{"id":5937,"date":"2025-07-31T10:02:52","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T14:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/?p=5937"},"modified":"2026-04-24T12:33:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T16:33:15","slug":"happy-birthday-to-me-1981","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/?p=5937","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday to Me-1981"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy Birthday to Me-1981<\/strong><\/p>\n

Director J. Lee Thompson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Starring Melissa Sue Anderson, Glenn Ford<\/strong><\/p>\n

Top 40 Horror Films #39<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Scott’s Review #621<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Reviewed March 4, 2017<\/p>\n

Grade: A-<\/strong><\/p>\n

Happy Birthday to Me is a 1981 slasher film that I fondly remember scaring the shit out of me as a little kid, too young to be watching a film of this nature, but sneaking into my parents’ bedroom with my brother to catch it on HBO.<\/p>\n

Certain that the film helped shape my passion for the horror genre, I hold a fondness for it- critics be damned.<\/p>\n

My opinion is that the film is a small treasure in the land of 1980s slasher films, containing a neat whodunit and a grotesque ending.<\/p>\n

Melissa Sue Anderson, desiring to break out of her nice television persona, thanks to the wholesome Little House on the Prairie, is cast in the lead role.<\/p>\n

Happy Birthday to Me also earns merit, as it is directed by acclaimed British director J. Lee Thompson (Cape Fear).<\/p>\n

Anderson carries the film quite well in a challenging part, and Glenn Ford co-stars as a Doctor.<\/p>\n

Virginia Wainwright is a pretty and popular senior at exclusive Crawford Academy- a school for elite, rich kids. She is part of the “Top Ten”, the most popular and richest kids in the school. The ten friends meet nightly at the local pub.<\/p>\n

One night, Bernadette, one of the top ten, is murdered by an assailant on her way to meet\u00a0her friends.<\/p>\n

This murder sets the tone as, one by one, the others are subsequently killed off, sending the school and local townspeople into a frenzy of panic.<\/p>\n

To thicken the plot, Virginia was involved in a horrible car accident four years earlier, which killed her mother and caused Virginia to have only sparse memories of the accident.<\/p>\n

This piece is key to the film’s mystery.<\/p>\n

There are many comparisons I can make to slasher classics that heavily influenced Happy Birthday to Me, but the most prominent must be 1978’s Halloween.<\/p>\n

The character of Virginia is very similar to Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in their somewhat virginal, good-girl characters, and both have almost identical hairstyles!<\/p>\n

Also, Happy Birthday to Me successfully uses the killer’s point of view, as the camera frequently serves as the perspective of either the killer or someone lurking, spying on others.<\/p>\n

The film also “looks” similar to Halloween.<\/p>\n

The whodunit aspect is the most effective among the film’s qualities. There are a multitude of likely suspects, and the film does not shy away from this, purposely casting doubt on several characters- could it be the creepy Alfred, who carries around a pet mouse and creates a fake head of the murdered Bernadette?<\/p>\n

Or the suave French student, Etienne, who snoops in Virginia’s bedroom and steals a pair of her panties? Finally, could it be Head Mistress, Mrs. Patterson, a harsh, no-nonsense woman harboring resentment for the snobbish elitism that exists at her school?<\/p>\n

When the killer is finally revealed, a measure of pure shock and confusion will undoubtedly transpire- how can this be? But by the time the ultimate finale is played out, all will make sense.<\/p>\n

The conclusion does disappoint slightly in the implausibility factor, and the original ending is much more logical and compelling than what was actually in the final cut- rumors have run rampant that the screenplay of the film was rewritten numerous times well into the production, never a good thing.<\/p>\n

So, the motivations of the actual killer are quite weak, but the buildup is amazing.<\/p>\n

Not to be outdone by the whodunit, the kills themselves are superlative: a shish kabob to the throat, falling gym weights, a scarf caught in the spokes of a bike, and the traditional fireplace poker are done in macabre and fantastic fashion.<\/p>\n

We always see the killer’s gloved hands, and we are aware that the victim is friendly with the killer, so we continually try to deduce who it could be.<\/p>\n

The gruesome “Birthday party” finale is gruesome and gleeful at the same time. Each murder victim is propped up around a dining room table, each with a party hat on and all in various forms of dismemberment or blood-soaked from their murder wounds.<\/p>\n

It is a grim and hilarious reveal. The murderer parades out of the kitchen, wielding an enormous birthday cake, cheerily singing “Happy Birthday to Me”.<\/p>\n

This is one great finale.<\/p>\n

Happy Birthday to Me (1981) is a wonderful trip down memory lane and still holds up as a key, perhaps overlooked part of the slasher genre that should be rediscovered by fans and followers everywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy Birthday to Me-1981 Director J. Lee Thompson Starring Melissa Sue Anderson, Glenn Ford Top 40 Horror Films #39 Scott’s Review #621 Reviewed March 4, 2017 Grade: A- Happy Birthday to Me is a 1981 slasher film that I fondly remember scaring the shit out of me as a little kid, too young to be … Continue reading Happy Birthday to Me-1981<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7540,143,10501,1209,13,1476,10509,10499,10251,10503,10510,1208,10500,310,7536,10502],"tags":[7541,254,10506,1211,248,1477,10511,10504,10258,10508,10512,1210,10505,311,7537,10507],"class_list":["post-5937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-39-favorite-horror-film","category-1981-movie-reviews","category-frances-hyland","category-glenn-ford","category-horror-films","category-j-lee-thompson","category-jack-blum","category-lawrence-dane","category-lesleh-donaldson","category-lisa-langlois","category-matt-craven","category-melissa-sue-anderson","category-sharon-acker","category-slasher-films","category-top-40-horror-films","category-tracey-e-bregman","tag-39-favorite-horror-film","tag-1981-movie-reviews","tag-frances-hyland","tag-glenn-ford","tag-horror-films","tag-j-lee-thompson","tag-jack-blum","tag-lawrence-dane","tag-lesleh-donaldson","tag-lisa-langlois","tag-matt-craven","tag-melissa-sue-anderson","tag-sharon-acker","tag-slasher-films","tag-top-40-horror-films","tag-tracey-e-bregman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5937"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22966,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5937\/revisions\/22966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottsfilmreviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}