RETRO REVIEW: X-RAY (AKA HOSPITAL MASSACRE) 1981
A killer stalks the staff of a hospital in BOAZ DAVIDSON’S slasher film, X-RAY.
Unrequited love can be painful in the best of situations, but unreciprocated love is like a molten-hot butcher knife to the heart. It’s one thing to pine for someone from afar, to wonder if perhaps there is any possible shred of hope that they might feel the same way about you, but it’s another thing to be shut down cold by the person you love. Valentine’s Day especially can be a volatile landmine - the one day a year that you are supposed to tell the people you love how you feel about them with crappy drugstore chocolate and teddy bears that will be thrown in the bottom of the closet as soon as the day is over. It’s the one day to shoot your shot with that person you’ve been eyeing, but as BOAZ DAVIDSON’S 1982 slasher, X-RAY illustrates, sometimes shooting your shot can backfire big-time.
BARBI BENTON stars as the victim of a stalkers revenge in BOAZ DAVIDSON’S X-RAY.
PLOT:
Divorcee Susan Jeremy (BARBIE BENTON) goes to a local Los Angeles county hospital for a routine exam, but through an increasing number of strange events, she finds herself stranded there while a crazed killer in doctor’s scrubs proceeds to run around killing any staff that are associated with her. As the killer circles closer to Susan, and the suspects around her dwindle down, could the killer possibly be Susan’s former schoolmate Harold, who killed a friend of Susan’s on Valentine’s Day 19 years ago?
“What’s in the box???!!!” A scene from 1981’s X-RAY.
KILLS:
This film was not originally titled HOSPITAL MASSACRE for nothing. The kills are plentiful and peppered liberally throughout the film. Perhaps the most significant kill in the film is the opening one. We open with a title card that says “Susan’s House, 1961” and we then see a little boy and a little girl - Susan (omg, it’s ELIZABETH HOY who was just in BLOODY BIRTHDAY that I previously reviewed for MD) playing with a train in her living room. The living room is decked out for Valentines Day (do people really do that?) and as they play we see a little boy named Harold outside looking in the window at them (played by none other than BILLY JAYNE, also from BLOODY BIRTHDAY). He leaves a card on Susan’s front porch, rings the bell, and runs away so that he can watch her open it from the window. When she does open it in front of the other boy with her, they both start laughing and crumple it up, deeply humiliating Harold. When Susan goes into the kitchen, Harold sees his chance for revenge, and when Susan comes back out the living room, she sees her friend impaled through the eye on a coat rack, with Harold smiling at her through the window.
Once we push forward to 19 years later, we realize that it is this event that will likely color the plot of the film and it does. Harold’s humiliation still runs as deep as ever, as he disguises himself head-to-toe in medical scrubs, lurking in shadows, attacking, and disappearing again like a kind of Phantom of the Opera via an HMO. Once Susan gets stuck at the hospital and the killer puts his gaslighting plan into place for her, the kills ramp up, with one guy getting an electric hand saw to the head (the decapitated appendage is later gifted to Susan’s bedside table in a red Valentine’s box), and a doctor meets his end with an axe to the head in a great kill. While not overly gory, the film does make good use of the hospital setting, utilizing surgical equipment, various medicines and chemicals and different rooms and floors of the building to build dread and tension.
Blood (and more) are splattered in BOAZ DAVIDSON’S X-RAY.
VISUALS/SFX:
Like with many CANNON FILMS, X-RAY has a lot of personality going for it, from the weird three guys in the gas masks that tell Susan “better get out of here, or you’ll get yourself deloused,” to the three old ladies who become agents and witnesses akin to the three witches from MACBETH to the events that unfold around Susan. Visually, the film has more going for it than many of the slashers of it’s time. It smartly uses both misdirection and pacing to add both tension and humor to the film. In one scene, Susan enters an elevator and sees a man in a hospital gown, with what looks like blood coming out of his mouth, and dripping down onto her white shoes. Once it’s revealed that it's just a drunk patient eating a hamburger with the most ketchup on it that anyone has ever put on a hamburger, we can’t help but chuckle at the mis-direct. But the visuals are not all strictly for laughs though. When Susan is receiving a physical exam at the hands of the creepy Dr. Saxton (JOHN WARNER WILLIAMS), cinematographer NICHOLAS JOSEF VON STERNBERG closes in on the lighting around her eyes, highlighting the fear and uncertainty in them.. When Dr. Saxton takes some blood, those fear-lit eyes are juxtaposed with the few drops of blood on her smooth arm, from where the needle pulls out. In one particularly tense scene, Susan hides behind an exam screen in a hallway. When the killer goes to the elevator near where she is hiding, she accidentally drops her lighter. The killer is alerted by the sound, and there is a nail-biting moment where she attempts to use her foot to slide the lighter back to her, only barely missing touching the killer’s foot in the process.
The sound design should also be applauded as well, particularly for a great moment when Susan is put into a shared hospital room with three elderly women, one of which is clapping spoons together, and another is rolling rosary beads around in her hands, creating a kind of ominous, witch-like acoustic jam session. Speaking of music, the soundtrack of the film was completely reminiscent of the main title song, SIKILIZA KWA WAHENGA from the 2017 film, GET OUT, with that creepy, slightly sinister chanting quality to it.
What starts out as a routine doctor visit becomes a nightmare in X-RAY.
PERFORMANCES:
Like many other CANNON FILMS stars, BARBI BENTON started her career first gracing the pages of Playboy, and while physically, she is unquestionably compelling to watch, she really does bring a solid performance filled with humor, cynicism, and icy anger to X-RAY. In one hilarious moment, she is tied down to a gurney by two staff nurses, hysterical after she witnesses a murder, as a doctor tells her to calm down and try to sleep. She cheekily responds, “Right!? Try to sleep? I just saw a murder!” With her perfectly glossed lips and even more perfectly coiffed hair, Susan is a gorgeous, put-together woman, so to see her accelerated descent into a gaslit, hysterical mess (all the events happen within a span of only 2-3 hours after she arrives at the hospital!) is unsettling to say the least. Considering that X-RAY is her first feature film role, and in the lead to boot, Benton does a solid job portraying a woman who’s life quickly completely spirals out of control by a vengeful admirer bent on payback.
A childhood Valentine’s Day turns deadly in X-RAY.
OVERALL IMPRESSIONS:
I won’t spoil who the killer is here, but it is pretty easy to clock early on the film (also if you IMDb the cast list, it becomes fairly evident as well). Be prepared to suspend your disbelief though, as when the killer is finally revealed, you’ll have to reconcile the fact that the killer’s eye color and hair color changed over several scenes and couldn’t possibly make sense for who the killer actually is.
However, we are not in the business of horror movie fandom for logic and reason, and X-RAY is definitely a fun and enjoyable watch, especially around Valentine’s Day with a group of your single friends. While Susan is billed as the heroine of the film, anyone who has had their heart stomped on will carry a nugget of sympathy for the spurred Harold. And yeah, Susan was kind of a dick for laughing at him and throwing away his Valentine, but if we were punished for the actions our 19 years ago selves did, how exactly is that fair? I’m looking at you, JAMES GUNN. Regardless of whether you root for the killer or the heroine, X-RAY is a fun, bloody Valentine romp that will capture your heart (albeit at the end of an axe blade).
No one on the hospital staff is safe from a crazed killer in X-RAY.
THE GORY DETAILS:
BILLY JAYNE, who plays young Harold and ELIZABETH HOY, who plays young Susan, appeared together as murderous children in BLOODY BIRTHDAY the same year they appeared together in X-RAY.
This film was shot at night in an actual abandoned hospital.
It was also released under the alternate titles HOSPITAL MASSACRE, BE MY VALENTINE, OR ELSE, and WARD 13.
On August 20, 2013, the film was released as a double feature under its X-RAY title with the film SCHIZOID by SCREAM FACTORY on both DVD, and Blu-ray.
MY RATING: 6.5/10
WHERE TO WATCH:
Philo, Amazon Prime, and Sling TV.
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