Scalps

1983 Directed by Fred Olen Ray

Silly group of college science students go an dig around in an indian burial ground for artifacts. Unfortunately, one of them becomes possessed by the evil spirit of Black Claw so he must therefore slaughter all of his friends.

Richard Hench Roger Maycock Frank McDonald Carol Sue Flockhart Jo-Ann Robinson Barbara Magnusson Kirk Alyn Carroll Borland Cynthia Hartline Forrest J. Ackerman George Randall Jay Walker Frank Scott Romeo Rodriguis

Alternative Titles

El cementerio indio, Skalpovi, Der Fluch des blutigen Schatzes

horror

84 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by pd187 ★★★★ 6

who knew fred olen ray could make something this murderdroney?? while watching this, i started thinking (youll have lots of time for thinking) about racism in horror where the victims are white and the killers arent, and how that relates to killer/victim identification in the slasher misogyny debate.... like, do shitty guys who relate to jason when hes stabbing topless girls switch identification when a bunch of meddling white kids face the violent indian pizzaface ghost? (& is it racist depicting natives as violent when their violence is heavily justified?) - is horror "about" identifying with the victims, which makes sorority slashers feminist but italian cannibal movies racist, or "about" the righteous elimination of deserving victims, which makes sorority slashers…
Review by Tony the Terror😼🏳️‍🌈 ★★★★ 7

THIS. This was just not not not at all what I was expecting when I saw “directed by Fred Olen Ray” in the synopsis! I was expecting something super goofy and fun like Evil Toons, but this was like...unexpectedly traditionally good? Like, the atmosphere was amazing and maybe it’s just the super grainy VHS rip that I watched, but it was genuinely creepy at times? I’m using these question marks because I’m honestly still having a hard time believing that this is a FOR joint??
I’m impressed and I’m really not sure if seeing a cleaned up version would help or harm my feelings on this, but I’m certainly willing to give it a shot! There’s an unpleasant rape scene in it,…
Review by belial_carboni ★★★½

SCALPS! A sun drenched psychedelic trip with evil native spirits, desolate landscapes, possession and a relentlessly creepy score. Even with some obvious influences from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Hills Have Eyes this low budget gem remains it's own bizarre beast.
A bunch of college students have travelled to an old Indian burial ground to conduct some research. It isn't long before some of the students begin to act strange as their realities are transformed into a horrific nightmare!
Its filmed in a way that gives it this dry washed out look that adds to the uneasiness and feelings of dread. It's very low budget and grainy especially for a blu ray release. But for a movie like this it…
Review by Sarah Jane 🔪 ★★★ 7

I'll just come right out and say this is my favorite Fred Olen Ray movie. I know it isn't good; the acting, the "special effects", the story... all crap. But I enjoyed the fuck out of this thing.
A group of college kids (3 males, 3 females) go up into what is really Agua Dulce in California to dig for Native American artifacts. Of course, they were told not to but you know how wacky kids can get. I knew we were up for some sort of mischief when the one girl (the one that didn't have a boyfriend) brought out some prayer sticks. I hoped for a brief moment she was summoning Misquamacus. Anyway, the kids dug up some…
Review by Matt Winfield ★★★

💀Daily Horror Hunt #17 – November Horror 2019💀
16. In America, Thanksgiving is right around the corner. We are going to watch a horror film that features Native Americans to honor their role in Thanksgiving.
24 seconds to decapitation, this thing starts rolling real quick. Not much in the way of gory action 'till the final twenty minutes though, so enjoy those first few seconds. Good thing those twenty minutes are pretty packed. A scalping, a bludgeoning, a neck slitting, and two people that just can't stop having sex on Native burial grounds. Oh, and that one chick takes like three arrows to the back without a prob. 'till she eventually takes an arrow to the knee... hmm, an arrow…
Review by K.O. Svines ★½ 10

Why did I buy this on Blu-ray when I hadn't even watched the DVD I bought ten years ago?

Recent reviews

Review by Struan ★

Oh god. 🤦🏻‍♂️
This was pretty darn abysmal. I feel a bit bad for 88 Movies that this is what they have to work with because this does not look like a Blu Ray release, more like a VHS release, but that adds to the crunchy vibe I guess. There was only one scalping, ugh. This was just dire and I normally like steaming piles of shit films.
Review by Andrew Moncrieff ★★★½

A very silly riff on Hills Have Eyes with a Just Before Dawn flavour and a crappy Evil Dead attempt at monsters. All the gore on this blu-ray is spliced in gracefully enough from a tape source.
Fred Olen Ray wisely lets the score do most of the movie’s sound and it is a good score, better than the movie, based as it is on tribal drums and a synth rendition of Mars, the bringer of war. It’s similar to The Prey in that it takes a while to get going (actually a long time), but I liked it more. Also like The Prey, it was fiddled with by distributors who added stuff in the first half to make it less dull.
Review by Matt Winfield ★★★

💀Daily Horror Hunt #17 – November Horror 2019💀
16. In America, Thanksgiving is right around the corner. We are going to watch a horror film that features Native Americans to honor their role in Thanksgiving.
24 seconds to decapitation, this thing starts rolling real quick. Not much in the way of gory action 'till the final twenty minutes though, so enjoy those first few seconds. Good thing those twenty minutes are pretty packed. A scalping, a bludgeoning, a neck slitting, and two people that just can't stop having sex on Native burial grounds. Oh, and that one chick takes like three arrows to the back without a prob. 'till she eventually takes an arrow to the knee... hmm, an arrow…
Review by womanimal of the juicy brained persuasion

this is surprisingly... p cool but i did laugh when a guy is talking about colonizers doing "a complete genocide number on the indians" and a lady goes ENOUGH ABOUT THE SCALPING STUFF! and starts pawing at her bfs dick. all this talk about genocide gets the ladies hot n horny!
Review by Joseph Howell ★★★

Surprisingly not bad for a Fred Olen Ray movie, and it reminds me of The Prey due to the “let’s make a movie” gumption (with an even lower budget), surprising mean streak (didn’t know Ray had it in him) and...well, there’s a lot of padding, though unlike that film most of it isn’t nature footage. It’s definitely got some problems (the aforementioned padding and a really pointless rape scene) but it gets by thanks to a great synth score and some nasty kills. It ultimately won’t be remembered as the most memorable entry in the 80s slasher craze, but its better than it probably has any right to be.
Review by Jacob Knight ★

Damaged Fred Olen Ray transmission where intruding white gold digging students are mutilated by the upset spirits of slaughtered Native Americans...or something. Often feels like a protest picture from some incoherent alternate dimension where murder is legal and the only pants are tight dungarees. Pretty terrible, but the last 20 minutes are beamed in from a lunatic fringe all their own.
Review by Chase East ★

Between a one or 2 out of 10.
The movie is called Scalps but there was only one scalping smh.
Had a fun first and last 10 minutes but otherwise it’s super dull and boring. It’s unfortunate because the premise could have been at least fun and interesting in a bad sort of way, but it just ends up being a really bland Evil Dead rip off.
Review by trashforcash ★★

Great idea, lousy execution. The basic plot is sound but there is such a lack of quality in the actual filmmaking it ruins any ideas that may have been on the page.
Review by James

This movie transcends brilliance and just hits that sweet spot right between "holy shit" and "this is perfect". Fred said he had to figure out a way to make the cheapest movie possible so he wrote a script based around 6 kids, a station wagon, and a tent and he basically succeeded. I was really into the way this movie looked but I was even more into the way it sounded. That fucking synth score NEVER LETS UP. It's dark and foreboding AT ALL TIMES and gives the movie this menacing atmosphere that dark desert scalpings alone could not have mustered up.