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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - May 15th

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME" released in 1981

At a private school in Massachusetts, Crawford Academy, popular girl Virginia's group of her friends begin to fall prey to a grueling series of murders, and soon there will be no one left to attend her 18th birthday party, J. Lee Thompson's cult slasher film, Happy Birthday to Me!

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At Crawford Academy, the richest, most popular - and most snobbish teens - at the Academy, the elite clique the "Top Ten", meet every night at a local tavern, the Silent Woman Tavern. The Top Ten includes; Bernadette (Lesleh Donaldson), Amelia (Lisa Langlois), Etienne (Michel-René Labelle), Greg (Richard Rebiere), Maggie (Lenore Zann), Steve (Matt Craven), Rudi (David Eisner), Alfred (Jack Blum), Ann (Tracey E. Bregman), and Virginia "Ginny" Wainwright (Melissa Sue Anderson). On the way home, the Top Ten see a drawbridge going up and decides to play a game of chicken. All cars in the game attempt to make it across before the bridge is completely raised (to allow the passing of ferries). A protesting Ginny is shoved into a car by Ann, and very car jumps the drawbridge save one. Distraught, Ginny runs off into the darkness and visits her mothers grave before returning hom to be berated by her father Harold (Lawrence Dane) for returning home late. The next morning, school principal Mrs. Patterson (Frances Hyland) threatens the Top Ten with the banning of ever going to The Silent Woman after hours. Later that day, Ginny has a session with her on-call psychiatrist, Dr. David Faraday (Glenn Ford) shares a handful of lost repressed memories where she underwent an experimental medical procedure, involving surgery to restore brain tissue, after surviving a harrowing accident at the same drawbridge years before. As Ginny attempts to resume her normal life, her fellow Top Ten members are being murdered in vicious and violent ways: Etienne gets strangled when his scarf is caught in the spokes of his motorcycle as blood splatters, and Greg gets his neck crushed while lifting weights. And yet, the killer who always sports a pair of black gloves is never seen. With Ginny's 18th birthday steadily approaching, she begins to believe she that she may have killed her friends in a fugue state, resulting from the trauma of her mothers death years before; after leaving Ann's party in a drunken rage, Ginny's mother drove her car off the drawbridge into the river below, killing herself, and seriously injuring Ginny. Not knowing what to believe, Ginny returns home... where the killer has a gruesome birthday party waiting for her!

[last lines]
Lieutenant Tracy: [seeing all the dead bodies] Dear God, what have you done?
Virginia Wainwright: [singing to herself, now insane] Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday dear Ginny. Happy birthday to me.

Top and Above:   Crawford Academy's elite clique The Top Ten, including Virginia "Ginny" Wainwright (Melissa Sue Anderson)(top right).

Interestingly Happy Birthday to Me was filmed before - but released after - producers John Dunning and André Link follow-up My Bloody Valentine; My Bloody Valentine went into production a week after Happy Birthday to Me wrapped, but post production was rushed to meet the 11 February 1981 release date in time for Valentine's Day. During Happy Birthday to Me's development, Dunning and Link decided to capitalize on the success of the previous years release of horror/slasher films, including the wedding-themed He Knows You’re Alone, Prom Night, Mother’s Day, Friday the 13th,  two New Year's Eve-themed horror movies, Terror Train and New Year's Evil, as well as Christmas-themed films To All a Goodnight and Christmas Evil. The producers hired John Saxton, a University of Toronto English professor, to develop the story, with Dunning providing the basis for the subplot involving Virginia’s brain injury after reading an article where scientists were regenerating frogs with electricity; and figured this could form the basis for a murder mystery where a girl suffers flashbacks and blackouts yet is unsure of her role in the mayhem around her. The script was completely reworked by screenwriting team Timothy Bond and Peter Jobin before production started in early July 1980. At the helm was British director J. Lee Thompson, famous for the classic Cape Fear (1962). Thompson, who had actively been looking to direct a thriller after having directed two other films in the horror genre, Eye of the Devil (1967) and The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975), later stated in a press interview  "What attracted me to this script was that the young people stood out as vivid, individual characters. The difference between a good chiller and exploitative junk, at least in my opinion, is whether or not you care about the victims."

Starring Melissa Sue Anderson (who took time off from the TV series Little House On the Prairie to do this movie), Glenn Ford, Lawrence Dane, Sharon Acker and Frances Hyland, Happy Birthday to Me also featured young upcoming actors, Matt Craven, Lenore Zann, Jack Blum, David Eisner, Michel-René Labelle, Richard Rebiere, and Lesleh Donaldson. Actress Lisa Langlois originally auditioned for the part of Ann, but with role instead went to Tracey E. Bregman (in her feature film debut), with Langlois instead cast as Amelia. Reportedly, actor Glenn Ford - who was less-than-thrilled to be in a slasher film - was heavily drinking during the production of this picture, and constantly through tantrums. Thompson and the producers tolerated most of his behaviour, as an actor of his caliber brought a bit of Hollywood glamor to the film, a rare thing for most slashers, which kept costs to a minimum with largely unknown actors. However, producers were forced to step-in when Ford and assistant director Charles Braive were involved in an on-set altercation. According to Dunning, "He [Ford] hit our AD who had called a lunch break in the middle of one of Glenn's scenes. I had to stop the police from arresting him. It was a mess. Glenn wouldn't come out of his dressing room until the first AD apologized, who said he would never apologize to Glenn. But I told him that this might be the end of his career as an AD if he didn't. So, he went and said he was sorry... and Glenn said he was sorry. They kissed and made up. As far as I know, Glenn never hit anybody else.".

TRIVIA:   Many fans were upset with the 2004 DVD release from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment because, not only did it have a completely different cover to that of the infamous original poster and VHS cover, it featured a disco score in place of the atmospheric piano piece that originally played over the opening credits in theaters and VHS releases. In response, in 2009 Anchor Bay/Starz Home Entertainment re-released the DVD using the original poster as the cover and restoring the original music over the opening sequence.

Top and Above:   As Ginny struggles to remember her suppressed memories, helped by psychiatrist, Dr. David Faraday (Glenn Ford), her friends are being brutally murdered one-by-one!

While much of the film was shot in and around Loyola College in Montreal, the drawbridge scenes were actually filmed in Phoenix, New York, just outside Syracuse. The producers found it difficult to find the right bridge closer to the main production, as the expansion of the Highway system had made them increasingly rare. The whole town of Phoenix came to watch the dangerous stunts, where a total of fifteen cars were junked, and one stunt driver was hospitalized with two broken ankles. The bridge itself has since been removed and replaced by a bridge further to the north. The removal takes with it a piece of history in drawbridges. The film's make-up effects were done by special effects guru Tom Burman (who replaced Stéphan Dupuis just three weeks before the cameras were due to start rolling), who, accroding to Dunning in an interview with the Terror Trap in 2011, began "splashing [fake] blood all over the place" on the set, encouraged by Thompson himself. Dunning said: "The cameraman came to me and said, "John, you've gotta slow J. Lee down. He's throwing too much blood around, and the camera lenses are always covered in it!". He'd take a bucket of blood and whip it around. I had to go to him and tell him to tone it down so we could clean up the crew". In an interview with actress Lisa Langlois also at The Terror Trap, said: "That's something he [J. Lee Thompson] was very famous for on that set, slinging lots of fake blood all around!".

With script being continuously re-written during production, it was reported in the press that in order to keep the "twist" ending a secret several endings were shot - when it fact, it was to hide the fact that while shooting, the film had no ending! According to a copy of the third draft of the script (obtained by genre website Retro Slashers), Happy Birthday to Me was supposed to end where Ginny is revealed as the killer, but possessed by the spirit of her deceased mother. Although this ending logistically makes more sense than the ending that was filmed, the filmmakers thought that what was originally scripted was not climactic enough (still, the majority of the film does point to this original ending, which indicates the switch came well into production). This version of the script also features a good number of scenes that were either never shot or rewritten, including some that show more clearly Alfred's love for Ginny and Ginny's difficult relationship with her father. However, the script was rewritten with a far more twisted revelation where the identity of the murderer is revealed to be Ann, posing throughout the movie as Ginny's-doppelganger while murdering her school friends.

TRIVIA:   This film was the last movie that director J. Lee Thompson made before the start of his long association with Cannon Films and Golan-Globus Productions, starting with 10 to Midnight (1983), which would see out the remaining of his career; only one other picture, The Evil That Men Do (1984), being made outside of this production house.

Top:   Ann (Tracey E. Bregman) arrives the "party" to wish Ginny a Happy Birthday... revealing herself as the killer;

Above:   Director J. Lee Thompson (pictured on set of 1986's Murphy's Law).

Columbia Pictures bought the rights from Cinépix for a reported $3.5 million, and put as much money into promoting the film as it cost to make. Columbia actually published a promotional manual for Happy Birthday to Me, which was jam-packed with ideas for cinemas to promote the film. Although it is not clear how many picture houses really embraced the film's promotion, some of the more colorful ideas were to stage a mini-recreation of the film's final scene (without the bodies), but with a butchered birthday cake with crimson candles surrounded by glittering birthday party hats, all to be set upon a fake coffin. People celebrating their own birthdays were encouraged to bring family and friends with incentives, such as T-shirts and party hats. They also suggested having a member of staff, dressed in funereal black, preventing anyone from entering the auditorium during the final ten minutes. Those in line would then be offered "a bite-sized slice of Virginia's birthday cake” from the concession stand. Dunning and Link didn't like the advertising campaign Columbia devised, believing it should have been more subtle and worried that it might put off as many people as it attracted. They were also concerned that only a handful of the murders in the film were as truly bizarre as the expectation built up and that the audience might feel cheated.

Nevertheless, Happy Birthday to Me grossed over $10 million at the US box office, and, for a short time, was the highest ever grossing Canadian film until Bob Clark's Porky's came along the next year in 1982. Critically, the movie received mostly negative reviews, with Vincent Canby from the New York Times calling it a confused ripoff of Friday the 13th and Prom Night. James Harwood in Variety wrote that the film gets "dumber and dumber until the fitful finale". In 2012, AllMovie gave the film a mixed review, writing, "Happy Birthday to Me stands out from the slasher movie pack of the early '80s because it pushes all the genre's elements to absurd heights. The murders, plot twists and, especially, the last-minute revelations that are dished up in the final reel don't just deny credibility, they outright defy it."

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   27%

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