X-Ray starts with a prelude in 1961 with a boy called Harold leaving a Valentine’s Day card for a girl he fancies called Susan. He watches through her front window to see what her reaction to his card is. She laughs about it with her brother and screws it up. In a rage, Harold breaks into the house and kills her brother. Harsh.

The action then fast-forwards to the modern day (well, 1981, anyway). Susan is now a young woman and going to a hospital to collect test results after her new job asks her to complete a medical. However, she soon discovers that an orderly is stalking her and not to give her her medical results.

X-Ray was also released under the name Hospital Massacre. I love hospital-based horror movies. The viciousness of Visting Hours, the brutal beauty of Halloween 2. Will X-Ray hold up when compared to these two fine films?

The answer is yes. There’s a different kind of vibe to the film that I’ve never experienced with any other slasher movie. Susan quickly finds that although she just expected to pop in and pop out of this medical facility, events conspire to prevent this. There’s almost something Kafkaesque to proceedings. Check out the authoritarian doctor and his two henchmen nurses who let her know in no uncertain terms that she isn’t going anywhere. This is a form of horror in itself- having your freedom taken away.

There’s also something unsettling about the others in the hospital. They’re all stark raving mad and wouldn’t be out of place in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or a Fellini film. Witness the co-inhabitants of the room she is made to reside in during her unexpected stay. Also, the chase scene near the end, where she runs into a room to find three men in traction who start to clap their plaster-cast limbs together like performing seals on acid. ‘WTF?!’ I kept thinking.

But this is all excellent. It beats the vast majority of slasher films that are formulaic cash-ins.

There are occasional moments that lapse into standard slasher cliche, though. The scene in which she is hiding from her psycho doctor and knocks some files off a filing cabinet had me rolling my eyes. Has she never seen a slasher movie before?!

But, on the whole, this movie surprised me. I never thought a slasher movie could dumbfound me, but in the past, some have (Pieces and Madman instantly spring to mind).

BTW, the actress who plays the young Susan is one of the three psycho kids in the excellent Bloody Birthday, as was the actor who played Harold.

3 out of 5 stars