who works hard, is always there for her friends, and is a bright, cheery person. And then the movie starts.

Leah - A woman Carrie met some time ago, and is running away from her old life for some reason. She ends up finding Carrie, staying with her, and getting sucked into the drama.

Lawrence - A troubled man who lost his mother in a tragic incident, and has gone on a killing spree seeking revenge.

The rine in Spine stays mainly on the pline.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Happy almost Valentine's Day, Triskelions! As is tradition around these parts I take a look at...well, not exactly a story of twisted love this year, but there is a bit of obsession to it, so it's not far off. Anyway, it's an obscure little slasher from the late 80s, a very early shot on video film, and it's called Spine.

Following a quick little murder before the credits to get the show on the road, we meet a pair of cops checking out the scene, and then over to a doctor's office.

It's not long before the killer we glimpsed briefly is finding a new nurse to stalk and kill.

As he drives off to follow her home, we jump back to the cops, having a meeting to discuss what to do about this guy.

I refuse to accept these are actual police officers.

They break down the facts of the victims, but have no real solid leads yet. It's frustrating them, and arguably drives their plot.

But enough talking! We have to get back to our killer, as he stalks his newest victim home, invites himself in, and does what he does. Which is hogtie the girls, stab at their spines, and leave the name “Linda” behind.

Meanwhile, Detective Herbert West is chatting with another cop, trying to talk her into dressing up like a nurse to lure the guy out. And the dialogue just feels so cheap. It's hard to really describe how off it feels.

Why does the police chief have Captain Jack Harkness’s time vortex manipulator??

The coworker does note a domestic disturbance call that raises some red flags, because they know it was a nurse involved. Detective West rushes off, and dispatch calls ANOTHER cop who can't be bothered to dress like one. He looks like a member of the Tracksuit Mafia, bro.

We cut to Joffrey arriving at the nurse's house, and his partner backing him up. Except, if you look reeeally carefully, he's actually carrying a mic as a gun. Look, just because they call them SHOTGUN mics, that's not how they work!

Meanwhile, a young woman wanders into town, and calls Carrie, another nurse we saw earlier. The pair met years ago, and Carrie told Leah if she was ever in town, look her up.

Well, she's in town, and she's on the run from something. This is ultimately unimportant to the plot, besides getting a character into town.

This is the most hilarious appearance of a mic in a movie, ever.

Brief aside, we keep bouncing between two cops, who don't dress like cops, sometimes dress alike, and it is REALLY CONFUSING because no one in this movie has much of a personality. They are fairly interchangeable. Apparently, there was some drama on set, so they brought in the other guy, but geeze.

Anyways, I'm mentioing this because I know I will not get through this review with keeping Sam Joffrey and Leo Meadows straight.

The two girls settle in, sound like their audio was recorded at the bottom of a shoebox, and everyone is awfully calm considering the nurse murderer around. That's the biggest problem, I think, this movie has no sense of urgency to it.

Back with the cops, they continue to come up with nothing, and hey. Go question Scorpion. He'd be my first suspect. Sure, maybe it's profiling, but you gotta start somewhere.

Come on, let me on the information superhighway!

We jump ahead a week, for no particularly great reason. Carrie sends Lori off put away some patient files, unwittingly sending her to her death.

Meadows and another cop?? show up to question Carrie while Laurie goes to her doom, and she's getting frustrated with all the questioning.

But more importantly...WHY IS MEADOWS NOW DRESSED LIKE A FISHERMAN??

Detective Gilligan has to wrap this up, he has a three hour boat tour to go on.

Carrie realises that Lori hasn't returned from the filing cabinet that time forgot, and comes upon the killer while he's trying to do his thing. He quickly slashes his captive's throat, and runs off as the cops suddenly appear.

Fastest police response time EVER.

There's a call from Leah to let Carrie know she got a job working reception at the doctor's office, and that's great! I hear there's an opening!

Anyways, Carrie heads home, and the killer follows her, having found his next volunteer.

Back at the police station, Meadows is still banging away on the database hoping to magically get it to cough something up, complaining that it's supposed to be state of the art.

Hey, that computer could run a whole V-World Matrix if it wanted to!!

I cannot wait for the "Will the computers have enough processing power to solve the case??" plotline to reach a climax!

Carrie heads home, and is about to go for a jog, when the killer knocks on the door asking for a Leon. She says there's no one there, and sends him on his way. We’re all full up on murder. We gave our lives at the office!

Leon. Leah. Louise. Laurie. The killer keeps leaving the name "Linda" at the crime scenes. Even Carrie Lonegan. This movie has more L names than a Superman comic.

Meadows is still trying to get the computers to do anything useful, when a random cop looks at his search terms and says "Hey, instead of backbone, try spine".

And instantly the results of Lawrence Ashton pop up IMMEDIATELY. Chat GPT coulda solved this in a fraction of the time.

Carrie returns home from her run, finds the garage door ajar, and once she heads inside, she his punched around by Lawrence and taken captive.

She awakens, tied up, hanging from her wrists, and Ashton calls her "Linda". He promises he'll be right back for her, after he takes care of her friend upstairs.

After he smothers Leah to knock her out and do whatever, we spend a little bit of time playing with Lind...er, Carrie.

Lawrence heads back UPstairs to chat with Leah, and he wonders what's taking "Linda" so long to join them. I dunno, she's a little...TIED UP RIGHT NOW.

But Lawrence does kinda reveal what's going on; his mom was sick, being taken care of a nurse named Linda, and when she died thanks to falling down some stairs, possibly because of the nurse somehow, he went around the bend, and looking for revenge. Okay, sure.

Carrie tries to buy for time, by acting like OHH right, yes, I AM Linda! hoping to get on Lawrence's good side.

Lawrence may be crazy, but he's not stupid, and sees right through her lies...not enough to see she's not Linda, but still.

Okay, using the reflection in the glasses to show Carrie is...actually well done.

He gets bored with Carrie's lies, and heads upstairs to "play" with Leah. While chatting, he mentions Linda hurt him, and reveals one of his eyes is gouged out. It's a SUPER close up shot, and we never get a proper look at it, but it's also a weird detail that doesn't really add anything.

Following that, he says he has to go back to talk to Linda and THIS GUY BOUNCES AROUND MORE THAN A PING PONG BALL. It feels so forced just to keep things moving. "Oh, I'll go to to X now. Oh, now I'll go talk to Y. Well back to X..."

Lawrence decides to have his way with Carrie, and he then goes BACK upstairs, and catches Leah trying to make a phone call with her nose.

He rambles a bit more, revealing his mother's spine got broken in three places, and that's why he focuses on stabbing the spines.

Once he's said that, Hannibal Infodump heads BACK downstairs to finally kill "Linda" and have his revenge. Again.

He gets Carrie on the ground, stabs her in the back, and as he kills the poor girl. Upstairs, Leah actually gets out of her ropes, and creeps around the house.

I’m gonna hug her, and love her, and name her Linda.

Leah doesn't make it very far before Lawrence grabs her, ties her up, and gets to work killing the latest Linda.

…BUT IT WAS ALL A DREAM.

THIS MOVIE CAN FUCK RIGHT OFF FUCK FUCK FUCK THIS MOVIE FUCK IT SO VERY HARD. FUUUUUUUUUUHHHHH

As Leah is about to get killed, she gets woken up by Carrie, and THE ENTIRE MOVIE SINCE BEFORE CARRIE CAME HOME FROM HER JOG WAS NOTHING BUT A DREAM.

FUCK.

That is, no joke, just about 25 minutes of an hour and 10 minute movie. I am SO ANGRY RIGHT NOW.

Now, it's worth noting that Leah's dream lines up almost perfectly with what the cops know. So, some rando who swooped into town two days ago solved the case faster than an entire police department. Are you KIDDING me?? Even faster than their state of the art computer system!!

Anyways, let's just wrap this up. Carrie wanders off, Lawrence is still in the garage for real this time, because Leah is psychic I GUESS even though this movie is at WAY too late a stage to include sudden super powers.

Somehow, Meadows is also in the garage (???) and shoots Lawrence, ending the movie.

I am going to burn some shit to the ground over this.

TRISK ANALYSIS

Video: It’s clearly shot on video, but it looks good for that level of things.

Audio: Not great, but definitely could be worse. Well, there is the stuffed in a tin can sound to it, but it’s understandable.

Body Count: It’s only a few, but the quality is pretty good for this level.

1 - 40 seconds, before even the credits, and a poor woman gets her spine stabbied.

2 - A nurse gets hogtied and stabbied.

3 - Another nurse gets her throat slit.

4 - Carrie gets her spinal tapped

5 - Meadows kills the killer

Best Corpse: Carrie would get the nod if she was ACTUALLY killed. We don’t see much, but there’s a ton of spray, and you sit and watch it for more than is comfortable. That really only leaves us with the first post-credits kill, because we get to see a lot of her post mortem.

Blood Type - B: The effects aren’t great, but they use a lot of very nice looking blood, so lots of purpose for effort.

Sex Appeal: They carefully dance around a lot of potential nudity, but some stuff does slip through.

Drink Up! Every time a phone rings.

Movie Review: So. Despite that frustrating ‘twist’ ending…I honestly don’t hate this. The idea is good. There’s a solid slasher stalker movie here. But there was so much messiness behind the scenes, and with no budget to fix the issues, and no time, so it came out like…this. Knowing the behind the scenes stuff definitely helps me give it a BIT of forgiveness, but only so far. And definitely will say, the acting given by Lawrence is some really good stuff. I would love to see a remake of this, with a solid budget, and tell the story the way they want. And preferably without undoing 20 whole minutes of the movie. takes a deep breath Three out of five stabbed spines.

Entertainment Value: Trying to sort out this messy movie is fun. Spotting the errors is a blast. There’s an unreal sense of offness to it all that make it something. The killer has some interesting motivations and methods, and the blood is good. It’s charmingly strange. Three out of five nurse uniforms.

I still want to burn it all to the ground though.