The Cheap-Arse Film Review #25- "CAMP BLOOD 2."

NAME:CAMP BLOOD 2

RATING: 18

RELEASED: 2000

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY: BRAD SYKES

STARRING: JENNIFER RITCHKOFF, GARRETT CLANCY, MISSY HANSEN

GENRE: HORROR SLASHER

BOUGHT FROM: POUNDLAND

PRICE: EVERY RATIONAL IMPULSE I'VE EVER HAD

I've seen alot of bad movies in my life. It's just the law oF averages, when you see as many as I do a year, you come to terms with the fact that not all of them are going to be masterpieces. Sometimes I'll even go to see a bad movie intentionally, such as last January when me and my regular cinema buddy (hello Dean)(why did I just say hello to you? You've told me point-blank that you never read these) went to see "AVP2: Requium." We were under no illusions, we knew we were about to see a bad movie, but as he put it, "Sometimes you have to see something bad to remind yourself what good is." As it turned out, that movie was even worse than either of us anticipated and inspired me to write up a quick review and send it to some of my friends in an attempt to keep them from even considering watching it.

The worst movie I've ever seen goes by the name "Feardotcom." Oh where to start when talking about this one? Well, firstly the plot is about as obvious a rip-off of the "Ringu" movies as you're ever going to see, with the killer video replaced by a kiler website. Then there's everything else. Literally. Everything else. There is nothing good to say about this film. The script is moronic, the acting is atrocious (and in the case of Stephen Rea, provided by somebody who should have known better)(YOU WERE IN "THE CRYING GAME!"). Set design and cinematography combined to give the whole thing a look I affectionately refer to as "Se7en: The Animated Series." And to top it all off, there's one massive medical inaccuracy in there that anybody who knows me knew was always going to get my goat. I don't feel like going into it here, just thinking about it is bringing my blood to a boil. I just wanted to put all that down so you could see what I judge all the bad movie against. If we're going to measure things on a percentage scale, I've probably seen more bad ones since I started this project than I have at any other time in my life. But in terms of actual quality, yeah, films like "Cheerleader Massacre" and "The Social Climber" were bad, but they're not in the same league "Feardotcom." They don't even play the same sport.

To date there has been only one movie that came in any way close to challenging that giant. It failed, but it at least found a home in my top five worst movies of all time, which even "The Social Climber" couldn't do. That movie was "Camp Blood," and the only reason it didn't take the number one spot is because it was clearly made with no money by people who didn't have a clue what they were doing, and I felt like showing a little mercy. Infact, I recently reread that review, and "merciful" is a good way to describe it, because even though I gave it a bad write-up, I could have gone on for hours savagely ripping it a new one. I think it's because I was still really new to this at that time and, I dunno, I felt bad about shitting on somebody else's work. I'm over that now, don't worry, and I'd actually like to go back and give it the going over it deserves. But it's too late, I've thrown it away, and I'm not buying it again. So I suppose it's sequel will have to pay for its sins.

Even before I'd put the bloody thing in my machine, my heart sank whilst reading the back of the box, seeing the running time listed at 90 minutes. "Oh sweet Jesus," I thought, "it's longer than the last one. Nearly twenty fucking minutes longer." Thankfully, when I finally fired it up, I noticed two things- 1) the main menu was far easier to navigate than it was on the first one (I COULD SEE WHAT I WAS SELECTING!), and 2) once the film started I was informed that it actually only lasted 73 minutes, which was a pleasent surprise if nothing else.

This installment begins almost identically to the last one, with two people, a male and a female, completely unrelated to the plot, walking through a forest. Sadly unlike the last time they're not birdwatchers, but rather just a boyfriend and girlfriend out on a stroll. The dude complains that he's hungry, so they sit down at the side of the trail. He has a drink ("Lemon and Lime! That's my favourite!") and before long he's telling her that where they are right now has a gory history, that it's known an Camp Blood, due to the fact that woman went crazy here last year and killed nine people and NO NO NO NO NO!!!! THAT IS NOT WHY IT'S CALLED CAMP BLOOD!!!! IT WAS CALLED CAMP BLOOD BEFORE THOSE MURDERS HAPPENED, BECAUSE OF A KILLING THAT TOOK PLACE YEARS PREVIOUSLY!!!! HOW CAN SOMEBODY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SCRIPTS TO BOTH MOVIES SCREW UP THE HISTORY OF HIS OWN FILMS SO BADLY?!?! Oh God, I'm less than a minute-and-a-half into this and already it's got me yelling at the screen.

Deep breath.

Okay, maybe I flew off the handle needlessly there, maybe the script only had him mention this at all so he could set the practical joke he was about to attempt (more on this in a minute) into some kind of context, but I'm less willing to cut this film any slack because the first one regularly made a complete hash of it's own continuity, and this just seems like more of the same. Anyway, after telling her about the horrors that occurred there, he excuses himself to take a leak. At least thats what he tells her, the truth being he has a clown mask in his bag and intends to put it on and scare the shit out of her. As jokes go, I can appreciate this one. Sadly, he doen't get the chance to extract any fun out of it, as when he gets back to where she's sitting somebody has already got to her and slashed her throat. He looks at her in horror, slowly removing his mask.He then touches her, as if to say, "Are you okay?" only to have her body slump to the side, which made me laugh. He's then killed when the unseen attacker runs him through from behind with his knife. This is worth talking about because they had this exact same effect in the last movie, and when I was talking about the very few things there that I thought deserved some praise, I singled that effect out as looking decent for what they could afford. Here though it looks silly, as they linger on the wound and him grabbing at the knife too long, so we get a good long look at just how fake the torso is in the close-up scenes. So yes, the filmmakers actually managed to screw up something they got right the first time around. The mask the guy was wearing gets trampled on by an unidentified pair of feet, the the camera pans slowly to the left and we see the original mask the killer wore lying on the ground. The Clown From Slipknot has returned!

Following the credits (which happen over footage filmed with the mask pulled over the lense in a lame attempt to make this look and feel all first-person), we're reunited from the sole returning, um, star from the first movie, that being Tricia (Jennifer Ritchkoff). She too is walking through the forest, as dry ice swirls around her. She looks confused and upset (get used to this, it's her default facial expression) and appears to be looking for something, eventually finding the Clown mask just lying in her path. She approaches it, reaches over to pick it up, only for A HAND TO COME OUT OF THE GROUND AND GRAB HER WRIST! She pulls away screaming (which she's really good at, it should be mentioned), and then... something comes out of the ground. I think it's supposed to be a zombie, but it doesn't look like one. It looks more the the Djinn from the "Wishmaster" movies. God what I wouldn't give to be watching one of those right now. Anyway, whatever this is, it picks up the mask, puts it on, and then runs after Tricia, knife in hand. She eventually comes to a dead end, that being a cliff, and turns around to see The Clown From Slipknot s nowhere to be found. Okay, killer popping up behind her in three, two, one... THERE HE IS! She gets grabbed, screames and...

... back in the room! Or rather the nut house. I didn't really go into much detail about the first film's ending, mostly because I was bloody sick of the thing by that point, but the gist of it is, Tricia was accused of performing the killing herself and locked up in the funny farm, which would seem to be where she still is. Her doctor hears the screaming and comes to check on her, before telling her she has a visitor. She thinks it's "another shrink," but as it turns out, it's a movie director. He goes by the name Worth Milligan (Garrett Clancy), and he's come to Tricia and the whole hospital with a very outlandish request- he wants her to come to Hollywood and help him make his movie in a Technical Advisor role, which he's basing on the tragedy the year before. Yes, this movie is going META OUTTA NOWHERE by having the main plot based around a group of people essentially remaking the first film. Which is exactly how it's presented, as the script we hear people reading from is word-for-word perfect with actual scenes from part one. It's never explained how Worth would know all of this in such fine detail without having been there himself, but to be honest I was just pleased the film didn't use this as an excuse to go down the sub-"Scream" road and be all knowing and wink-wink nudge-nudge.

Tricia is reluctant to go along with this plan, asking what's in it for her, his answer being that she could finally get her story out there and have people believe it. When she questions why anybody should believe what she says just because it's now a movie, Worth wheels out, "Two words- BLAIR. WITCH." (wow, this movie just time-stamped itself...). She still doesn't seem convinced, and he becomes more-and-more crazed in his attempts to convince her, at one point telling her she's bigger than Manson (I assume he meant Charlie and not Marilyn), and then telling her he can get her out of there under his supervision, prompting the doctor to step in and tell him he can't, and even if he tries he'll oppose him. THEN WHY DID YOU JUST SIT THERE AND LET HIM SAY ALL THAT THEN?! Surely there's something unethical and a bit dangerous in letting somebody get your patient's hopes up like that, especially when they're believed to have committed brutal crimes. Any doctor worth his salt would have heard the first few words of this pitch and told the guy to fuck off.

Tricia is then lead back to her room, where she has a flashback to the events of the last movie. This goes on forever as we're shown what feels like almost whole scenes from beginning to end, but interestingly there seems to be a theme to them, that they all end with somebody telling Tricia she's nuts for believing The Clown From Slipknot exists. It would seem from this that they were trying to plant the seed that maybe Tricia is crazy and that she did really kill all those people last year, which I would be fine with and might even have found an interesting twist... were it not for the fact that we've already seen The Clown From Slipknot kill two people whilst Tricia is still locked up, thus making it impossible for her to be the killer. This movie. Anyway, she has a change of heart and asks to speak to Worth again, and before you know it, we're in LA (as identified by a far-off shot of the HOLLYWOOD sign and some footage of LA traffic)!

Worth is going ahead with his movie, holding auditions with actresses in order to fill out his cast, an act he and his cameraman Shemp (the superbly-named Ken X) are carrying out when we catch up with them. The scene is an exact duplicate of one from the first movie, and it's acted terribly, but here's what baked my brain- the scene they're recreating was bad the first time around as well, but there it was supposed to be good, whereas here it's terrible on purpous, so does this mean that this scene is technically speaking an improvement on the first one, just because it's being carried out the way it was intended to be? Is anybody following me here?

Wow, Melenie Griffith just appeared on my television selling some kind of Pilates equipment. That was a nice little distraction. Anyway, back to the movie.

Finally, Tricia shows up with her doctor. I was pleased to see him there, because I was afraid she'd just show up on her own even though it's believed she's some kind of violent murderess. At least this way she has some supervision, I thought. Then Worth asks the doctor if he'd like something to drink, and he replies, "I won't be staying, I'm just dropping Tricia off." HE JUST DROPPING HER OFF! HE SAID ALL THAT STUFF ABOUT TRYING TO KEEP HER LOCKED UP, AND NOW HE'S JUST RELEASING HER BACK INTO THE WILD WITHOUT ANY SUPERVISION! Dear God, they're not even trying. So she's there, and already she gets freaked out by Shemp fooling around in the Clown mask. This dude, it should be mentioned, is a total charicature, an alcoholic who makes everybody feel uncomfortable from the first time they meet him until he... well, we'll get to that later. The film obviously wants us to think he's the killer, which is why I discounted him instantly. I had my money on Worth at this point, for what it's, um, worth. After the doc is gone (and not seen again), the first thing Worth has Tricia do is go through pictures of actors and choose who she thinks would be perfect for Steve. Of course, being asked to pick an actor that looks just like her dead boyfriend doesn't have a completely positive effect on Tricia's mental wellbeing, and as she's doing this she has another flashback, begins to freak out and says she needs some fresh air, practically running out of the room.

It outside on the balcony that she meets Adrienne (Missy Hansen), an actress who says she's come to audition for a role in the movie. They exchange some banal pleasentaries, and by the time this scene had finished I'd decided she's the killer. It all just felt so random and pointless that the only reason for it to exist was for it to later be revealed to have had more importance than anybody realised. So, she turns up to audition, only to be too late, as the last role has been handed out to a really old, haggard-looking woman in a zebra-print top. Don't worry sweetie, happens to us all. So of course the next thing that must happen in the Zebra Lady has to die, and sure enough the next scene starts in her kitchen, with her talking on the phone and chopping up a banana with a very big knife. I don't know wy she's doing this. Maybe she's going to make herself a banana sandwich. I could go for a banana sandwich right about now. We then cut to her bathroom, where she's getting ready to step into the shower, allowing the director to show us he's improved in how he shoots nude scenes by coaxing her out of the bottom half of her clothing, too (also, helloooooo obvious breast implant scars). In between these scenes, the camera work goes all first-person again, showing somebody sneaking into her house, getting as far as her kitchen, before seemingly being scared off by her phone ringing. She gets out of the shower, answers the phone to find nobody's on the other end of the line, drops her towel (of course), bends over to pick it up, and OH MY GOD THE CLOWN FROM SLIPKNOT IS STANDING RIGHT BEHIND HER! Even though she walked into the room in such a way that she'd be looking directly into the kitchen, and there didn't appear to be anywhere for him to hide. So he kills her, choking her a little bit, then stabbing her with the knife she was using to chop up that banana. I wish it wasn't so late, I really fancy that sandwich now.

It now the next day, and Tricia shows up at Worth's office to meet the rest of the cast- there's Lance (Mark Overholt), a cocky wannabe ladies man who's playing Steve, Vanessa (Jane Johnson), the initially prim-and-proper object of Lance's affections who's playing Tricia, and Todd (Timothy Patrick), the only person who seems a little bit put out at the thought of being around Tricia, playing Jay. They're one cast member missing due to the fact that she's dead, and Tricia uses this chance to try and get Adrienne in the picture. Worth says sure, and hands her a pile of actresses photos, saying if she can find her amongst those, call the attached number and get her down there that second. Tricia runds off to another room and starts going through the pictures, finding hers and calling her. All seems to be going well, until The Clown From Slipknot shows up and starts chasing Tricia around the building, drawing the attention of the others. This turns out to be a red herring, as it's really that weirdo Shemp behind the mask, who falls to the floor giggling when he's discovered. Somehow this gets smoothed out, and the next time we see Tricia she's in a car with Worth and Shemp, driving to the camp, where Worth mentions that they're really going to be staying at for the entire shoot. This is the straw that breaks the camel's back for her, and she puts her foot down, saying she's not staying there. Like the bastard that he is, Worth says that's and that he'll have Shemp drive Tricia back to the insitution if that's more to her liking, which is enough to bring her back onside. From here the movie grinds to a hault for a bit as the next few scenes consist of then filming a scene that ends with Shemp drunkenly assulting Vanessa during the filming (which I think is supposed to get a laugh, because y'know, alcohol-induced man-on-woman violence is a riot),and then a scene around a campfire where we get another fucking flashback scene, this one narrated by Tricia as she explains the events of the last film to everybody. How much more screen-time are we going to get dedicated to this? Did the people behind this really think there was a chance that they might have a few viewers out there that hadn't seen the first one?

There is one mild piece of liveliness in between all this when we're introduced to Patrick (Patrick Thomas, here working under the name Courtney Burr), who's supposed to be an assistant or something. He's a fat, annoying piece of shit, who I couldn't decide was supposed to be a stoner or just suffering from some kind of mental instability, as he yo-yo'd from being stupid-but-friendly one minute to threatening to punch out the entire cast and crew the next. His stay in this film is a short one though, as he's sent off to get food for everybody (where they want him to do this in the middle of a forest, I've no idea), and he decides to slack off and smoke a joint, where he's discovered by The Clown From Slipknot. Thinking this is Shemp, he offers him a toke and ends up GETTING HIS FUCKING HAND CUT OFF, WITH BLOOD SPRAYING EVERYWHERE AS IT NOW LAYS ONTHE FLOOR STILL CLUTCHING THE DOOBIE! Okay, that... that was great, there's no other word for it.

More deaths follow, and in traditional slasher fashion, the occur after a boinking, when Lance finds himself in a tent alone with Vanessa and she reveals herself to be something of a sex fiend when she starts peeling his shirt off. He's also not what he appears to be, as he ends up cumming within seconds of her climbing on top of him and being branded "all talk." So she kicks him out of her tent, where he's hacked to death, and she soon meets a sticky end when she has a knith thrusted into her muth and out the back of her head. Believe it or not, I'm going to offer the movie a little bit more praise here- when I covered the first one, I made note of the fact that, for a slasher, there wasn't much slashing going on, and we ended up with the hilariously lopsided situation where the movie had less the twenty minutes to kill off most of the main cast. Here, there have at least been killings, and they've not all happened at the same time, they've been scattered around a little bit. So, yeah, pacing. Seemingly the only thing Brad Sykes learnt in between his first movie and this one.

The remaining five wake up the next morning to find Lance and Vanessa gone without a trace, which I don't buy, because I refuse to believe there was no blood or anything to be found. There's some more freaking out, with Todd (not unreasonably) suggesting that Tricia might be behind this. She flies into a rage, and following this the project is abandonned, with Worth the only person remaining at the camp site, where he too meets his end at the hands of The Clown From Slipknot when he gets the top of his head carved open. Tricia returns, feeling bad about leaving him, only to find that he... gone without a trace. Okay, this is getting stupid now. Where's the fucking blood? I saw a large puddle of it collect around Worth's head. You're telling me that was dealt with in this amount of time? Bullshit. From here the kills come thick and fast, with Todd getting his throat slit in a stream, and Shemp, after drunkenly trying to rape Tricia, getting his eyes plucked out byhis own broken booze bottle. Tricia herself is the attacked, but rather than geting killed, she's just knocked out, waking up surrounded by the dead bodies of the people she was working with. Well, almost all of them.

Yep, as I expected, Adrienne turns out to be the killer, her reason being that she's the sister of Harris, the killer from the first movie, and refuses to believe Tricia's story. Show reveals her plan (which isn't worth going into here), and how she only originally planned to kill Tricia, but when she killed Zebra Girl, the thrill of the first kill proved addictive and she...

... wait... that was her first kill? The woman from the audition, she was the first person she killed? That's what she's saying? THEN WHO KILLED THE TWO FUCKING PEOPLE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVIE?! WHO?! WHO?! WHO?! WHO?! WHO?! WHOOOOOOOOOOOO?!?!?!

FUCK!

THIS!

MOVIE!!!!

I'm done with it. Tricia kills her by setting fire to her then hacking her with her own knife. Adrienne then gives her the clown mask in the most casual manner possible under the circumstances, then the movie ends.

As much as I freaked out at the end there, to be fair, this is an improvement on the first "Camp Blood." But that's like saying, when the bomb isaboutto drop, blowing your own brains out would be an improvement on having to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. This is an appalling movie and the people behind it's making should be ashamed of themselves, frankly.

FINAL VERDICT

BINNED!

Thankfully there is no "Camp Blood 3." However, I recently (like, 30 seconds ago) discovered that Brad Sykes is still making movies, is most recent being "Plaguers" in 2008.

I think this could be the beginning of an absolutely horrendous friendship.

Until Wednesday, I'm The Cheap-Arse Film Critic, and I'm every nightmare you ever had, I'm your worst dream come true, I'm everything you were ever afraid of.

The Cheap-Arse Film Review #2- "CAMP BLOOD"

NAME: CAMP BLOOD

RATING: 18

RELEASED: 1999

WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY: BRAD SYKES

STARRING: JENNIFER RITCHKOFF, MICHAEL TAYLOR, TIM YOUNG, BETHANY ZOLT, COURTNEY TAYLOR

GENRE: SLASHER HORROR

BOUGHT FROM: POUNDLAND

PRICE: £1.00 (DUH)

It was not good sign when the main menu of this disc managed to piss me off. I put the film in my player, sat through the opening title cards, and up it came. A half-way decent looking menu, too. So, I didn't see any of the four onscreen options highlighted, so I started pressing the up and down buttons on my remote so that I could see where it was.

I didn't see anything.

Okay, no problem, my player was obviously having a brain-fart and not showing the cursor, I thought. It's done this before, and it's a problem that's easily fixed, usually just by turning it off and on. So I did this, waited until the menu came back...

... and still nothing.

At this point I was starting to get a bit annoyed, thinking that maybe the disc was defective and I'd end up having to bin a movie without even reviewing it, but I decided to persevere. There had to be something I was missing. So, I moved so that my face was right up close to my TV, as close as you'd put it as a kid when your Mum would tell you to move back otherwise you'd get square eyes, and again started pressing the up and down buttons.

That's when I saw it.

The cursor was on screen. The words did become highlighted. They just became highlighted in the palest hint of yellow I had ever seen. It was almost imperceptible to the naked eye. Then I clicked to start the movie, and found that it then turns to an equally-slight shade of baby blue.

How can you do that? How can you screw up the main menu for your DVD so badly? Here's a hint to anybody looking to put out independent DVDs- MAKE YOUR MENUS EASY TO NAVIGATE. I mean, yellow? Blue? This is a horror movie. What's wrong with, say... BRIGHT RED? And when you actually select something, what's wrong with having it turn, I don't know... A DARKER SHADE OF RED? And I know there are people out there reading this who are saying, "Well, maybe you've got the colour and/or brightness settings on your TV too low. Maybe if you turn them up, you'll be able to see it better." And maybe I do. But that's not the point, the point is, I don't have to alter the way I have my TV set up in order to know what I'm doing on the menus of any of my other DVDs. So why should I have to make a special case for this one? The answer is, I shouldn't.

I can't believe I've written this much and not even got onto the actual movie yet. This is going to be the longest review ever.

The film opens with two bird watchers walking through a forest, one of whom is played by easily one of the sleeziest-looking men I have ever laid eyes on. The woman babbles about birds for a little bit, notices the guy staring at her arse, they exchange cringeworthy flirty dialogue ("You're supposed to be looking at birds, not me." "Can't I do both?"), before they launch into...

... actually, I don't know what to call it. I'm loathed to call it a sex scene, because at no point do either of them make any attempt to remove the bottom half of their clothing. I don't even want to call it a dry humping scene, because neither of them really move around that much. We do, however, see boobies. Well, one pair anyway, but it's a good pair, which is the only thing this scene (and in many ways, this movie) has going for it. This goes on forever. At one point she is literally straddling the cameraman, rubbing her chest and reaching down as if to stroke his cheek. In many ways it took me back to when Channel 5 launched and this sort of thing was the height of erotica. Needless to say, shortly after this, both are dispatched with by The Clown from Slipknot. I'm not joking, that's exactly what he is, just in a gark gray jumpsuit as opposed to an orange one. And that's another thing...

... can we possibly have break from horror movies that have some form of a clown as it's main Big Bad? At this point it's like, okay, we get it, clowns are fucking creepy. Can we move on now, please? We don't have to go too far, we can stay within the circus if you'd like. How about a seris of films about a killer lion tamer? Just imagine it- young busty girl, home alone, scared, she hears a noise, looks around the house, finds nothing, creepy music swells, she turns around, and BOOM! LION IN THE FUCKING FACE! Money, I tell you.

So, after this, we're finally introduced to the main characters/sacrificial lambs of this piece. You've met them before- there's the timid woman who doesn't think this is a good idea (we know this because she reads about the missing girl in the paper and I think straight up says, "I don't think this is a good idea"), her bland boyfriend who does because he thinks it'll be good for their strained relationship (which didn't seem so strained five minutes ago when they started fucking in the shower, in a scene where we don't see the woman's breasts, which leads me to believe she's related to the director in some way), his arsehole of a friend (who we are shown is an arsehole when he bitches out another driver and then proceeds to go through the entire movie barely uttering a line that isn't in some way hostile to someone), and his spoilt, bratty girlfriend (who we know is spoilt and bratty because she takes a huge case she can barely carry camping, and also dares to take pride in her appearence). Note how I'm not mentioning any names here. I'm doing that for two reasons- 1) it really doesn't matter what these people are called, they're drawn with such broad brushstrokes that their names may as well be Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Daisy, and 2) and this quite a serious issue...

... I barely know who these characters are. And I'm not talking about the film not showing me their hopes and dreams and what they aspire to be before The Reaper comes for them, I mean I barely know their names. I'm an aspiring screenwriter ("aspiring" meaning mostly that I talk alot about it at parties so people will find me interesting). I've never had a film made, I may never have a film made, but even I know that one of the first things you should do is get the names of your characters into the heads of the audience as soon as humanly possible. This starts off alright. We're not given the names of the two birdwatchers until the very end, but even by slasher standards they're just meat, so that doesn't matter. We also find out that the name of the main male lead's character really quickly, as his name's actually the first line of dialoge spoken by the the main female lead's character. She literally shouts the name "STEVE!" into his face as he pulls back the shower curtain before stepping in. After that, though, is where it starts to get noticable. The next scene has two people in it, and is intercut with a scene with another person in it by way of a phone call. When the scene starts, I can only name one of the people on my television. When it ends, I can still only name on of the people on my television. Sykes doesn't think to have any of the characters here refer to each other by name, not one single time. He does, however, have the Arsehole Friend drop the name of his girlfriend, "Nicole." So, you're seeing fit to name characters that aren't even in this scene, but I have no idea what the name is of that character that's currently talking? That boys and girls is a perfect example of bad writing. Infact, it get worse; we don't actually get the name of the main female lead's character ("Tricia") until we're over 15 minutes into the movie and she's been in 4 scenes, 3 of them dialogue heavy, and, I'm not making this up, we don't get a clearly audible mention of the secondary male lead's character's name ("Jay") until we are over 31 minutes into this movie, this 72 minute movie. Including credits. I know what probably happened, the guy's writing the script and, because he's writing character's names down every time they say a line of dialogue, he's forgot to actually put those names into people's mouths. I've made the same mistake a few times with my writing, but the difference here is, I've never filmed anything. At some point, somebody should have realised that a mistake had been made and fixed it on the fly. How hard would it have been to have had somebody just say someone's name in an early scene? It's even more unforgivable when you take into account the fact that they did do this with a few characters, including the crazy old man who tells them to stay away from Camp Blood, who says his own name within thirty seconds of being on screen ("Thatcher"). All this tells me is that people weren't paying attention, or were and just didn't care enough.

So anyway, they meet up with their guide, get to the camp, there's some making out, some horseplay on a swing and some shots of The Clown From Slipknot seemingly riding a bicycle. It's all basically just killing time until Killing Time, which starts the second they step out their tents on the second day to find their guide has been supposedly barbequed. Cue lots of screaming, infighting, some vomiting and some truly ludicrous assumption ("IT WAS THE CLOWN!" "THIS IS A GAME TO HIM!"). If you're thinking this will build to The Clown From Slipknot toying with them in an evil, cerebral manner, separating them and then killing them all one-by-one, well, you'd be wrong. Here's what he actually does- HE COMES RUNNING AT THEM FROM OUT OF THE UNDERGROWTH. And then gets PUNCHED IN THE FUCKING FACE, BEFORE LEGGING IT. I laughed so fucking hard. It was at this point that I looked at the timer on my player to see that this movie only had around 20 minutes left. 20 minutes to kill at least three people? This is going to rule.

So things go at a breakneck pace from here... Steve heads off in hot pursuit of The Clown From Slipknot... there's an awesomely bad knife-fight that words can't do justice to, with sound effects for the knife swings and punches straight out of the 50's, and at one point a slow-motion effect that's just that thing you can do with your camcorder that makes it skip every other frame... Steve bites the big one, and it's difficult to feel for a guy who decided to chase after the known killer with the really big knife rather than take this opportunity to flee for his life... Nicole is kidnapped when The Clown From Slipknot just casually walks up to the group from behind when they're fighting... we get this movie's loan fairly creative kill, when Jay accidently stabs Nicole himself when she sneaks up behind him having somehow escaped. In a better movie, this would actually have been a great moment. As it is, it's just alright.... Jay gets a good, old-fashioned neck-snapping... Thatcher from right at the beginning is shown to be in league with The Clown From Slipknot... Tricia manages to save herself by GRABBING THE BLADE OF THE KNIFE WITH HER BARE HAND (and hardly making out like it hurt, either), and then the film becomes the most obvious rip-off of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" you've ever seen. She's literally running down the street covered in blood, screaming, with the killer making chase and swinging his weapon. All that's missing is the "BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ" sound-effect. It all comes to to a glorious climax though, as Thatcher runs over The Most Obvious Dummy You've Ever Seen Dressed Like The Clown From Slipknot, before getting hacked to death. It's then revealed that the killer was the guide all along.

OR WAS IT? Well... I dunno. The ending really doesn't make any sense, and makes less sense due to the fact that all three of the other main cast members return to play THREE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CHARACTERS. I really don't feel like going into it, I think I've written far too much about this film already, and I'm not even done yet.

From a technical standpoint, this film is bad, although I'm not sure I'd say it looks or sounds as bad as "We've Got The Toaster" did. That's gifting it with faint praise, as the best way you could describe the production value here is cheap and nasty. There's one scene set around a camp fire where the story of The Clown From Slipknot it told (girlfriend fucks around on him, he goes insane, he kills them both, starts wearing a clown mask for some absurd reason), where the sounds of the crickets and general forest wild life go up and down depending on who's talking. The effects aren't good, but I will actually say they were trying, and the first killing of the movie, where the guy gets stabbed through the chest and the blade comes out through his back, is not too bad. It's hard to pass comment on the acting too, as nobody is given anything to really sink their teeth into beyond their expected cliches. I suppose the best I can say is I was never embarrassed by anyone, even though I was occasionally embarrassed for them.

There are also some really major logic and continuity errors that should be mentioned. In the scene where the group meet up with their guide and discover it's a woman named Harris (yeah, the killer ends up being a woman, despite looking like a heavy-set man and having the strength to snap people's necks with a flick of the wrist), Jay is all, "You're Harris?" and even says that he wouldn't have hired her if he knew she was a woman, but then he also says during the exchange that he spoke to her on the phone. So, he spoke to her on the phone, but couldn't tell she was a woman? That must have been a terrible connection. There's some really massive, noticable and confusing things that come out of the two birdwatchers being killed at the beginning. For a start, the newspaper mentions that the woman is missing, but makes no mention of the man. Was he just so smarmy people didn't care what happened to him? Also, and this is the big one, less than ten minutes into the film, the woman's carved-up, barely alive body is discovered by two hunters. Let me get this straight, she was missing long enough for it to make the papers just in time to scare Tricia before she and her friends make the trip to Camp Blood themselves, but not long enough for her to, y'know, BLEED TO DEATH? It's also mentioned that her car was found near the forest, so the area was presumably searched, but they didn't find this poor woman crying and bleeding out in the middle of a fucking stream? WAT?

But in the end, none of this matters. I could have saved myself the effort of writing all that. Because in the end, this film could have looked great, had award-worthy performances and been written by The Bard himself, and it still would have failed, for one simple reason...

... it's not scary. Not for a second. There's no suspense, there's not a moment when you want to cover your eyes, there's not even a moment when you jump a bit. Part of this is becase it's mostly filmed outside during the day, probably to save money on lighting, but I think it's mostly because it was written and directed by a man who doesn't understand what scary is. He seems to think it's blood and screaming. I bet he's a ball at parties.

The only real extra on offer here is a trailer. I usually think the trailer is the most useless extra on the entire disc, but this one, believe it or not, if fabulous- it's the entire film condensed down into just over a minute. Every kill (including an absolutely hilarious decapitation), every lame line of dialogue, every scream, all capped off by an incredibly disinterested narrator intoning towards the end, "Due to the graphic nature of this film, no persons under the age of 17 will be permitted to wear 3D glasses." How fantastic is that? This was so good, it was almost enough to save this disc...

FINAL VERDICT

BINNED!

... Almost. The nicest thing I can say about this movie is that it's not the worst I've ever seen. But it's high up in the top 5, that's for fucking sure.

Before I go, I want to share with you the only other amusing thing that came out of purchasing this shitty, shitty movie. I was at the counter at Poundland, when the nice, elderly lady who was working the till saw the movie I was buying and jokingly asked, "And how old are you, young man?"

Suddenly, I found myself mentally transported back to the days when I would go down to my local video shop and try it on with the owners, even though they had my age on their computers and I knew for a fact I wasn't getting anywhere with it. So, do you know what I answered?

"Ay... eighteen."

She looked at me very strange.

I'm 25.

Until next time, I'm The Cheap-Arse Film Reviewer, and I am a Golden God.