Rish Outfield's reviews
Ahh, to be a teen slasher fan in 1981.
"Little House on the Prairie"'s Melissa Sue Anderson is Virginia, a pretty, wealthy, popular girl in a group of the elite at her elitist private school. Every year, she throws the best birthday parties ever--but her schoolmates are kicking the bucket rather violently right before this one. Who is responsible, and why is she having blackouts lately, and what happened to her mother a few years back? Glenn Ford plays her patient and doting psychiatrist, and eventually, he finds out the chilling truth . . . as do we.
Happy Birthday To Me is one of the better 80's slashers I've seen--and my friends, I've seen my share. This movie looked like it would be only mediocre, but it ended up rocking just like a Tom Petty song. The highlight, was, without giving it all away, that it looked like it was heading in one direction, then took a left turn so sharp that tyranist and I shouted "No way!" at the same time. It worked remarkably well. I was more than willing to give this one a Bad Title skull, but the ending justified it all. This is one we'll probably see again in a couple years. If you're still around then, we'll save you a seat.

The tyranist's thoughts
With the parade of holiday themed movies showing few gems (Halloween being the notable exception) and the fact that I am predisposed to dislike Canadian productions (blame Blue Monkey), I was ready for disappointment with this one. What I discovered instead that it was both a truly interesting holiday horror flick and a nice Canadian production. Guess I was wrong. But you can't blame me when I point out that Melissa Sue Anderson was the main character, can you?
Little Virginia is back at Crawford academy and she is finally popular. Having spent the last few years in a psychiatric ward can make a person somewhat insecure, but she appears to be just fine. But then her friends are disappearing one by one. Is she the killer? Of course, not, but then who is?
This is really a very well-written nicely filmed little horror movie that has obviously been mistakenly overlooked a lot. The cast is really quite good and they have some great dialogue to work with. The deaths are interesting and the plot thick enough that the ending is not readily apparent from the start. On the very good side, even though the vast majority of the film takes place at night, it is only very rarely too dark to see what is going on.
There are a couple of plot twists meant to throw suspicion onto one character or another that can be a little confusing and obvious, but really when the heart of the story unravels all is forgiven. The ending is strikingly original, but there is a moment just before the truth is discovered that is really very disturbing.
Definitely give this one a look if you haven't already. You might be surprised at how much you like it and will forget all of the things it has going against it.