The proper place to see a movie like this would at the drive-in movie theater, on the bottom of a dusk-to-dawn triple feature, at 3:00 am when everyone left in the lot is either asleep or drunk or making out like crazy in the back of the car. Oh yeah,and in the 70's, when filmmakers were trying to make films about those crazy college kids and their search for meaning, when it wasn't so badly dated. There you'd be in your car, preoccupied with being 90% asleep, drunk out of your gourd or well, getting some, and the movie would just be video background that you didn't care about.
However, seen out of that context on a modern DVD as part of a horror movie 50 pack, "Slashed Dreams" (or "Sunburst") disappoints on just about every level. Naive, self-absorbed college students get into a big plastic hassle with their friends and peers about "the meaning of life" and decide to go visit their friend (who "dropped out and really got himself back together" or some such) in some California woods. There they run into some sinister locals who eventually assault them, then their friend finally shows up and helps them get unsatisfying revenge and comforts them with Kahlil Gibran (Sp?) and they walk off into the sunset. The end.
The movie tries to combine travelogue, social commentary, philosophy about the meaning of life,suspense,action, and cheesecake. It manages to do OK with the cheesecake because the young lady is fairly hot...but the rest of it is either dull as dishwater (the nature scenes) or badly staged and unconvincing (the violence) or as self-important (and as deep) as Rod McKuen. For all that it was fairly short, it felt like the longest 80 minutes I've spent watching a movie in many months, and I just finished watching a string of non-classics like "The Beast With 1,000,000 Eyes" and "Snow Creature".
I'm rating the movie a bit higher than I really want to because it does try to be about something, and it seems to be a victim of exploitative after-the-fact repackaging.(Someone going to see a movie called "Sunburst" is expecting an entirely different experience from someone going to see a movie called "Slashed Dreams".)
However, seen out of that context on a modern DVD as part of a horror movie 50 pack, "Slashed Dreams" (or "Sunburst") disappoints on just about every level. Naive, self-absorbed college students get into a big plastic hassle with their friends and peers about "the meaning of life" and decide to go visit their friend (who "dropped out and really got himself back together" or some such) in some California woods. There they run into some sinister locals who eventually assault them, then their friend finally shows up and helps them get unsatisfying revenge and comforts them with Kahlil Gibran (Sp?) and they walk off into the sunset. The end.
The movie tries to combine travelogue, social commentary, philosophy about the meaning of life,suspense,action, and cheesecake. It manages to do OK with the cheesecake because the young lady is fairly hot...but the rest of it is either dull as dishwater (the nature scenes) or badly staged and unconvincing (the violence) or as self-important (and as deep) as Rod McKuen. For all that it was fairly short, it felt like the longest 80 minutes I've spent watching a movie in many months, and I just finished watching a string of non-classics like "The Beast With 1,000,000 Eyes" and "Snow Creature".
I'm rating the movie a bit higher than I really want to because it does try to be about something, and it seems to be a victim of exploitative after-the-fact repackaging.(Someone going to see a movie called "Sunburst" is expecting an entirely different experience from someone going to see a movie called "Slashed Dreams".)