Digging the pile of low budget horror, I happened to find this piece of pure gold that shines even today. I knew Fred Olen Ray for an actor but with this one, Ray totally grabbed me in. I now salute him for his directorial abilities that gave us this masterpiece. The year is 1983 and like many others who praise the glory of the golden age of untamed slashers, most precisely the early 80s, I am going to sing my praises for 'Scalps'. Despite being a B flick, 'Scalps' is heavy on atmosphere and gore. The atmosphere is creepy and the nostalgic tune that plays during the run time is fairly engaging and makes one feel desolate. It goes along seamlessly with the striking visuals of the desert. People will say that deserts offer no scope for the urban horror where we usually have a killer who wears a mean nifty hat, muffler and a drenched raincoat, murdering the hapless victims to secure their body parts as the trophies of victory. NO! This one is surely different and a twist of supernatural combined with some good locations and a fully functional storyline make 'Scalps' unique among the other entries. The director drags us to the desert locale and shows the enormous amount of horror that is trapped there. Analyze 'Scalps' in the light of Wes Craven's classic 'The Hills Have Eyes' or Alexander Aja's remake of the same film, and you'll certainly understand my point. Deserts are cruel locations and those who have been pampered in the cities will have to learn to live again from the very scratch. Well here our actors aren't just freaked out by the tortures of nature, there is 'something' very strange in the air that's manipulating some of them to murder others and that 'something' doesn't just cease to exist as it has remained there for more than a century.'Scalps' begins with an old man with a shovel heading towards the Californian desert. Perhaps a gold digger, the old man falls prey to a possessed Indian artifact that somehow kills him. Now there is a team of 6 archaeologists. They decide to go to the Californian wasteland to dig up a few Indian artifacts. The project guide and museum curator Professor Machen (Kirk Alyn) is assigned a task to submit the inventory of historical artifacts he has in his museum and fails to join the others. As the Californian law prohibits the archaeologists to dig anything from an ancient Indian burial ground (aboriginal heritage), Machen asks the team members to dig the area secretively without letting anyone know. He also advises them to tell others that they are officially going on a field trip. Now a nostalgic and disturbing tune begins to play as we find the team members looking out at the silent dark brown hills that hold a sinister enigma within. We come across some striking visuals from the desert. The wasteland is vast and spooky, the hills seem to be looking at the unfortunate victims-to-be and the vegetation speaks a lot about its lowly and mean nature that doesn't have anything to offer to the detoured individuals. The members embark onto their journey and finally reach near the burial ground. One of the team members DJ (Jo-Ann Robinson) receives a psychic vision and tells her mates that they are in great danger. She tells them that they are in the domain of Black Claw, the infamous native Indian black magician who was buried there a century ago. She further tells that by digging the burial grounds, the team has earned the wrath and curse of Black Claw. Unable to deduce her visions, the others take her for a daydreamer. Unfortunately the mystery deepens for everyone when they hear drums playing several feet under the ground. They also hear tribal ceremonial music and vocals. A team member Randy (Richard Hench) along with his girlfriend decides to find the source of music and gets closer to the burial ground where he and his girlfriend witness a ceremonial fire that has no heat. The ceremonial fire belongs to the Black Claw, who possesses Randy. Randy goes on a killing spree and begins to murder the other team members with neolithic tools. How the others race against time to save their necks forms the rest of the story.'Scalps' has ample gore and a few squirmy murder scenes, so it may be a fortune cookie for the gore freaks. The murder scenes are disturbing and dark. Some of the scenes are shot in dark but that's the point Ray wants to make. They couldn't have brought the dark and abysmal side of the desert (both natural and supernatural) so brilliantly If they had used artificial lighting. 'Scalps' is interesting and has some amount of hypnotic quality as well. 'Scalps' has a genuinely creepy and hypnotic score that will live with you for a very long time. Also the tribal music that plays near the burial ground is hypnotic. The visuals are such that they would throw you in the early 80s and you'll be forced to recall those olden days when things used to be so raw, natural and wild. The only drawback here is the editing. Viewers may find it difficult to understand why the day randomly switches to morning, evening and night. Overall 'Scalps' has a strong message behind it. It simply negates the concept of 'The White Man's Burden' showing that there is still something far more advanced than the White Men or the civilized world has ever witnessed. 'Scalps' has impressed me every time I have watched it, so I give it 8/10 for the horror, gore, atmosphere, dark humor and plot.

The overall problem with this movie from what I can see, was just a sheer lack of funds to be able to turn this into a real horror movie gem.The story is great. Sure there are plenty of horror flicks out there that in some way revolve around native American burial grounds or mysticism, but for me this is the first movie I can recall seeing that has the spirit of an actual native American tribal chief getting his vengeance on those who are after fortune in lieu of respect.The story is of a team of young archaeology students out on a dig who ignore local warnings of where not to dig, and unearth a whole heap of trouble in an effort to bring back some rare finds to help further their chance of a career. This angers the spirit of the former tribal chief, Black Claw, who in turn possesses one of the team and sets about killing the rest. As they're out in the middle of nowhere and miles from help there's a real sense of dread throughout the movie. Also Black Claw appeared quite merciless as he even killed the professor of the students when he turns up at the end to check on their progress.I particularly liked the fact that this movie didn't involve the car suddenly running off the road or being forced off the road, it didn't involve religious hillbilly zealots, or anything that was the result of 1950's nuclear testing.As I said before, the movie suffers a lot from a lack of budget and also from what appears to be time-constraints to do several takes on some scenes, as certain scenes seem rushed. The acting is not all that good, and the special effects are pedestrian, as does the editing between the night time or dusk shots taken on location and those that were done in a studio, however there are some genuine gruesome scenes in this movie that have been fully restored if you're lucky enough to get a copy of the re-released DVD to make this worth watching, if only for a chance to see a different story line.

In this golden age of DVD where anything and everything is seeing a release, movies like SCALPS are hoping to find new audiences. To achieve this, these oldies are getting slick packages complete with crap like 'The most shocking horror film of its time", or "Banned in 30 countries". As a consumer of classic exploitation and horror I know that there are plenty of gems for me to discover from the olden days. SCALPS is not one of those gems.A flimsy plot line gives us the usual brood of pretty and hunky (for their time) coeds who find themselves digging for artifacts in the desert. Evidentially they are not supposed to be disturbing the sacred place, which looks like foothills about a mile from the freeway. Some strange force turns one of the hunks into a zombie Indian scalper and the hunt is on.A real horror director with a budget could have taken advantage of the built-in suspense such a scenario provides. Not in the case. The tone is low budget and campy. Despite some decent effects on one scalping, the kills are unimaginative. Exploitation value is low with little nudity. The watcher is given no reason to care if the coeds live or die. Frankly I chose die, because I wanted the whole thing to end.If this is an example of what the "classic" days of slasher horror had to offer, then I need to look elsewhere to be interested. Beware of slickly packaged DVDs touting scenes of uncompromising horror and depravity. Most of them are filled with garbage like this.

I had always heard about Scalps as people say it's Fred Olen Ray's best horror flick. Well if this is his best, I'd hate to see the rest! The film starts off a little dull, but starts to get better as the group make their way into the mountains. The atmosphere is quite creepy in a low-budget kind of way and reminded me slightly of The Evil Dead, plus the location is similar to The Hills Have Eyes. I love the shot of the rotting skeleton when the car goes past, but no one sees it.Once they have set up camp, the group hear mysterious drumming, see strange faces in campfires, and so on. There are some hilarious lines such as "I broke a fingernail!", and also when the girl says that the drumming is coming from hell. The scalping scene is probably the highlight of the film, and is brilliantly done - it really surprised me. When the girls throat is cut, she writhes around in agony and it looks realistic. Also the part where he removes her scalp is really cool. There's another good gore scene when a mans head is chopped off, but it's not quite as impressive.Overall, Scalps is worth a watch if you can tolerate low budget horror. It's nothing amazing, but does have a low budget charm about it.