Kaydan Christian
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
Blake Rivera
If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.
Leofwine_draca
SWEET 16 is a low budget and rather unknown thriller of the early 1980s, complete with various genre elements. It's a small town drama, a murder mystery of sorts, and it also contains a series of murder scenes which are straight out of a slasher film. The story revolves around a 16 year old girl whose boyfriends keep getting killed by an unknown assailant. The film's backdrop of small-town bigotry and resentment is more interesting than the somewhat slow central story, but at least there are various familiar faces showing up here.Don Stroud does his bit alongside Dana Kimmell, making a small horror niche for herself with roles in this and Friday the 13th Part III in the space of a year. Susan Strasberg and Patrick Macnee play the parents and the latter does particularly well in an against-type role. Best of the bunch is the reliable Bo Hopkins as the town sheriff.
trashgang
I once bought this movie on VHS because it was a big OOP all over the world. But of course sometimes they are released on official DVD. Once I've got the DVD it was time to watch it. Still, the DVD is like watching a good VHS. I guess it was still copied from a VHS. The luminance was flickering a whole time of the movie. There were a lot of drops on the DVD stated that it just was a copy. But that wasn't really a problem because the editing wasn't without failures. A lot of hiss when they cut from one reel to another combined with the typical sync faults. Made in the era of the slashers many stated that it was a slasher. I wouldn't say that. There are some killings in it and first person shots are used but there isn't any really bloody or gory shots in it as they used in the time being. Was it bad, no no, it is watchable for anybody. It's weird that some OOP's really had some big names in it. This one has Patrick Macnee and Bo Hopkins in it. Included on the DVD is the director's cut and the theatrical cut. What a difference in the beginning. The director's cut isn't 1 minute into the movie or Melissa is already full frontal naked. The theatrical cut has a whole other beginning, no shower scene. It really is a good movie but I only gave it a 4 due the reason that it was made full slasher era and it didn't deliver what we were used to that time being. But the main reason why it was hunted down was the fact that it was Jim Sotos second movie. He just made a remake of the roughie Forced Entry, in fact same story without the hardcore. Sotos' movies were hard to find until up today...
lymanvunk
SWEET SIXTEEN (1983) **/***** 86 minutes Director Jim Sotos Cast Bo Hopkins, Susan Strasberg, Aleisa Shirley, Patrick Macnee, Dana KimmellFifteen year old bad girl Melissa is new in a desert town and it isn't long before folks around her start dying off. The detective has to put together the clues with the help of his Nancy Drew good girl daughter played by Friday the 13th alumni Dana Kimmell. The local Native Americans are prime suspects since they seem to upset the prejudiced townsfolk. These events all lead up to the revealing of the killer at Melissa's sixteenth birthday party.This below average slasher isn't too memorable. It has a made for TV feel, without much score besides the title character's own corny theme song which plays a couple times throughout. Lines like "the killer will turn us into coleslaw." Fit into standard eighties slasher screenplays. Marci calls Melissa a bad name then somehow immediately they develop a friendship. Apparently Marci sees how hard it is to fit in because Melissa knows how to wear make-up. This movie would be hard-pressed to be made today with the main character being fifteen and the director inserting multiple gratuitous close-ups of her. The social commentary on Indians wasn't developed enough to be taken seriously. I am too surprised at the fairly high rating this movie gets. Both Sweet Sixteen and Ed Hunt's Bloody Birthday had the potential to capitalize on that time honored tradition of the birthday party to create an intense sequence of carnage but I feel failed to deliver. But on the bright side releasing obscure movies like this on DVD gives hope that others will follow.
Wizard-8
A really dull mystery here. While the production values may generally be a notch or two up from other low budget movies of the time, it doesn't break the tedium that quickly builds and isn't much erased by the (few) murder scenes. Odd that while the movie centers around one particular girl, she actually isn't in that much of the movie when you think about it. She doesn't do that much when she is onscreen, save maybe for taking off her clothes a few times. There are a lot of obvious red herrings, so it's pretty easy to figure out who is behind it all, though the movie doesn't make clear how the sheriff managed to piece it all together.
