We open at night, with a slow pan of Crawford Prep School. And as our focus shifts to one particular student, Bernadette O’Hara (Lesley Donaldson), who appears to be in a hurry to get somewhere, the soundtrack turns sinister (and the rogue POV cam kicks in), and then she’s suddenly attacked by a flurry of leather straps. Her attacker turns out to be Winston, the bulldog of the school’s head mistress, Mrs. Patterson (Frances Hyland); Bernadette just got tangled up in his leash, and Patterson chastises the girl to be more careful while untangling her. She continues the scolding because Bernadette belongs to the Crawford Top Ten, an elitist group of students who spend way too much time at the local watering hole, The Scarlet Woman. (You can spot a Top Tenner by the long, striped scarves they wear.) The student takes it, until the old woman is out of earshot and then says what she really feels. 

Moving on into the parking garage, just as Bernadette is about to start her car, an assailant assaults her from the backseat. The attacker grabs her by the throat, with black gloved hands (Plot Point #1), pulls her into the back, and throttles her until she stops moving. Credit to Bernadette for playing possum, and as the attacker lets go, she manages to get out of the car. But not for long. After several twists and turns, she runs right into someone -- who’s wearing white tennis shoes (Plot Point #2). She knows whoever it is (Plot point #3), but she doesn’t realize that this is her attacker. Thinking its safe, she relaxes until the bad guy produces a straight razor and slits her throat.

We shift scenes to The Scarlet Woman, where the local Shriners are wasted -- and stuck on verse 45 of "99-Bottles of Beer on the Wall". One table over sits the Crawford Ten -- well, nine now, I guess. Only seven are accounted for, but the rest start trickling in. Virginia (Melissa Sue Anderson), who turns out to be our main character, arrives next, making it almost a quorum. Then creepy Alfred (Jack Blum) -- complete with psycho-loner army surplus jacket, and black gloves (Suspect #1) -- finally shows up with his pet rat, George. The rest of the Ten consists of two couples, Rudy (David Eisner -- the class clown) and Maggie (Lenore Zann), Greg and Amelia (Richard Rebere and Lisa Langolas), and then rounded out with Steve (Matt Craven), who’s a compulsive gambler, Etienne (Michel LaBelle), a motorcycle riding foreign exchange student from France, and Ann (Tracy Bregman), who is Virginia’s best friend.

While the rest of the group ponders where Bernadette is, Rudy and Greg pick a fight with the head Shriner. The rest make peace and offer to buy the Shriners another round, but Rudy sneaks George the rat into one of their beer steins. And after one of them takes a drink, all hell breaks loose. The bartender saves the Ten from a Shriners-ass-kicking, but kicks them out of the tavern. Outside, they hear the warning horn for the drawbridge -- time for another round of the Crawford Top Ten's traditional "Game" where they race over the drawbridge before it opens to let the passing boats through. Virginia winds up with Greg and Amelia in his Trans Am, and we also notice that Alfred slinks away on his moped, wanting no part of it. As the drawbridge starts to rise, the first few cars make it, Steve chickens out, and, despite Virginia's hysterical protests, Greg floors it to pull off a Blues Brothers cum Dukes of Hazard stunt. They barely make it over, and the rattled Virginia has some kind of flashback involving the bridge (Plot Point #4) -- and then completely loses it when they pull over. Virginia goes screaming into the dark, but Greg and Amelia let her go because she lives nearby. Ann asks what happened, and when Greg doesn’t give her a satisfactory answer, she replies -- with venomous conviction -- "I could kill you." Couple that with her black gloves, makes Ann Suspect #2.

On the way home, Virginia has to make her way through a cemetery -- a familiar route. She stops at her mother’s grave, produces a pair of garden shears, and starts trimming the grass by the head stone. As she begins talking to the deceased, amongst the other tombstones, a rogue POV cam starts stalking her; but it’s only Etienne, who offers to walk her home. But there's something ominous and threatening with the offer, so Virginia declines -- but he sneakily follows her home anyway. Once she's inside, he starts peeking through the windows -- making him Suspect #3, or just peeping tom? Inside, Virginia finds her dad, Hal (Lawrence Doe), waiting up for her, and he wants to know if she went to the cemetery again. He doesn’t think it’s a healthy idea that she goes there so frequently, and we then get some back-story: they just moved back into the house after wife/mom died four years ago. (Plot Point #5.) We also find out that Virginia has some emotional baggage about her mother. But with the help of her psychiatrist, she feels all can be made right once they unlock some repressed memories. So, combining this with her behavior in the graveyard, that makes her a psychological powder keg and Suspect #4. (And between you and me, I think this mystery is solved already.)

Virginia retires to her bedroom, grows concerned with an open window and closes it. Knowing Etienne is prowling around somewhere, the movie teases the audience with several false scares while she strips down to take a shower. (And for all you Little House on the Prairie fans, I regret to inform that there are no nude scenes by anyone in this film. Yeah, I’m as disappointed as your are.) She drops her panties and hops in the shower. Hearing something over the water, the girl runs back to her bedroom. It's empty -- but the window is open again.

The next morning, Virginia and Ann are late for class. Mrs. Patterson holds up their science lecture to ask if anyone saw Bernadette last night because she never made it home. But the girls say she never showed up at the bar, and after the principal leaves, the teacher resumes the lesson of the day -- putting electrical charges into dismembered frog legs and watch them twitch. (SCIENCE!) Watching the legs twitch causes Virginia to have another flashback:

A slightly younger Virginia is in some kind of lab, lying on a gurney with her head is hooked up to some kind of electronical wang-doodle apparatus. Her father is there, along with several doctors, and we catch something about "her damaged brain cells are regenerating by themselves." Suddenly, Virginia wakes up, but only utters two words: "My birthday?"

Later, when Virginia relates these new memories to her shrink, Dr. Faraday (Glenn Ford), he reveals that she was part of an experiment after "the accident." Seems a Dr. Firebrau combined the same principles of lizards regenerating limbs with several percolating kilowatts of electricity, and viola, a new, synthesized brain. (Okay, just where in the hell are they going with this?) Virginia still can’t remember this "accident" but Faraday warns her not to push it, to give it more time, and it all will come back to her.

The next day, we find the Crawford Nine gathered at the dirt track to watch Etienne bully his way to a win. After the gang congratulates him, they decide to meet later at the tavern to celebrate. When the others leave, Virginia stays behind to personally congratulate him. Etienne reveals he couldn’t lose because of his good luck charm, and then produces her panties that he swiped the night before. Disgusted, Virginia leaves and we spot Alfred lingering around as well. (So we can officially eliminate Etienne as a suspect and officially call him a creep.)

Later, while Etienne has his bike up on blocks giving it a tune up, unknown to him, a figure in white tennis shoes makes its way silently into the shop. Sneaking up from behind while Etienne works on the throttle, the killer grabs Etienne's scarf and throws it into the drive chain, and when it snags and goes taut, it starts to reel him into the wheel like a hooked fish. And as the killer revs up the motor, turning the back wheel spokes into a salad shooter, the snagged scarf sucks the victim into it and slices his head up like a ripe tomato. (Which makes you kind of wonder if it can make curly fries?)

So the next day, three people turn up missing -- the two victims, and Alfred. That evening, Ann and Virginia decide to stop by his house to check on him. Since he isn’t home, they sneak in and enter a shrine to Norman Bates. Seems Alfred’s hobby is taxidermy, and his room is littered with stuffed animals. He also has another gruesome hobby when they find his workbench covered with several human appendages. The girls are appalled, but can’t resist looking under a bloody blanket. They pull it back, revealing Bernadette’s dismembered head! Alfred catches them in the act. But when he turns the lights on, it becomes obvious that the head they found is a fake. (Alfred acts a little squirrelly, but I think it’s because his sanctum sanctorum has been violated.) He pulls out one of the fake head’s eyeballs out and tells the girls that they can be models for him, too -- just like Bernadette. The girls decline and quickly leave.

The next day, Mrs. Patterson has individual meetings with each of the remaining Ten. When Virginia denies knowing anything, Patterson starts getting a little pithy with her about these darn rich kids, getting away with everything, but she’ll put a stop to it. She isn’t wearing black gloves but we’ll still call her Suspect #5. Virginia finds Ann waiting for her outside the office, and they decide to get the gang together and catch a movie. After the movie lets out, we notice Steve and Maggie are acting awfully friendly -- and we notice Rudy is missing. But we find him, waiting in the parking lot. No one told him about the movie, and he suspects Steve was behind that and takes a swing at him. Greg manages to break it up but Rudy promises Steve that if he touches Maggie again, he’ll kill him. (Suspect #6.)

The scene shifts again and we find Greg, lying on a bench, pumping some iron. He finishes his reps and places the barbell on the stand. Our tennis shoe friend shows up, and Greg recognizes whoever it is but doesn't realize the danger. He asks the killer to spot him and add some more weight, and then continues bench pressing. After several reps, the killer slides the barbell stand away. Greg holds the barbell above his head (I assume he’s too tired to just drop it over his head and roll out of the way) and pleads for the killer to put the stand back. But the killer takes another weight and drops it on to Greg’s crotch, causing him to drop the barbell; it crushes his neck, and he spits up a fountain of blood. (Okay, if it is Rudy, he just killed the wrong guy.) Later, Amelia shows up with some pizza but finds the bench press equipment in perfect order. (So the killer brought a mop?)

The next day (man this killer is taking their own sweet time), the ever dwindling Crawford Ten watch a soccer game. Alfred is the team’s goalie and stops a penalty kick. After which, Rudy manages to score the winning goal right before the final whistle. The crowd storms the field, and during the melee, Rudy asks Virginia to meet him later at the campus chapel. After she agrees, we see the look Rudy gives the eavesdropping Maggie and realize he did this just to piss her off. (Tit for tat on the whole Steve thing.) We also notice that Alfred, who has a thing for Virginia, isn’t very happy about this either. On the way to the Chapel, Rudy buries something in the campus flowerbed. (It looked like one of those scarves.) Catching up with Virginia, he takes her up into the bell tower and tries his Quasimodo imitation on her. But then things take a sinister twist as he produces a knife. He claims he just wants to cut the bell rope as a practical joke, but then why does he use it to back Virginia into a dark corner where she has another episode and passes out? (Okay, maybe Rudy is the killer.) After an undetermined amount of time (the movie really pulled one on us in that last scene -- I’m not sure what the hell’s going on), the chaplain doesn’t notice a smattering of blood on the floor, and more blood dripping from the ceiling. He pulls the bell rope and it snaps, falls, and spools up around the pool of blood. The chaplain cries murder and runs out of the building. Meanwhile, Virginia is in the grips of another flashback:

She’s back in the hospital, and we’re treated to some rather disturbing and gruesome scenes of her brain surgery. As the doctor cuts her head open, he starts poking and probing into her damaged brain. But then fter a cursory examination, he declares Virginia to be a lost cause and staples her head back together.

Later, Virginia tells Faraday about what happened after she blacked out. When she woke up, Rudy was gone; she saw the blood, panicked, and got out of there. Unsure if she’s just delusional or serious, Faraday sends her home to get a little rest. (Geez! Where did this guy get his degree? Let's see -- The Tijuana Night School of Faith Healing and Several Holistic Pastes? Well, that would explain a few things... ) After she leaves, he hears a news report about the chapel, and how a bloody knife was found at the scene, and decides that maybe he should look into it.

With four students now missing, the cops are conducting a campus wide search but are getting nowhere. A Lt. Tracy (Earl Pennington) wants to question Virginia, the last person to see Rudy but his attention is drawn outside when Tracy finds something sinister in the flowerbed. Of course, all the students follow them, hoping to catch a glimpse of a dead body, leaving Virginia alone in the library. Suddenly, Rudy's body falls from the second floor and lands with a thud. But he's OK, and wants to explain what happened at the chapel. Seems that after Virginia passed out, he cut his hand while hacking at the bell rope to the tune of fifteen stitches. He apologizes for running out on her, and, more importantly, asks if she ratted him out about cutting the chapel bell rope? She didn’t, and as a reward, gets to go to the big dance with him. (Wow. Lucky girl.)

We then shift directly to the graveyard where Virginia chats with mom again. And as the music turns sinister, we spot someone in white tennis shoes approaching -- but this time we pan up and see it’s Alfred. Sneaking up behind her, he reaches a black-gloved hand into a pocket, but before he can pull whatever it is out, the girl turns and shoves the garden shears right into his gut. (And yes, we’re supposed to notice that she’s wearing black gloves.) As the confused Alfred falls, we see that what he was reaching for was a small rose.

So the killer is revealed. Or was this another one of Virginia’s psychotic delusions? (With this movie, who knows for sure?)

When Virginia wakes up the next morning, unaffected by last night’s events, we can only conclude it was just another dream. She finds her dad packing; an emergency at work is forcing him out of town for a couple of days, but he promises to be back in time for her birthday. Telling her to have fun at the dance tonight, he leaves. Then the film confirms the fact that even by 1980 disco was still not dead. (At least not in Canada. More on this later.) As the gang boogies on down, Steve is already sick of Maggie -- who is freaking out, convinced she’s the next victim. He talks Rudy into dancing with her, and as they happily reunite, Virginia turns her attentions on Steve. In full-blown floozy mode, she says her dad is gone for the weekend and invites him over for a midnight snack. He happily agrees. Concerned with her friends erratic behavior, Ann tries to stop them. Virginia laughs her off and says to meet her tomorrow afternoon to prepare for her birthday party.

At the house, Virginia and Steve sit in front of the fireplace -- both heavily under the influence of drugs and alcohol, which leads to some foreplay and snogging that would have gone further but the food is done. Virginia cooked up a batch of shish-kabobs -- meat and veggies on a pointed stick, yeah, this is gonna end badly -- and playfully feeds Steve several bites. After he cleans off the first stick, she dips the second into some sauce, and as he opens wide, Virginia shoves the skewer right through his mouth and out the back of his neck. With a cold detachment, she watches while his gurgles slowly peeter out. Thusly dispelling any doubts that Virginia is the killer -- but now we have to find out why.

The next day, when Ann arrives, she wakes Virginia up. Wanting all the "gory" details about her night with Steve, Virginia claims to not remembering a thing about last night past the snogging. (We note she does seem sincere.) Hoping a shower will help clear the cobwebs, all the water does is trigger more flashbacks:

She’s in a car with her mom. And mom’s obviously drunk and very distraught over something as they travel along in a driving thunderstorm. Mom claims "they’ll all pay for what they did." Virginia proclaims she doesn’t care, but the booze and the rain causes mom to miss the lights and warning horn for the draw bridge. As it rises, the car gets high-centered on the separating sides and eventually spills into the drink. (And they show us the plunge about eight times in case you miss it.) As the car floods, mom is stuck and can’t get out but she manages to roll down a window and tells Virginia to swim to safety. When the daughter doesn’t want to, so she makes it an order. Then the window comes down, Virginia escapes, and mom is doomed. Trying to surface, Virginia bongs her head on the passing boat, then her bloodied head bobs to the surface. (Explaining and tying up several plot lines.)

When Virginia snaps out of it, she's outside the shower but notices the floor is covered with water. Pulling back the shower curtain, inside the tub she sees Ann, submerged in the water, with her throat cut. In a panic, Virginia calls Faraday over and confesses that she killed Ann. Thinking she's just having another traumatic episode, Faraday demands to see the body. When she refuses to show him, he takes her by the hand and drags her toward the bathroom, determined to confront her psychosis head on. Sure enough, when he pulls back the shower curtain, the tub is empty and spotless. (So was all this in her head?) After calming her down, Faraday realizes there must be a link between her missing friends and her repressed memories -- and that’s why she’s been dreaming about killing them. (So it was all a dream?!?) When she tells him about jumping the bridge with Greg and Amelia, this seems to confirm his diagnosis; and that must have triggered her repressed memories and homicidal delusions. (Again, should she really be on the loose?)

The doorbell rings. It's Lt. Tracy with word that Ann is missing and they found her car abandoned nearby. With that new wrinkle, Faraday begins to doubt his diagnosis and promises to bring Virginia in for questioning after she wakes up. Taking the gloves off, the doctor confronts Virginia and asks if the six missing kids had anything to do with her mother’s accident. Then suddenly, she has total recall. (About frigging time, how long is this damn movie anyway?):

Four years ago, Virginia’s mother, Estelle (Sharon Acker), invited the six richest kids in Crawford -- Ann, Bernadette, Alfred, Steve and Greg -- to her daughter's birthday party. But when none of them show up, mom is indignant and downs another fifth of Scotch. When Dad calls home, disgusted Estelle hands the phone over to Virginia and he apologizes for not being there. She lies and tells him all her friends are there and they’re having a great time. As Estelle continues to drink and rant and chew on the furniture, we glean that she came from the other side of Crawford's tracks, then married herself rich husband in a vain attempt to weed her way up the social hierarchy. And when Virginia confesses that the kids didn't come because they’re all over at Ann’s party, this so enrages Estelle that she decides they will just have to crash that party.

Despite the raging thunderstorm, Estelle, with her daughter in tow, drives over to the palatial estate but can't get past the front gate. Undaunted, Estelle a scene and demands to see Ann’s father. And if we listen close, we pick up some cryptic clues when she rips into the groundskeeper: something is said about not being paid off so easy this time (Plot Point #6), and we realize that Estelle and Ann’s father have a sordid history. (The plot thickens.) Virginia drags her back to the car and convinces her to just head home. 

They never made it.

When Virginia snaps out of and runs away, again!, Faraday lets her go. But she doesn't go far, grabs a fire poker, circles back, and proceeds to bash his head in with it. (And I will go on record stating I don’t think the human body contains enough blood to shower the walls like that.)

Later, when Virginia’s dad returns, bearing gifts, he finds his house dark and silent. A quick search finds the room covered in the doctor’s blood, but no body. He freaks, thinking something has happened to Virginia. When the house proves empty, he heads to her favorite spot -- her mother’s grave. Making his way through the rain to the cemetery, where he finds Amelia in a state of muted shock. He continues on, first tripping over Faraday’s body and then finds his wife’s grave has been dug up. He then spots the lights in the guest cottage -- where the original birthday party was to take place. Inside, he finds a truly ghoulish and macabre scene: the table is still set the same way it was four years ago -- I take it no one's been in there since? -- only this time, the guests are all present and accounted for. Propped up in their assigned seats, next to his decomposed wife, the mystery of the missing dead teens is now solved. Then dad locks up in shock when his little girl comes out of the kitchen with a birthday cake, candles aglow, singing "Happy Birthday to Me" sweetly to herself. Happy to see daddy, she sits him down at the table. All he can do is drop his head in his hands and cry as Virginia blows out the candles and produces a knife to cut the cake -- but then uses it to slash dad’s throat, instead. Unfazed, she then moves down the table to Ann’s body, slumped over on the table. But when she pulls the body up *gasp* it’s really Virginia! -- Whoa, what’s going on? Then the evil and psychotic Virginia says all that’s left to do is kill sister Non-Psychotic Virginia. -- What? Twins?!? She has an evil twin?!? I call no frakkin' way! And with one final insult to the audience's intelligence, Psychotic Virginia pulls off a latex mask revealing -- JINKIES!, it was really Ann all along! -- And the call of No frakkin' way still stands.

Well, in an twelfth hour confession from Ann, it seems that Estelle was a floozy and had an affair with Ann’s father. She got pregnant in the process, so Ann’s father paid Estelle to go away. But Ann’s mom still found out and divorced the creep, destroying Ann's family. So, guess what, they really are sisters. But Ann has wanted revenge on Virginia's family for her father's misdeeds ever since, and focused all her rage on her illegitimate sister since Estelle was already dead. Why she had to kill the others is beyond me, though. E'yup, all that brain surgery crap, flashbacks, and psychotic episodes meant absolutely nothing.

Coming in at a whopping 110-minutes, the running time is a little too long for one of these teenage-revenge/slasher flicks. And that is the main problem most people have with it. When it's cooking, the film is really pretty good but, unfortunately, it spends the majority of its time dawdling along at it's own meandering pace. Which is too bad because by the time you get to the twisted (and fairly effective) shock-ending, your basically burnt out and just want the dang thing to end.

Happy Birthday to Me promised six of the most bizarre murders you'll ever see. Well, three maybe qualify as bizarre (the motorcycle, free weights, and shish-kebab) but the rest are nothing special. And frankly, there was just too much time spent between the killings where nothing significant happens. As the mystery drags you along, trudging through muddled flashback, slapping us in the face with several red-herrings, to suddenly go all Scooby-Doo on us in the last three minutes -- torpedoing all that came before -- is too tough a pill to swallow. There's nothing wrong with a twelfth hour confession, but this film spent so much time elaborating on Virginia's past and head troubles, it just compounds the feelings of wasting your time for the first 107 minutes. 

Melissa Sue Anderson made more than her fare share of horror flicks during her Little House on the Prairie days. She teamed up with The Waltons alum Mary Beth McDonough in the witches tale Midnight Offerings. (And McDonough was