Saw this one as kid at The Tennessean, a grand old movie palace from l'age d'or, fallen into charming derelict abandon in the hard-pressed 70s, typical for downtown Nashville, TN as for most urban areas. The garish and crudely sketched poster featured a cliched version of Death (black flowing robe, skeletal figure, malicious grinning skull) wielding the ubiquitous scythe and running towards the viewer. Could the jogging fad of the decade influenced the skeleton's spry stance?
As for The Redeemer itself - finally available on DVD as Class Reunion Massacre, but badly edited and far inferior to the 80s VHS release which contains all original footage - the ultra-simplistic plot pre-figured the soon-to -emerge slasher trend, as so many forward thinking films did before 1978's seminal blueprint for the subgenre, Halloween. Unfortunately the victims in the film are all punished for sins way politically incorrect by today's standards - marital infidelity, drug abuse, homosexuality. But think of it as a time capsule capturing the retrogressive zeitgeist of an era badly confused between free love and a queasy embrace of gender equality.
All pretense aside, we adored the creepy mix of live action slaughter with plot less moments of puppetry (so SO VERY ripped off by the limpid SAW series of today). Lots of moody moments and stretches of near-boredom help to create the perfect soporific ambiance crucial to exploit the well-timed explosions of actual gruesome violence. Honestly folks, this one has cheap charms to spare.
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