Sweet Sixteen (1983)

 

Teenager Melissa moves into a small town filled with racial prejudice and bullying, and each time she meets up with one of the boys in town, they end up murdered - but who is the killer?

Sweet Sixteen is a 1983 American slasher film directed by Jim Sotos and starring Bo Hopkins, Susan Strasberg, Dana Kimmell, and Patrick Macnee.

A beautiful lonely girl named Melissa tries to make new friends from a town she's currently living in. The only problem is, each of the boys that she spends time with end up brutally murdered. Her sixteenth birthday is on the way, but Melissa turns out to be a suspect when it seems she's the last person who has seen her boyfriends alive.

This was not generally a well-regarded slasher movie back in the 80's since it did not contain a lot of graphic violence or gruesome Tom Savini-type special effects. It is more of a murder mystery. And the identity of the murderer is pretty obvious,  I found it to be mostly a snooze fest and I fell asleep twice and had to run it back to pick up from where I dozed off. 

Don't fret dude.  This movie made my eyes bleed too. 

The movie is nicely shot with quite nice photography and good directing but just as with many other slasher flicks from the 80s, the movie suffers from being too dark at times. The acting is actually pretty good though and Melissa's character is easy to sympathize with, even though she's a complete slut. Not that I'm complaining, because without the occasional spot of nudity, this would be a lot less enjoyable, the actual horror content being fairly lame.

Most of the film consists primarily of dull police procedure, as Sheriff Dan Burke (Bo Hopkins) slowly pieces together clues to discover the identity of the killer, plus some clichéd racial tension between the town's rednecks and local Indians, none of which is particularly thrilling.

Not even close to being among the best slasher films of the 80's but you could catch some fond memories of that time period if you grew up then as I did. 

Trivia:

Patrick Macnee replaced Leslie Nielsen, who was forced to withdraw from the film because of scheduling problem.

Final film of Henry Wilcoxon.

Dana Kimmell starred in the third Friday The 13th film Part 3 in 3-D (1982) one year earlier. She and Michael Pataki both appeared on episodes of Charlie's Angels. Michael Pataki and Don Shanks both appeared in the Halloween films. Pataki in Part 4 like his installment in the Rocky movies too, Rocky 4. Don played the series' iconic villain Michael Myers in Halloween 5.