Movie Reviews: 2 Cape May County Horrors

With last year’s Oscar-nominated hit Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown filming scenes around Cape May and 2026’s as-yet-untitled Steven Spielberg UFO movie utilizing parts of Tuckahoe and Woodbine, Cape May County has begun showing up in some big-name feature films of late. But this is hardly the first time our area has popped up on screen. A pair of low-budget horror films were also made in the County in the 1980s that weren’t exactly huge hits but have since begun to build cult followings. I had already seen one a few years ago but only just became aware of the existence of the other in the last few days and decided they’d make for a fun Halloween double-feature. Both are readily available online, so you can do the same, but would you want to?

Blades

This is the movie whose existence had somehow escaped my attention until now, and since it was filmed on the grounds of the now-demolished Ponderlodge Country Club in the Villas, not very far from my home, I immediately had to give it a look. Working from the utterly bonkers premise of transposing the major plot points of Jaws to a golf course and replacing the shark with a sentient lawnmower there was very little chance of this 1988 movie being good in any traditional sense of the word. And it’s not. That said, it is better than it really needs to be and should please any fan of cheesy, low-budget productions like those produced by Troma Studios at the time (the studio served as a distributor for this title).

Director and co-writer Thomas R. Rondinella (with John P. Finnegan and William R. Pace) claims that the movie was intended as a parody, and that does come through in some of the more outlandish and obviously comedic moments, but so much of the film is played seriously and devoid of jokes that one would be excused for not being able to determine their intent.

Robert North stars as Roy Kent (no connection to A.F.C. Richmond), a washed-up celebrity golf player who has been hired by the Tall Grass Country Club to be their new on-staff pro, taking the position that longtime employee Kelly (Victoria Scott) believed she would be getting. On his first day on the job, a mangled body is discovered which becomes his problem for some reason. Visibly cold throughout much of the film, Roy quickly ascertains that a real threat exists on the course and wants to close it down, but the owner refuses to allow anything to interfere with his tournament, leaving Roy, Kelly, and gruff ex-groundskeeper Deke Slade (Jeremy Whelan) to handle the matter on their own.

The acting, while not awards-worthy, is largely better than one would expect from a movie of this caliber, with the three leads in particular coming off pretty well. It’s fun to see the old Ponderlodge on screen and it looks pretty good (if dated), helping to mask the film’s low budget. Nothing is ever frightening here, but it’s never boring either and a small but surprising amount of tension is even generated by the supremely silly finale. If anything about this movie sounds appealing to you, you will probably have a good time with it (I did), otherwise your mileage may vary. ★★★

rated r. contains some graphic violence, mild language including sexual references, and smoking.

The Prowler

1981’s The Prowler is set in Avalon Bay, California, but was filmed around Cape May’s historic district, primarily in The Inn of Cape May, the Emlen Physick Estate, and the Chalfonte Hotel, with a brief appearance by what is now the House of Royals at the Queen Victoria Bed & Breakfast. Directed by Joseph Zito, who would go on to helm Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (it wasn’t), a pair of Chuck Norris actioners, and an early Dolph Lundgren thriller, this slasher is heavily flawed but thrilling when it wants to be. This is largely due to the grisly murder effects by a young Tom Savini (who at that point had already turned in notable work on Dawn of the Dead, Friday the 13th, Maniac, and The Burning) but is also at least in part because of its effective use of the location.

The film begins with a letter written by a woman named Rosemary (Joy Glaccum) in 1944, in which she breaks up with her boyfriend, a soldier who has been fighting overseas (rude). In 1945, she and her new partner Roy (Timothy Wahrer) leave their graduation dance for some alone time, when a figure in a faceless army uniform bloodily dispatches them, leaving a red rose on their bodies. The town stops holding graduation dances from then on, or at least until 1980, when our story truly begins.

Pam (Vicky Dawson), a young woman who is afflicted by a rare inability to properly operate most locking mechanisms, is hoping to have a fun night with her friends at the dance, but a mysterious figure is seen lurking in the shadows and people begin to go missing, leaving her and her boyfriend, local Police officer Mark (Christopher Goutman) to try and figure out just what is happening.

Enveloping the exteriors of Cape May’s streets in an eerie bluish light, The Prowler is thick with atmosphere, lending some extra suspense to the proceedings. With kills that are surprisingly brutal and mean-spirited being carried out by a nondescript but nevertheless menacing figure, the movie does generate some real fear, especially in the first 50-60% of its runtime. Pacing issues after that though do sap a great deal of the suspense unfortunately. Combined with weird plot holes and dropped threads that emerge in the final 30 minutes it’s easy to see why this didn’t wind up being remembered as an all-time slasher great.

Still, the cast does solid work, Richard Einhorn’s score serves the material well, and Zito shows himself to have a decent grasp on how to scare an audience. Alas, Neal Barbera and Glenn Leopold’s script gets too bogged down by its weak and weirdly muddled mystery in the end. Horror fans, especially the most hardcore, will have a lot of fun with this and most others will still get a few good scares out of it. ★★★