In the 1986 Shot-on-Video film Spine, a killer is stalking …. well, to be honest, I’m not sure which state this movie is supposed to be taking place in.  Some of the shots feature mountains in the background so it’s definitely not Texas.  I’m going to guess that the film was shot in California, despite the fact that some of performers had Southern accents.

Anyway, a killer is stalking California.  His victims are all nurses who stand 5’3.  He attacks them at home.  He ties them up in a way that causes them to strangle themselves when they struggle.  He cuts out their spinal cords.  Using his victim’s own bloody hands, he writes “LINDA” on the wall.  None of the victims are named Linda.

Who could this killer be?

Well, we know from the beginning.  This film is not a whodunit,  From the start, we see that the killer is Lawrence Ashton (R. Eric Huxley), a hulking man who has a Graham Platner-style beard and who apparently thinks that every nurse that he sees is his former girlfriend, Linda.  He holds Linda responsible for the death of his mother and he’s seeking revenge.

Who can stop Ashton?  How about a cop who does things his way!?  Sam Joffrey (Carl Elliott) doesn’t have time to go by the book!  He’s got nurses to save!

I spent most of this film thinking that Sam Joffrey was terrible at his job.  There was a lengthy and rather distasteful sequence in which Ashton menaced two nurses.  The whole thing seemed to go on forever and I found myself wondering just what exactly our “hero” was doing while all of this was going on.  However, the entire sequence turned out to be just a nightmare.  Really, movie?  I mean, again, I thought the whole sequence went on for way too long and that the film seemed to be celebrating the violence more than condemning it but, if you’re going film something like that, you should at least commit to it.  If you’re going to make a gory film about a sadistic murderer, there’s no excuse for hand-waving away the bloodiest part of the movie by making it “just a dream.”

Spine has all of the typical SOV flaws.  Even though it’s only 72 minutes long, I struggled to pay attention to it.  For the most part, the dialogue was either too muffled or too loud for me to really be able to follow any of the conversations.  (Even today, amateur filmmakers tend to underrate the importance of a clean soundtrack.)  The actors were pretty amateurish.  The dialogue had that “everyone told me this line was funny so we’re not cutting it from the script” feel that is such an integral part of the SOV experience.

That said, I have a weakness for these SOV films.  A part of it’s because I’m a history nerd and this film allowed me see just how tacky 1986 could be.  It’s one thing to shoot a scene on a soundstage that’s been designed to look like a living room.  It’s another thing to shoot a scene in an actual living room that has a really ugly couch as a centerpiece.  Finally, Spine actually did have an effective score.  In the usual SOV tradition, it was a synth score but it still did a good job of creating a slight feeling of unease.

There are better SOV films than Spine but there are worse ones as well.  Spine is right in the forgettable middle.