Starting in the 1970s, Canada became a source of top-rated slasher films, from Bob Clark's Black Christmas to Paul Lynch's Prom Night to J. Lee Thompson's Happy Birthday to Me. In Kier-La Janisse's authoritative horror guide, 2010s House of Psychotic Women (expanded for 2022), Janisse refers to it as the Canadian tax shelter era.
Thompson, a British director who made his name with tense thrillers like 1962's Cape Fear—famously remade by Martin Scorsese in 1991—traveled to Montreal to put his stamp on the genre with Little House on the Prairie's Melissa Sue Anderson as a high school senior recovering from experimental brain surgery and The Big Heat's Glenn Ford as her caring psychiatrist.
On the surface, Ginny's life is great. She's part of the Top 10, the most popular clique at Crawford Academy, and several boys are competing for her favors. She even has a best friend, the steadfast Ann (The Young and the Restless's Tracy E. Bregman).
Four years before, though, none of them even knew she existed. When she invited them to her birthday party, no one came, because Ann was having a party at the same time. That night, Ginny's mother, Estelle (Sharon Acker), grew so angry that she drove in the pouring rain, attempted to scale a drawbridge, and missed. Ginny would survive—Estelle would not.
Ginny lost her memory that night, but flickers begin to return, just as members of the Top 10 disappear one by one. Thompson depicts the gloved hands and sneaker-clad feet of the killer, but their identity remains a mystery as they dispatch teens using scarves, barbells, and even skewers as deadly weapons. Is it Ginny, her doctor, or someone else?
Well, the script from Timothy Bond, Peter Jobin, and John Saxton originally identified one particular person, but Thompson pinned the crime on a different culprit, making for a ridiculously entertaining, if not entirely credible ending, though credibility doesn't appear to have been the goal in a slasher with more comic moments than most.
If Happy Birthday to Me marked Thompson's first slasher, he wasn't new to the world of horror, since he'd previously directed 1966's The Eye of the Devil with Deborah Kerr and 1975's The Reincarnation of Peter Proud with Michael Sarrazan. As in many of his films, the cast acquits themselves nicely, particularly Jacob's Ladder's Matt Craven (as one of the top 10), Ford, and Anderson, who filmed while on a break from her role as Mary Ingalls on Little House.
Though Happy Birthday to Me has long been a genre favorite, it wouldn't have as much of an afterlife as Black Christmas, which was remade in 2021, or Prom Night, which spawned three sequels and a 2008 remake.
This special edition includes a commentary track from co-writer Timothy Bond in conversation with filmmaker Daniel Kremer and an interview with Tracy E. Bregman. Happy Birthday to Me is essential viewing for fans of 1980s slashers.
What film collection does this belong in?
Public libraries looking to expand their film collections of horror, particularly Canadian horror or Canuxploitation, like 1981's My Bloody Valentine (from the same producers), would find a lively addition in Happy Birthday to Me.
What kind of film series would this movie fit in?
Happy Birthday to Me would provide a fine choice for a series on Canadian horror or the filmography of J. Lee Thompson, which includes A-list pictures with Gregory Peck, like The Guns of Navarone, and several B-movies with Charles Bronson.