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Happy Birthday To Me

Pray You're Not Invited To The Party.


In the era of Facebook we must be more careful to the invite to events. Because skipping one could create a wave of imaginative murders. It was so in this movie of 1981, you can image today. It's not that we want to reveal the plot of this movie, but with a title like that you will agree that it is easy to imagine which is the central point.

"Happy Birthday To Me" altough its rollercoaster of things done well and things done poorly became a "cult movie".No matter if the poorly things are more numerous than the good ones, and if from the title this movie doesn't surprised too much. It's a cult.

Due to its excessive length (150 '), a risky time "Happy Birthday To Me" has large numbers, of narrative errors and stupid narrative interludes badly copied from "Happy Days". But we must doesn't forget the ending: incredible, impossible, it seems "cathartic" for previous errors.

Not everything has to be thrown away anyway and the great British director J.Lee Thompson, occasionally shows some good ideas, especially when there are murders that here are certainly very original. The top is reached with the boy impaled by a skewer and immortalized, so to speak, in the original poster.


The setting is rather rich snobs hateful, specifically members of the prestigious "Crawford Academy." In this classic North American school structure, a group of students called "Top Ten" lives the years of youth, between jokes, love story, and tests of courage to the limit of human possibilities.

They call themselves the "Top Ten" because they are "spoiled children" living in dream villas and driving sports cars without any problems. Among them there is Virginia "Ginny" a survivor of an accident in which she lost his mother and went under surgery for a delicate brain operation. The shock was so strong that she has removed everything that had happened. But one night a classic challenge for the group, re-opens the wound of the past. At the same time the already described killings decimate the group, even if the children continue to live in luxury as if nothing had happened.

Do not get angry, we haven't revealed anything, no "spoilers", really, and indeed we leave you the pleasure and patience (especially) to see this film.

But we want to say that several blooper await you, as well as a very minimal acting and a director who does not strive too much. The silhouette of Ed Gein, then, that so inspired the horror film, can be see in the distance and could not be otherwise for a "slasher" some 'trivial.

In addition to murders, things we find  an interesting cast, starting with "Ginny" which is played by Melissa Sue Anderson, best known for being Mary in the series "Little House on the Prairie". See her here with broken families and liters of blood, repay us for the very sweet episodes of popular series among others, ended two years after this film.


The star of the film is yet another. Glenn Ford. The actor best known for westerns, the movie "Gilda" and the "Golden Globe" won for "Pocketfull Of Miracles" BY Capra, plays one of his latest character, the psychiatrist who follows the case of "Ginny" . A role a little 'useless in the dynamics of history, but well played by the actor, the only one who knows what it means to play in the cast.


J.Lee Thompson is also man who must know his job, a director who has had tremendous success, working in British cinema than in Hollywood. Thompson, has achieved worldwide fame with "The Guns Of Navarone" with Gregory Peck, work got in the last minute and followed with "Cape Fear" always with Peck.

His career has developed in different genres, from thrillers to war films, through the fiction also directing two episodes of the series "Planet Of Apes." A busy career, which is no longer able to express the levels of the two "totems" above, and which here shows a certain lack of ideas. Other notables complete the cast of this production, actors and actresses famous in theater and television in the same continent.







Technical

Original Title: Happy Birthday To Me

Alternate Titles: Ab in die Ewigkeit (Austria, Germany), para mí cumpleaños Feliz, Feliz cumpleaños to mí (Argentina, Mexico), 'N moord verjaardag (Netherlands), Aniversário Macabre (Portugal), Blodig fødselsdag (Denmark), Boldog születésnapom ! (Hungary), Birthday of blood (Italy), Cumpleaños mortal (Spain), Feliz Aniversário Para Mim (Brazil), Happy birthday, it souhaitez invité jamais être (France), Onnellista syntymäpäivää (Finland), Ta genethlia tromou tou (Greece) , Upiorne urodziny (Poland), Vse najboljse rojstni za moj dan (Slovenia)

Year: 1981

Country: Canada

Duration: 150 '

Directed by: John L.Thompson

Starring: Melissa Sue Anderson, Glenn Ford, Lawrence Dane, Sharon Acker, Frances Hyland, Tracey E. Bregman, Jack Blum, Matt Craven, Lenore Zann, David Eisner, Lisa Langlois

Production Company: Canadian Film Development Corporation (CFDC), Columbia Pictures Corporation