Happy Birthday to Me
(1981) 111 mins.
Rated: R (gore)
Country: Canada
Director: J. Lee Thompson
Starring: Melissa Sue Anderson, Glenn Ford
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Virginia’s group of rich friends start to get killed off one by one.
Synopsis:
Mrs. Patterson and Bernadette O’Hara meet one night and have a chat as Bernadette is on her way to an inn. Mrs. Patterson warns her not to be out later. Bernadette agrees, but as Patterson leaves, Bernadette mocks Mrs. Patterson beneath her breath.
As she gets into her car, Bernadette reaches for her keys and someone starts choking her from behind. Bernadette is pulled to the backseat kicking and is able to open the back door with her heels during the struggle. She escapes the car and runs out. She is almost caught again by a car but hits the assailant’s hand away. She runs into someone she recognizes and asks them to help her. She looks down to see their gloved hand holding a razor. The person then strikes Bernadette’s neck, slicing it.
In a small foggy bay, in a town somewhere… in a pub named “The Silent Woman”, some old fez-wearing-fraternity-club guys are singing “bottles of beer on the wall”. A table nearby some university students are bored and annoyed. Virgina (Anderson) arrives to the student table and the others are wondering where Bernadette is. Finally a mousy looking guy shows up, who happens to be Alfred. Alfred has a pet rat, George, with him. Everyone in the group is wearing the same school colored-purple banded scarf. The same scarf the killer also wore.
The fez-wearing drunks at the next table want to start their song over, which pisses off Greg, but the scuffle is quickly squashed. Alfred tries to buy Virginia a drink. One of the students buys the fez-leader a drink, but slips the rat George inside the drink, causing chaos. Alfred scoops up the wet rat and the students leave the pub in a hurry.
The students dare each other to drive their cars over the draw-bridge before the road is too high to cross. Two cars make it, and Greg’s car barely makes it over, crushing its front. This scares Virginia, who runs out after the car stops.
She wanders into a graveyard and sits near her mother’s headstone. She pulls out a small pair of hedge trimmers from a box near the stone and starts to clip at the grass. She tells the tombstone how she’s now part of the Top 10 clique. Virginia senses someone watching her from the foggy bushes and calls out to them. She runs out of the graveyard but is stopped by clique member Etienne. He offers to walk her home but she declines. She walks home alone.
Virginia comes home to her father who is upset with her going over there at night. Virginia retorts that she isn’t allowed to visit her mother’s grave. Her father wishes that she would forget the past, Virginia says she won’t be completely cured unless she remembers and deals with the past issues she’s repressed. As they have the conversation, Etienne is watching from a window in the shadows. He climbs up and into a window of Virginia’s room. Virginia gets ready to take a bath, she hears the window open and runs to it, knowing that someone has opened the window. Etienne climbs down and runs out into the darkness.
The next day Virgina is late to a science class in which her dean, Mrs. Patterson lectures the class on tardiness and that the students might be forbidden from The Silent Woman Inn because of their bad behavior. She also wonders if Bernadette is late. The science teacher demonstrate electrical currents through frog’s legs, causing the leg to move. This triggers a memory in Virginia. She recalls being strapped to a table.
She tells her therapist, David (Ford), that she was an experiment. She had an energy field created in her brain to regrow cells. Brain cells, much like a salamander would regrow a tail. David says she will continue to remember and grow the cells until she remembers everything and is whole.
Etienne wins a dirt bike race. The Top 10 group is there. They cheer him on and promise to meet up with him at the Silent Woman. Etienne shows Virginia the panties he stole from her. She angrily gets away from him and stalks off. Meanwhile, Alfred stares at Etienne.
Later, while Etienne is working on his bike, the killer walks up behind him. Etienne is working on his bike while the wheel is running. He’s wearing his clique scarf. The killer merely throws one end of the scarf into the wheel to get tangled and kill Etienne.
At the Silent Woman, Alfred and Etienne are missing from the party. After the party, Anne and Virginia sneak into Alfred’s room to see what he’s been up to. He’s not there and they snoop around the room. They see something under a small tarp on a plate of blood. They remove the covering and scream. It’s a human head. The girls try to leave the room. Alfred finds them. Anne tells Alfred they were worried about him, and he says that no one worried about poor Bernadette. Alfred pulls an eye out of the head and turns on the light. It is a model of Bernadette’s head with glass eyes.
Virginia has a meeting with Mrs. Patterson and she assigns Virginia afterschool duties.
The Top 10 go to a movie. Everyone except Rudy is invited. He’s angry and wants to have a word with Maggie who is holding hands with Steve. After a skirmish is avoided, Virginia, Anne and Alfred go to the pub.
The killer goes and walks in on Greg weight lifting. He’s comfortable with the killer and asks him to add more weight to the barbell. More weight is added, when Greg lifts the barbell, the killer moves the rest away and then tosses a weight onto Greg’s genitals, causing him to drop the weight onto his neck.
The group are at a soccer match where Rudy kicks the winning goal. He asks Virginia to meet him at the chapel and she agrees to. Rudy covers up something that looks like a scarf in the dirt. At the church, he takes her up into the bell tower of the church. He closes the trap door and pulls out a knife…..
Virginia is running through the hospital. She sees someone in bandages and blood and it triggers a memory. She recalls a memory of her brain having an operation. She felt that the operation happened today. The last thing she remembers was the bell tower. David soothes her and calms her down, saying she’s alright.
Back at the school, police are investigating the disappearances of the students. Rudy is also missing and they are questioning about him. When everyone goes out to see the buried scarf, Rudy surprises Virginia. His hand is bandaged. He cut it while cutting the rope from the bell in the bell tower.
In the flowerbed they find a skull. David pulls off more dirt from the skull and sees that it is the property of the science department. Virginia invites David to her birthday party.
After remembering an underwater drowning memory, she runs off to the graveyard. Alfred walks up behind her quietly and he slowly reaches into his pocket. As he’s about to pull out what’s in his pocket Virginia stabs him with the pruning shears. He falls down dead, his hand holding a rose bud.
After a dance Virginia and Steve go home to Virginia’s house and she prepares a meal of kebabs. She then skewers his throat and he dies.
The next morning Anne stops by to check on Virginia and she tosses her the keys from the upstairs bedroom. Anne enters the house. Virginia is taking a shower when she suddenly has a flashback.
Her mother is driving young Virginia somewhere in the rain. Her mom is determined to drive over a bridge, but the draw bridge is lifting. The car is stuck and falls into the water below. As the car is filling with water, Virginia’s mother tells her to swim out. Virginia swims out, but her mother is caught in the car and drowns. As Virginia surfaces, she is struck on the head by a large boat.
Virginia wakes from the flashback in the bathroom which is full of water. She turns to turn off the bathtub taps, but sees Anne drowned in the tub. She screams and looks again to see a corpse in bloody water. Later she is crying on the stairs inside her house, afraid to do anything.
David arrives to find Virginia sobbing on the floor. He takes her up to the bathroom to prove to her that she imagined it. He pulls back the curtain to reveal a clean bathroom. David believes that there is a link between Virginia’s trauma and her friends. Virginia knows that they played the game over the bridge, but there is more than that.
She remembers that a few years ago it was her birthday. Her mother decided to have her party in the cottage. Six of the richest kids are invited to come to her party, but none show up. Virginia’s mother, Estelle, grows increasingly angry. Virginia’s father, Hal, is gone again during her birthday. Estelle is upset with his absence but also angry that the other kids haven’t shown up. Virginia reveals that the kids are most likely at a party for Anne Thomerson. Estelle decides that Virginia and herself should pay them a visit instead.
They drive up to the Thomerson mansion, but are not allowed inside. Estelle starts screaming in the rain through the mansion gates that she is a rich woman now and can’t be bought off ever again. Estelle vows to make them pay. And at this point, Virginia ends her flashback.
Later when Virginia is calm, David is wandering the house and is killed by being struck from behind with a furnace poker.
Hal arrives home with his arms bundled with gifts. He walks into the house and looks for Virginia but doesn’t find her. He finds the bloody mess in her room and assumes it is his daughter. He starts to cry in grief and wanders around. He first wanders through the graveyard and sees the dug-up coffin of his wife, but it is empty inside. He then wanders over to the cottage, which is lit up. He finds the bloody corpse of David outside in the rain. Hal enters the building. It is dark except for the occasional flashes of lightening from outside. He sees the rotted corpse of his wife sitting in a chair and sighs in grief. Surrounding the table are all the kids from the university who were killed.
Virginia enters the room with a lit-up cake. She sings “happy birthday to me” as she walks over to the table, then blows out the candles. She tells her father that he kept his promise to her. She offers to give him a slice of cake, then suddenly slashes at his throat, killing him.
Virginia walks over to a lamp and turns on the light. She pulls one of the bodies away from the table. It is Virginia, unconscious. The cruel Virginia calls the other one sister. She pulls her away from the others and positions her so that she can see the corpses of all her friends and parents. Cruel Virginia removes her mask and beneath it is Anne’s face. She has fooled people into thinking she was Virginia and carried out the murders while dressed as Virginia and putting chloroform over the real Virginia’s face making her black out while Anne committed the murders. This is Anne’s revenge because she is Virginia’s half-sister. Her father had Estelle as his mistress. Virginia is the daughter of Estelle and Mr. Thomerson. Estelle never let Mr. Thomerson forget this, which caused Anne’s mother to leave him. So now she wishes to kill Virginia in front of all the corpses. However, instead Virginia grabs the knife and stabs Anne, killing her.
Anne slumps over dead. Just then, a policeman arrives. He sees Virginia covered in blood and surrounded by corpses. “Good God, What have you done?” he asks as the movie ends.
Review:
This film was actually pretty decent, as far as slasher/horror movies go. It turned into a whodunnit with a lot of red herrings. The audience is led to believe a lot of other people are suspects. And even if you do suspect Anne or Virginia, the method or “reality” of who did the killings is still a surprising twist. So on that end, I’d have to say that this film delivers. I found myself wanting to watch the end of the movie rather than slowly plod through as I take notes. To me, that’s a good sign that the writing is pretty well done.
It’s by no means an amazing film. The acting is mediocre and there is the hard to swallow revelation, but it’s still fun to watch if you can just let that slide and engross yourself in the film.