Director: David A. Prior
Tagline: “Flesh Tears. Bones Shatter. The Nightmare Has Begun.”
Choice IMDB keywords: Matricide; Killer Child; Slasher; Blood; Sledgehammer
Plot: In the same house where a little boy once killed his mother—for locking him in a closet so she could have a tryst with her secret lover—a non-standard group of horny youngsters arrive to get drunk and goof around. Unlike the usual well-groomed, nubile movie teens, the gang in Sledgehammer is a little older and shaggier, aside from their leader, a buff jerk named Chuck (played the director’s brother Ted Prior, a former Playgirl centerfold). Chuck is there with his girlfriend Joni (played by Linda McGill), who wants to have a serious talk with him about their relationship, but keeps getting stalled by his constant jokes and rough-housing. In fact, all the males in Sledgehammer have a Neanderthal streak, whether they’re licking their dates’ faces or spraying beer all over them and joking, “Am I making you wet?”
After the introduction, Sledgehammer settles into impressive feats of padding, marked by heavily improvised party scenes (most of which consist of the cast holding up their drinks and saying “woo!” over and over), slow-motion footage of characters walking, and multiple extended establishing shots of the house. The copious exterior footage makes the location look remote and rural, while the interiors resemble some college kid’s sparsely furnished, undecorated apartment.
Inevitably, the party guests begin to get killed by a hulking, hammer-wielding man. Once the bodies are discovered, Chuck and the rest of the survivors hole up in the living room, afraid that they won’t be able to find the culprit in the tiny house, and that if they go looking for him they’ll get picked off. After more stalling, the heroes are finally forced into action, confronting an apparition that appears to be the now-grown boy from the decades-old murder. Chuck smashes the man’s face into a bloody pulp with his own sledgehammer, and then the remaining guests flee the house… while the murderous little boy looks on from a window above!
Key scenes: In a flashback to the original murder, we see the mother’s lover offer his best seductive chatter—“Damn!”—before the shadow of the sledgehammer signals the end of the affair.