Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, Enemaniacs!

This year, B-Movie Enema celebrates by leaving campus for Christmas break. Well, not really. I’m here. I’m always here. I am forever. Please kill me.

Anyway, the movie I’ve chosen for this review to close out 2025 is one that I’ve wanted to cover for a while now. 1982’s The Dorm That Dripped Blood is also known in some parts as Pranks. In a bit of a twist in the usual expectations of how naming and renaming conventions go for old, lower-budget horror flicks, this is a movie that was actually ORIGINALLY released as Pranks, but became best known under the other The Dorm That Dripped Blood title. In fact, that was the title it had when I first saw it. Much like with last week’s Terror Eyes, I’m almost positive I saw this for the first time on the much-loved defunct Roku channel, Bizarre TV.

Co-director Stephen Carpenter works more as a writer, including writing some scripts as well as creating the show Grimm. His directing credits include 2001’s Soul Survivors, which I remember being released during my time working at a movie theater, and 1987’s The Kindred. The latter, I remember getting dumped into theaters around where I lived in Indianapolis, but disappeared only a week or two later, only to be found on home video shortly after. Basically, that’s me saying I don’t think it was particularly successful at the box office. Those films that Carpenter got co-directing credit for were with his directing partner, Jeffrey Obrow.

As for The Dorm That Dripped Blood, or I suppose Pranks, the film was mostly shot in and around the UCLA campus, particularly the film school building. It also used the University Cooperative Housing Association. To help with authenticity, I guess, the film was shot during the Christmas break while most students were away celebrating the holidays with their families. It would not be very surprising to find out that this movie was absolutely inspired by the success of 1980’s Friday the 13th. Carpenter wrote the script with writing partner Stacey Giachino while they were still film students at, where else, UCLA.

The star that really broke out after this movie is the actress playing the ill-fated Debbie, Daphne Zuniga. Zuniga worked pretty heavily in the 80s. In 1985, she played Margie and appeared on the poster for Vision Quest with Matthew Modine. That movie featured the fantastic Madonna song “Crazy for You,” and she can be seen performing the song as a club singer in a particular scene in the movie. Anyway, it’s probably 1987’s Spaceballs that Zuniga is best known for as the parody of Princess Leia, Princess Vespa. While that is probably the most enduring role in her career, she continued to work well into the 2010s and even appeared in another Matthew Modine film in 1989, Gross Anatomy.

Alright, so let’s clear out this building that is 2025 by talking about this college slasher, The Dorm That Dripped Blood!

As our frightful tale begins, we learn that Morgan Meadows Hall, a college dormitory, has been condemned by the state or city or whoever. That’s what a sign said next to the side of the road, which I assume leads in and out of the college campus. Back on that campus, a guy is chased near the condemned dorm and is eventually grabbed and killed by an unseen murderer after having his hand cut up by a large knife of some sort. I should point out that there’s a guy in the bushes who is holding this dude by his throat, and it looks like a second dude steps on the guy’s hand and then cuts it with that knife. I hope that’s not giving away too much too soon, or, I guess, confuses anyone, because there have to be two guys attacking this dude for any of this to make sense in any kind of logistical manner.

Spoiler alert: there is only one killer. This scene was shot in some sort of wonky manner

Elsewhere, at a party, we meet Joanne and her boyfriend Tim. Tim seems to have asked her a question that she needs a little more time to think about how she wants to answer. Tim would rather not wait, but Joanne is just not sure what she wants. You see, these were two of the coeds who lived in Morgan Meadows Hall. Tim wants to get an apartment and move in with Joanne. She’s already been sitting on this request for a couple of weeks. With Christmas Break starting the next morning, she’s not ready to answer.

Joanne will be staying behind on campus to help with boarding up the dormitory while Tim and some of his friends are leaving for a ski vacation. The next day, Joanne is joined by friends Brian, Patty, and Craig. Now, Debbie (Daphne Zuniga) was going to be the fifth member of the team, but her parents were already on the way to pick her up to take her home for the break. She is, however, going to help on this first day.

That also means that Debbie and her parents will make for fine first victims.

As the day turns to night, Debbie says goodbye to Joanne and opts to go downstairs to wait for her parents. Before she leaves, Joanne asks for her master inventory list for the work they are doing. While Debbie searches for that, her parents arrive. Her dad is kind of an impatient fella. He honks the car horn, which causes the killer stalking around outside to step away from the storage room where Debbie’s messing around looking for the inventory list.

It also gives the killer a new target.

Debbie’s father gets out of the car and climbs up the stairwell to get Debbie. He’s met by the Converse-wearing killer carrying a baseball bat. In a battle of middle-aged man vs. a baseball bat, baseball bat almost always wins.

Back at the car, the killer sneaks into the backseat and kills Debbie’s mother with a garrote. Debbie gets to the car shortly after and discovers her mother’s dead body. This causes her to pass out. The killer then places her under the wheels of the car and backs over her, crushing her head like a watermelon. He then puts everyone’s bodies into the car and drives off with the car.

Okay… First, let me say that this is kind of a crazy series of events. Well, kind of. Allow me to explain. Most slashers would likely still kill the younger victim first before killing the parents if they ever actually show up and get involved in the plot. No, in this, if we don’t count the initial death in the cold open, the first victims were two middle-aged parents, THEN their daughter. But the mode of death for the parents was more brutal. It’s the type of brutality usually reserved for the drunk/high/sexed up kids. Debbie gets run over by the car, sure, but what’s wild is that she first finds her dead mom and then faints!

This is not the typical series of events you’d see in a slasher movie from the 80s. I’m not sure what era it would have been typical in, but I digress. Sure, this is 1982. The genre was still kind of in the wilderness years. This film, in particular, was shot only about seven or eight months after the first Friday the 13th was released. So it wasn’t yet written in stone that the victims almost always have to be kids, and there are NO DEATHS RESULTING FROM FAINTING SPELLS. That makes this movie kind of quaint in that regard. But wait… There will be more to help separate this movie from what you would typically see in other slashers of the era.

The guy pictured above is Craig. He’s a bit of a douche. He’s always joking around. He kind of doesn’t want to take much in terms of responsibility. By that, I mean he moaned and groaned over getting assignments for this work from Joanne. He also definitely does not want to speak to the weird guy, John Hemmit, who creeps around the campus, and was found by Patty to be still around when everyone else was supposed to be gone for Christmas Break, about not being allowed to be on campus. He’s also a bit of a prankster – which ties into one of the other titles of this movie, Pranks. He drops a little fake spider onto some eggs that Joanne is cooking for their breakfast. He also seemingly played a prank on Debbie by making some noise when she was alone, going over the assignments and inventory the day before, though it was never actually revealed that he did that as a prank.

This is NOT the type of guy you want to do a kind of intensive job that has a strict deadline and is very understaffed.

So Joanne’s got a prankster who is kind of a douche and a vagrant creeping around the campus. Great. She hasn’t even found out yet that Debbie and her parents are dead. Additionally, she learns from the caretaker, Bill, that one of his drills has gone missing. Joanne assumes that it was John, the vagrant, who took it. She’s only been the boss of this job for a day and a couple of hours, and she’s already up to her tits with problems.

Now, one of her problems might soon be solved. On her way back from trying to find John to talk to him about the trouble he might be causing, she runs into a guy looking to buy some desks from the dorm. He’s going to cut her a check and then send his guys out to pick up the desks. He’s mildly a creeper, but in the 1982 sense. Generally, he’s just a little slimy, not someone to be worried too much about. I mean… don’t worry that he just likes to sometimes prowl around the college and look through people’s garbage for shit to sell – and possibly scope the college chicks. Nothing wrong with that!

Speakin’ of prowlin’ and scopin’, Patty sees John peeking into the dorm while she’s fetching beers. Brian goes outside to try to confront John, but he only finds Craig, who nearly brains Brian with a pool cue. The four of them pair off to search for John. When they can’t find John, the four of them decide to go back to their home base and make dinner. If they don’t see or find John, they’ll do the most American thing ever, and call the cops on the vagrant.

This is the part of the movie when we get Chekhov’s Gun, or, more accurately, Chekhov’s Drill. Remember when I said that Bill the caretaker came along and complained that someone had taken his favorite drill? Well, he gets the drill back. Oh, wait. I was supposed to say he gets the drill in the back of his head.

Also, remember when I mentioned that Bobby Lee was not at all a creep? Why would I think he was a creep? He just wanted to buy the desks from the dorm! That surely wouldn’t be creepy or untoward in any way. Oh, wait. Nope, after sexing up his lady, he tried calling Joanne to take her for a drink. When she declined, he decided to go out for a drive even though his lady showed off her tits and asked him to come back to bed.

What I typed above was a scene in this movie. It serves a singular purpose in the movie – to create a red herring. One of the most common tropes in a slasher is the red herring. It’s the guy or the situation that should lead to the identity of the killer, but is really just a misdirection. It was what made the early slashers so great, especially when they used the Friday the 13th method of the twist reveal that a seemingly kindly old lady was behind the murders. This movie already has one more red herring than it should, and it reveals something really bad about this movie that I’ll get to later. The only reason Bobby Lee is introduced into this movie is to make him a red herring and give us some reason to believe he might have gone back to the school to kill the caretaker.

But it makes little to no sense. Bobby Lee already explained that he picks through the trash of what college kids throw out. There’s no reason for him to take the drill. Besides, we already have suspect #1: John Hemmit. But what really kind of irks me here is that, if you know your slashers well, especially these early ones, you know that John is not going to be the killer. Bobby Lee is not going to be the killer either. The real killer will be someone we already know. The suspects should be Craig, Brian, and Tim.

Tim is the absent boyfriend who really wants his girl to settle down and move in with him. Craig is the douche. Brian is the “nice guy” who really wants to “be there” for Joanne while she’s got a lot of heavy shit on her mind with this job and Tim’s request that they get a place together. Plus, Tim and Brian should start to rise to the top of the suspect list at this stage because we know from an earlier scene that Tim is not happy with his girlfriend spending the next two weeks with this Brian guy.

While Brian and Craig are taking trash out to the rubbish pile, they see John walking by. Craig goes after John and grabs the vagrant, telling him that he had better stay away from this place. If he sticks around, he’s gonna get hurt. Brian calms Craig down and tells him to let the guy go with the message. There’s no need to give him any more grief.

When the four students prepare a dinner for themselves, Craig notices some food is missing, and sees what he believes to be John running out of the Co-Op building. He tells Joanne he’s going to go after John while Joanne tries to find Brian and Patty. While she’s trying to get the other two, our assailant smashes the dinner table with the same spiked bat that killed Debbie’s dad. Joanne decides to call the police. The cop responding to the call says that the description of John Hemmit sounds a lot like a guy they just picked up, not too far from here.

While on the phone with her mom, Joanne hears strange noises that make her think that their prowler is either creeping around outside or on the roof above her. When she tried to call Brian and Craig, neither answered their rooms’ phones. Before Patty can get to Joanne’s room, the prowler cuts the phone line and then cuts the power to the building. Brian comes outside, and Joanne calls to Brian to have him come upstairs to them. As he walks up the stairwell to get to Joanne’s dorm room, he’s confronted by someone with a flashlight shining in his eyes. It’s the prowler, and he slashes at Brian, cutting his arm.

Craig arrives at Joanne’s dorm, saying he was taking a shower when the power went out. He and Patty go to turn the lights back on. While in the kitchen, Patty is attacked from behind while all the kitchen appliances seemingly run by themselves. The killer drops her into a giant pressure cooker and locks her inside it. Craig returns with an injury on his head, saying that John attacked him and Patty.

While Craig tries to tell Joanne what happened, John knocks on her door. He’s then seen in the hallway of the dormitory with the machete used to slash at Brian and the Converse shoes we saw the killer wearing allllll the way back when he was after Debbie. Craig and Joanne decide to leave her dorm room and look for John, armed with a cleaver and some scissors.

John surprises the pair in the stairwell. He knocks Craig out and then chases Joanne into the basement of the Co-Op building. On the other side of the door, John tells Joanne he didn’t mean to scare her. He just wanted to take her away from here. When Joanne backs away from the door, she finds Brian’s mutilated body. She uses the machete to cut John, but he continues to chase her and plead with her to help him take her out of there.

When she runs away from him again, she finds Craig. He tells her that he thinks he knows of a way to get out of there. Craig convinces Joanne that they need to confront and kill John. When she goes back to try to lure him into a trap, Craig jumps the guy while Joanne gets the bat to hit John and kill him. But then Craig gets a little creepy…

Joanne wants to leave and get to an even safer, less spooky place. Craig says they can’t and forces her to look at what they did to John. He then tells her they did this together and that he was the killer the whole time. John knew all along and tried to reveal the whole thing to Joanne. Joanne slaps Craig and runs away, leading to another chase. Joanne eventually manages to get a little out ahead of Craig, but he uses the cavernous basement to find her and grab her.

Craig explains why he killed the others. He loves Joanne. Brian had to go because he saw some chemistry between the two of them. In fact, we saw him peeking in on her and Brian early on, sharing a kiss while they talked over stuff that was going on. Patty had to go because she was too clingy and was always getting in the way. Debbie? Well, he never explained why he had to kill her. I guess she was just there.

While he chased Joanne, she screamed. Outside, Bobby Lee returned to pick through the garbage again. He heard her scream and decided to investigate. Looking down through a grate into the basement of the Co-Op, he sees Joanne getting pulled down the ladder by Craig. Craig, a crazed psycho, thinks that Joanne is fucking around with that guy too.

Bobby Lee gets into the building, but is soon followed by the police, who have been nearby looking for the prowler that Joanne reported. Craig fights with Bobby Lee. The struggle attracts the police. Bobby Lee, who vaguely matches the description they gave of John, is held at gunpoint by the cops. Craig tells the cops this is the guy who has been giving them all their trouble. While the cops tell Bobby Lee to turn around slowly so they can question him, Craig grabs a knife and tells him he’s a dead man. He flinches, which makes Bobby Lee move, which makes the cops shoot and kill Bobby Lee.

Craig picks up the unconscious Joanne, whom he knocked out when she was making too much noise as Bobby Lee was searching the basement, and carries her to the incinerator. He tells Joanne that he has no choice, and she won’t feel anything. While the cops are calling for the coroner, the pipe from the incinerator bellows with a bunch of smoke. One of the cops comments on the stench from the smoke and if it really should smoke that much, but the other cop says there is nothing to worry about because the place will be torn down soon anyway.

So, this movie is a stinker. It’s not great on several layers. First, I guess I should go ahead and get this out of the way… Joanne dies. Yeah… Craig fucking wins. Obviously, the genre hadn’t figured out the whole “final girl” thing yet. On top of that, Joanne is kind of implicated in a bit of a love triangle. She has a boyfriend who wants to take the next step with her. She doesn’t. She seemingly has a thing with Brian. That doesn’t exactly put her in a great light when it comes to our horror heroines in slashers. But also… That whole love triangle is not even really addressed. It was important enough to be spotted and to be commented on late in the game, but it was not addressed. I even went back to make absolutely certain that I saw what I thought I saw with Joanne and Brian right before Debbie and her family were killed. Maybe the ambiguousness that I have about whether or not I have this point right was shared by the move itself and even it didn’t want to address it.

The biggest problem this movie has is its pacing. I commented earlier that there were too many red herrings. This is true. We have John, who is played as a red herring until the last possible moment in the plot when he could be played as such. It’s fine to have a character like that, but if he is truly trying to help the students, he needs to be revealed as such earlier or killed sooner. Or both, I don’t know. Tim is completely and totally tossed aside in the first 10 or 15 minutes. That makes him superfluous to the movie. He was a perfect red herring that was not used at all. Joanne could have tried calling him at one of the places he was supposed to be, only to not connect or be told he had to leave for some nebulous reason. Nope. She didn’t even try calling him.

Bobby Lee is similarly superfluous. He’s kind of a creep, but seems harmless, even when he treats his lady friend like a jerk. I have to assume that his inclusion is only there for him to 1) leave his house at a time when a murder is about to happen, and 2) get some titties into this movie because no one else is gonna take their tops off. I kind of like how he’s dispatched at the end, but I wouldn’t trade that for his inclusion in the movie.

So, yeah, this movie has to pad itself with these superfluous things just to make it to 88 minutes. This movie could be a very good 80-minute movie with some tightening here and there in the plot. Instead, we get this movie that is barely more than one of those made-for-television horror flicks from the 70s.

Merry fuckin’ holidays for me, I guess.

Oh well… They certainly are not always winners around here, my Enemaniacs. But it’s soon to be 2026. To kick things off next week, I have a movie from the hive of scum and villainy, RedLetterMedia. Join me as I discuss their first widely available movie, which also happens to feature their most famous character, 2010’s Feeding Frenzy.

Until then, I hope you have a great holidays and a very safe New Year. I know 2025 was rough. It might get rougher before it gets better. But, all that said, I’m happy you come here to read my dumb ramblings. Be safe and take care of yourselves.