Fever Lake 1996 Review

Fever Lake 1996

Directed by: Ralph Portillo

Starring: Corey Haim, Mario Lopez, Bo Hopkins

Review by Luisito Joaquín González

Imagine being the director behind the worst slasher movie ever made. Now no doubt in terms of technical application and production values, there are far poorer entries to be uncovered, but Bloody Murder from the year 2000 has long been widely regarded as the weakest addition to the stalk and slash cycle. There are a couple of reasons as to why this is the case. Firstly, it received quite a solid distribution deal, which meant that it was seen a lot more than most of the DTV monstrosities that have littered the genre. Secondly – and in effect most importantly – it is without doubt a turgid excuse for a scary movie experience.

Prior to its release though, director Ralph Portillo already had a stab at the stalk and slash grouping with Fever Lake, a virtually forgotten addition that slightly pre-dates Wes Craven’s Scream. Whilst I can admit that I wasn’t overly excited about seeing it again for this review, I carried the hope that I may find something that I missed all those years ago.

 

Six school friends head off to a remote lake on a fishing trip for a weekend’s break. Upon arrival they learn the legend of an evil spirit that emerges from the depths and causes unrest amongst local wildlife and human inhabitants. After a young girl is butchered by a wolf, the natives believe that the evil has returned…

Due to a flagrantly ripped off opening scene that sees an axe-clenching father stalk his wife and child through a similar looking house, Lake has been branded some places as a teen-slash imitation of The Shining. The methodology of Stanley Kubrick’s picture was to spend a length of time with the characters and develop a successful tone of dread that built up the moments of horror exceptionally. Portillo’s flick also lets its players dominate the majority of the plot, only this time around it results in an overwhelming feeling of frustration and boredom.  This is mainly because we have a story that’s as exciting as being kept on hold to customer service, and it’s been populated with personalities that are as intriguing as an empty cereal packet. Around the fifty-minute mark, I asked my Mrs if she knew the name or a noteworthy detail of anyone that had appeared on the screen up to that point. I waited thirty-seconds or so for a response and then realised that she had fallen asleep.

Now I understand and appreciate a director that can build an underlying apprehension that explodes into a crescendo at the conclusion of a feature. I also recognise that this is by no means an easy feat to accomplish. What confused me most about FL though was that it looked to have been put together by a crash test dummy. If Halloween acts as an example of a film that’s been produced with a complete understanding of horror as an experience, Fever Lake is its mirror reflection. We are only made aware that there is a threat lurking around the location by the repetition of identical dialogue by a ‘Native American’ that’s played by a white man(?) and adds absolutely *nothing* else to the story. He and other members of the townsfolk (including inept sheriff of the year award winner Bo Hopkins) talk of an evil spirit that lurks in the lake, but there is nothing that demonstrates this visually. Instead we get suspense music at the dumbest of times, like when the teens are discussing what to have for dinner(?). Well over an hour is spent with the cast involved in breakneck moments of tedium that include: going fishing, chatting about uninteresting crap and running out of petrol. Every now and then we cut back to the aforementioned American Indian who reiterates those lines he said five-minutes ago. It all merges into a steaming pile of nada.

When the killer finally turns up 72 minutes later, the momentum tightens slightly before one embarrassing twist leads to an incomprehensible one and it all fades to black. I have reviewed many slasher films that have been over-padded by 15 minutes and should have been trimmed down to give their runtime a smoother flow. A whopping forty-five could be removed from Lake though and it would still make an incredibly boring short. There’s no slasher action for the first hour and everything else that happens is delivered so leisurely and with such ineptitude that it’s a real challenge to keep your eyes locked on the screen. One false scare was so bad that I felt shame for the filmmakers, but my sympathy was turned to anger when I saw that they’d tried to do the exact same thing again at the conclusion.

I have no idea what Portillo was thinking when he made this film and I don’t know why he even bothered. It’s easier to give credit to someone who has tried and failed than it is when you can’t see any logic in an attempt or its delivery. Fever Lake is absolute rubbish and is perhaps even worse than the more notorious film that it led to. Of course I will re-watch Bloody Murder and explore this in finer detail, but don’t expect the results of my analysis anytime soon. I need a break from Ralph Portillo. A considerable one to be honest.

Slasher Trappings:

Killer Guise:

Gore

Final Girl

RATING:

Torment 2008 Review

Torment 2008

Directed by: Steve Sessions

Starring: Suzi Lorraine, Tom Stedham, Ted Alderman

Review by Luisito Joaquín González

We have seen the word ‘Torment’ pop up a few times in obscure horror titles over the past thirty years. These include a film from 1985 that is often touted as a slasher, but is more of a serial killer flick and a British entry from 2009 that traipsed the ‘revenge of the bullied herd’ route. This quickie from director Steve Sessions is most definitely the truest stalk and slash flick of them all and it has also become something of a rarity

It was made for $5,000 over five-days in 2007 and was picked up for release the following year. Director Sessions already had a couple of horror movies under his belt and has become fairly popular amongst fans of micro-budget movies. He chose a clown as his antagonist and as I have said previously, motion pictures with killer clowns in them are rarely any good, so he had a real chance to make a statement with this, his sixth picture.

 

A young women is released from an institution by psychiatrists that believe she can adapt back to society as long as she’s taken care of. Her husband whisks her off to a remote house in the forest where the two of them can be alone and rekindle their romance. As soon as she arrives though, she sees an ominous stranger dressed as s clown from the window and attempts to convince her partner that they are unsafe.

I had promised actor and a SLASH abover Jade LaFont, who plays a small part in this picture, that I would review this film over a year ago. Unfortunately, I never got round to doing so until he reminded me on the site’s Facebook page a few weeks ago. I’m glad that he did, because Torment is an interesting addition to the genre and it is unlike any other that I’ve seen recently, which is meant both as a swipe and a compliment. It seems that the plan here was to roll out a stalk and slasher with a psychological slant and this novel approach is intriguing and unique. Session’s screenplay is all about delivering an atmosphere; and it mixes three styles from popular sub-genres. Whilst the murders are those that you’ll usually see in torture-porn films, the boogeyman is pure stalk and slash and they are both wrapped together in a synopsis that leans toward the Identity/The Ward style of thriller.

I browsed through some other reviews of the picture and found that they all mentioned one specific aspect. You see, Sessions includes early scenes that portray that Suzi, our heroine, is suffering delusional visions because of her illness/medicine. However instead of building the mystery around whether the killer is real or just a figment of her imagination, we are shown him committing external killings that prove that the threat is indeed genuine. Although those critics considered this to close the door on the most obvious slice of ‘is he or isn’t he’ tension, personally, I feel that it opened many others that manifested themselves as the story rolled on to its surreal conclusion. We are offered no backstory or motive for our psychopathic jester, which gives him a Myers-alike chilling aura that makes him all the more terrifying and adds to the ambiguity. We also get some impressive suspense scenarios in the later stages and one jump-scare that is truly outstanding. I especially enjoyed the use of specific sounds – or therefore a smart lack of – to make the deaths all the more authentic and the score is neatly composed.

Despite so much positivity, the film does have a number of flaws. Far too much time is spent within dialogue scenes between the husband and wife that are long-winded and fail to add anything to the plot. There’s a sequence inside a car in the first twenty-minutes that is so badly edited and conveyed that it almost becomes nonsensical and frustrating. Even more so when it’s obvious to viewers that this could have been filmed in a different location and would have worked much more efficiently. Another weak part is that three people are brutally tortured, but don’t let out so much as a loud whimper, let alone a blood curdling scream. I have learned that this is because the director was filming in a upstate neighbourhood and didn’t want to alert the authorities, but if I hadn’t had been told this, it would have left me highly critical of what looks like obvious ineptitude. In reality victims can at times be too scared or stunned by a state of shock to yell when pain is inflicted upon them. Film fans are used to hearing the cries of the prey in horror films though, and so they are unlikely to over analyse and excuse the lack of audible reaction seen herein.

Bluntly, Torment should not be as obscure as it has become. It is not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, but it tries hard to deliver something authentic and that in itself deserves praise. There are not many slasher movies that don’t have some of the elements that were implemented by Halloween, but you could count on one hand the amount that capture Michael Myers’ chilling aura of menace. Tyler Tharpe’s Freak from 1996 was a fine example of an enigmatic antagonist and now we have another. If a movie of this genre manages to build tension and keep you guessing, it’s doing something right.

Slasher Trappings:

Killer Guise: √√√

Gore √√

Final Girl √√√

RATING:

Dead 7 Review

Dead 7 2000

Directed by: Garrett Clancy

Starring: Joe Myles, Matt Emery, Delia Copold

Review by Luisito Joaquín González

I certainly wasn’t expecting much from Dead 7, especially after I learned that it was a Brain Damage films release. They are the production criminals that have unloaded excrement like Maniacal and the rancid Butchered on to unsuspecting movie fans for the past ten years. With that said though, I’m always open minded when it comes to low budget features, because for every twenty Camp 139s there’s always the chance that there could be a Killer Campout lurking amongst them somewhere. Surprisingly enough – Shock horror – Garret Clancy’s slasher opus was a damn site better than it had any right to be. It has somewhat restored my faith (momentarily) in Brain Damage as a label.

Clancy opens proceedings with a neat collage of woodland wildlife shots that brought eighties schlock classic The Prey to mind. Next we cut to a girl named Venus who is searching for her younger brother in the dense forest. She is very protective of Harley as he is deaf and mute, which makes it harder for him to communicate and let people know if he needs help. The two had been playing hide and seek until Harley’s attention had been diverted by the mysterious station wagon that had parked just yards in front of him. Hidden behind the camouflage of the dense trees, the young boy watches on as two men climb out of the car and drag a struggling man out of the boot. Franky (Matt Emery) and Brownley (Joe Myles) are viscous drug dealing gangsters that are just about to enforce the consequences of messing with their clique. They drag the victim out to an abandoned mine shaft and decapitate him with an axe before throwing his body down the pit. They hurriedly leave and meet up with their girlfriends Julie (Tanya Dempsey) and Karen (Janet Keijser) and their co-ed friend Drusilla (Gina Zachory).

Franky suddenly realizes that he has left his wallet back at the shaft, and after consulting Brownley, the two decide that they’ll have to go and find it without arousing the suspicion of Drusilla. Despite having very bad taste in friends, ‘Silla doesn’t seem like the type to be a part of any immoral activities and that’s why they try to keep the corpse under wraps. All five of them head back to the scene, and leave Dru to join Harley playing Hide and Seek. Unfortunately whilst searching for a secluded place, Harley comes across the foursome in a criminal situation, which means that they have no option but to silence him…for good! So down the mineshaft he goes with no chance of ever escaping or calling for help. Poor old Drusilla has no idea that her buddies have just killed the youngster and she is dragged away without an explanation.

A couple of months down the line, everyone except Venus seems to have forgotten about Harley’s death. The gangsters are given an ominous reminder when an unseen intruder throws some incriminating evidence through Franky’s window. This results in a chain of events that leads to the gang being stalked and gruesomely slaughtered one by one by a mysterious stranger. Brownley has already proved that he is a ruthless killer, but it looks like he may have met his match in this mystifying vigilante. Who could be behind this frenzy of retribution? 

Even though it sounds like a textbook slasher by the numbers, Dead 7 is actually a fairly engaging and moderately authentic take on the genre. It makes a refreshing change to have a mystery that actually pays off the viewer with a satisfying conclusion. Clancy has enough screen writing flair to keep you guessing through to the climax. He directs with a confidence that exceeds his lack of experience, and the photography is fluid, crisp and innovative all the way through. Kudos also to the editor who did an extremely credible job when compared with similar no-budget offerings. The decision to shoot all the horror scenes in broad daylight was a wise method of avoiding the frequent problems caused by insufficient illumination and even though the locations were those of the ‘take what you can get’ variety, they suit the desolate atmosphere of the feature. Modern day horror enthusiasts might be disappointed by the lack of any really convincing gore, but the murders are fairly imaginative all the same: Death by copious amounts of cocaine anybody? The acting is fairly shoddy and unconvincing, but it’s by no means the worst that I’ve seen. It’s perhaps ironic that the best performance happens to be the director’s cameo as a bent copper.

It goes without saying that Dead 7 does show it’s amateurism in places. Clancy’s script includes some inadvertently amusing dialogue that certainly wasn’t his initial intention and one or two of the bargain bucket death scenes are hilariously hokey. One guy gets his ears lopped off and spends the rest of his screen time covering them up with his hands so that we don’t see the wounds! In all fairness though, the killer’s face make-up in the final scene was actually quite good and there’s also a gooey slashed throat among other grisly highlights.

The net result is a decent slasher with a supernatural sheen that manages to keep you watching from start to finish. That’s a target that many other Brain Damage monstrosities couldn’t even dream of achieving. There’s some raw but worthwhile talent on display within Dead 7 and it warrants at least a viewing.

I say check it out…

Slasher Trappings:

Killer Guise: √

Gore √√

Final Girl √

RATING:

Humongous 1982 Review

Humongous 1982

Directed by: Paul Lynch

Starring: Janet Julian, David Wallace,  Janit
Baldwin

Review by Luisito Joaquín González

I must admit that Humongous was always a slasher movie that I had a certain fondness for. Not because I remembered much about its production quality (I’d only seen it the once, many years ago), but it always struck me as one that had been completely overlooked, perhaps unfairly. Personally, I love an underdog and that’s why I was keen to see if I could salvage some positives from giving it another blast on my Plasma.

Director Paul Lynch had come hot off making a major success out of a relatively average movie in Prom Night and therefore the odds were looking good for a similar return with this, his second effort. In the end though, his follow up turned out to be not very humongous at all and a bit of a cocktail sausage in the popularity stakes. Despite solid distribution from a major label, it failed to achieve the standing of titles like Madman or Hell Night, which are fairly similar in their concepts.

 

After a disturbing rape sequence in the pre-credits, we meet five youngsters who are planning to go sailing on a huge lake. When their boat explodes after an unfortunate accident, they find sanctuary on a remote island. Little do they know that the land is inhabited by a woman and her deformed son who are not the most welcoming hosts…

A lot of critics (myself included in an earlier review) have written about the film’s poor illumination, so to save you from reading the same thing, I have decided not to go over it again. It could be argued though that Lynch deliberately attempted to keep his antagonist off screen for the most part and reveal him gradually as the film rolled on. It’s a ploy that is used regularly in horror features and it reminds me of the anticipation of having a surprise present in a wrapped box and guessing what’s inside as you shake it. You only have to check titles like Halloween, The Predator, The House by the Cemetery or even Night of the Demon to see that it works. In the case of Humongous though, photos recently discovered by JA Kerswell over at Hysteria Lives show that not only was the director aiming to deliver suspense, but his bogeyman’s make-up was definitely the kind that you wouldn’t want to have the best lighting rig in town for.

Paul Lynch has spoken quite openly about the film’s low budget, but the locations and earlier effects (the uncut dog mauling scene especially) demonstrate funding that looked superior to other titles released around the same time. Perhaps the monetary reservoir drained far quicker than expected, so they had to cut costs for the remainder of the shoot? I often wondered why the first on screen murder was so gruesome and the rest looked brief and diluted. I presumed that much like Happy Birthday to Me, the studio had shortened the death scenes to escape punishment from scissor happy censors. If that was the case, does any of that footage still exist? It’d be nice to know. Further proof of this possibility can be found in the double murder that cuts so rapidly that it’s tough to make out what’s happening. The majority of the runtime is comfortably edited, which makes it look even more unusual and likely that some gore was removed prior to release.

I was never the biggest fan of Lynch’s Prom Night as I felt it took the Halloween pilfering to the gatepost and then crashed straight through it. There are signs of the same level of imitation here, especially in the shot for shot duplication of the stalking sequence from Carpenter’s classic. It’s the part where Michael Myers emerges from the shadows to push Laurie Strode down some stairs. This came straight after a scene where Sandy, our final girl, momentarily confuses the bogeyman by dressing in his mother’s clothes. This had been quite blatantly lifted from Friday the 13th Part II, which was released a year earlier. Whilst the reuse of ideas is extremely common in the slasher genre, Humongous overcomes accusations of being a freeloader by bringing a few of it’s own drinks to the party.

Some of the characters featured are intriguingly developed and filled with insecurities. The hero’s brother, Nick, is obviously envious of his elder sibling. So much so  that he fires a loaded rifle past his head for no apparent reason. Then Donna, a cheeky redhead, adds some depth to her ‘slut’ persona by conveying subtly that she uses her breasts and body to sell herself due to a lack of confidence. She basically tries to get people to like her. The actress who played her, Joy Boushel, is a 10/10. Despite my intelligence and talent, when it comes to women, I’m like a caveman. If a female is busty, I want her! I really hoped that Donna to be the final girl, but when she started being slutty, I knew she was about to die. She was really one of the best looking of the slasher bunnies that I’ve seen. As I’ve said many times, I’m very fussy when it comes to women. They have to be curvy and voluptuous to fit my type. Aside from busty ladies, there’s also an ambiguous hint that the youngsters had stumbled upon the island out of destiny and that our heroine was there to follow in the footsteps of the deranged mother. The final freeze frame shows us how the events that Sandy has overcome have affected her psychologically. This begs the question, did she stay behind to live in the house and therefore takeover from the deceased landowner? I also liked how the killer, who it is suggested had grown up with only dogs as companions, growled and grunted like he was in fact a mongrel himself.

Whilst the previous issues with Humongous still remain and the acting is up and down-ish, I really enjoyed watching the movie this time. It’s obvious that Lynch had grown as a director and parts like the eyeball jump scare and Donna filling her bra with blueberries rate high up there with the other great slasher postcards. I think that the best achievement of all was the successful delivery of an ominous tone that wraps around the runtime like a comfort blanket and kept me guessing what will come next. Moments like this have been too easily overlooked due to criticisms of the lighting, which is a huge shame.

I have a lot more respect for this picture now and would say that it’s the best example of Lynch’s slasher work. It may never achieve the status of a cult classic, but there’s enough here to have made me glad that I saw it again. I wanted to leave this until last, but the rape sequence is really uncomfortable viewing. The movie loses half a star because I am not sure this much footage was needed to convey the point. Less is more when showing rape and sexual assault. There were a million ways that could have been filmed.  I think Lynvh chose the worst possible way to display this plot point.. 

Slasher Trappings:

Killer Guise:

Gore: √

Final Girl: √√

RATING:

 

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Camp 139 2013 Review

Camp 139 2013

Directed by: Matthew Joseph Adams, Benjamin James

Starring: Ricardo Andres, Greg Bronson, Michael Cooley

Review by Luisito Joaquín González

Last week, when I posted my write-up of Blood Shed, I was chatting about other entries that included a crazed soldier as an antagonist and how the ‘born to kill’ synopsis made a perfect motive for a film such as this. Well Camp 139 has a plot outline so similar to Shed that I had to check that they weren’t from the same crew. Released on DVD earlier this year, not many have given this the time of day, which makes your old uncle Luis proud to be the first to put pen to paper on a Slash above. Interestingly enough, there’s a short that I have seen called Camp 139 that was released back in 2010 by director Ryan Polukord. I haven’t uncovered a link between the two productions, which is strange, because they have similar woodland backdrops and the same unique title…

Four youngsters head off to a place in the forest where it’s rumoured that there lies an abandoned military hospital. Legend states that many years after the Second World War, the site became a hub of experiments to create soldiers that were brainwashed to become remorseless killing machines. After a while, we learn that a maniacal force is hiding amongst the woodland…

Like many hard working Joes across the world, I use public transport, the train in fact, to arrive at my place of work. (Rarely on time) Readers in countries like Germany and Canada can be comforted by the fact that they may never have to experience the catastrophe that is the National Rail Service in the United Kingdom. A couple of weeks ago, I arrived at the station to see that not just one, but two of my scheduled journeys had been cancelled due to an ‘undiagnosed fault’. When a carriage finally did pull up to my platform an hour and a half later, it was packed like a cattle truck so they would let no other desperate passengers clamber aboard. My boss was livid. Camp 139 is a similar experience to that event, because we wait 38 minutes for the killer to arrive, and when he finally does, he drags his victim off the screen in two-seconds flat. It felt like one of those crappy Secret Santa presents where a devious colleague has wrapped a health-food bar in an iPad box. I’m still not sure if I have fully recovered.

Up until that point, things had been grim, inescapably so. A mechanic couldn’t give you heart surgery, a bricklayer wouldn’t build you a cloud software platform and a person without a clue won’t deliver an exciting scary movie experience. I felt a bit sorry for the actors, because they weren’t doing such a bad job. I closed my eyes to listen to their conversations and they sounded almost how you would imagine a gang of friends to talk. It’s just that the dialogue is so bad and so tediously shot that it takes the will-power of an ancient monk to keep focus. They didn’t even bother including a score of some kind to add energy to the sequences. It’s hard on occasion, when watching a bad movie, to put a finger on the true roots of the problem. With directors Matthew Joseph Adams and Benjamin James, there’s no mistake in uncovering the guilty party.

The final third takes place in an abandoned factory of sorts and rips off Blood Junkie so much that for a moment I forgot what film I was watching. I often wonder how psycho killers that reside in such a dilapidated place manage to survive when dumb teens don’t wander through on a camping trip. I mean, what do they eat? Do pizza guys accept payment from a fellow in camouflage and a Gas Mask? Do such people receive homeless benefits? Anyway, whereas Junkie was a fine example of craft and finesse on shoestring funding, Camp offers absolutely nothing. No chills, no thrills, no skills and no hundred-dollar bills baby. You can blame the minuscule budget all you want but that’s not an excuse for flat boring camera angles, cringeworthy conversations and a killer in a mask that doesn’t even fit him. I mean come on!!! Even the sight of Victoria Paege in a bikini couldn’t save it.

I knew that I was in for a bad time when the pre-credits scene burst on to the screen like a headless bull. Just who were those people and what the hell was going on? Before I even had a chance to analyse the visuals, my ears were pounded by some death metal and everything faded to black. It came to a close with a twist that you’ll have guessed and a hilarious explanatory scene, which had my partner and I grimacing. Following that, our room was like something from a Sergio Leone Western. All that was missing was a gust of wind and some tumbleweed. We looked at each other in silence and a state of shock. Perhaps it was only a bad dream? If only.

Quarantine this Camp on the double is my recommendation, I’m off to catch my train… (Crosses fingers)

Slasher Trappings:

Killer Guise: √

Gore: √

Final Girl: √

RATING:

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Blood Shed 2014 Review

Blood Shed 2014

aka American Weapon

Directed by: Cliff Vasco

Starring: Amin Joseph, Maria-Elena Laas, Benjamin Mouton

Review by Luisito Joaquín González

Recently in my review of Rose of Death, I mentioned that leaving a rose beside a murdered corpse had been done before and much better in one of my all-time favourites, Rosemary’s Killer. Well it’s nice to see that the film that I have so much respect for is still having an influence on the genre it assisted in defining, because Cliff Vasco’s recent stalk and slasher has also ‘utilised’ a similar idea to that classic synopsis. Blood Shed is the latest film to include a psycho killer that’s not been able to escape his military background, but its plot takes things to a more intriguing level than we’ve seen in previous entries…

Six teenagers take a break in some secluded woodland for a few days to get away from it all. Little do they know however that hiding in the woodland is a deranged psychopathic killer…

Whilst I was logging on to Vimeo to watch this pre screener, I took a browse around online to see if I could find any news or information about the picture. On the IMDB, I saw that it already has a laughable 2.7 rating with a couple of not so generous comments posted below. There were also a few external reviews that equally criticised Cliff Vasco’s debut feature. Often slashers get a hard time from snooty authors even if they do deserve praise and I couldn’t help but wonder if this may have been the reason behind the initial negativity?

Well yes and no is the answer, because whilst Shed is not going to redefine the way that we look at slashers, it deserves more respect than it’s currently being given. It all kicks off at what I guess is a marine training camp. We see two actors giving fairly credible impressions of Private Pyle and Gny. Sgt. Hartman from Full Metal Jacket (If you haven’t seen that and don’t know what I am referring to, I’ve just given you the perfect excuse to see a fantastic movie). To add a dose of realism, the scene incorporates real footage of soldiers being drilled at a military base and it’s very easy to see that it is (ancient Vietnam footage from the late sixties/early seventies) that is of totally different picture quality, which is kind of cheesy and amusing. I liked the idea of an antagonist that had been warped by the pressure of an over zealous/bullying drill sergeant and was excited about what would come next.

We then get to meet our group of young adults (aka cannon fodder) who are off camping for a weekend in the woods. The first thing that I noticed about them was that their dinnertime conversation was unlike the norm. Screenwriter Vasco is most certainly a fan of conspiracy theories and his characters discuss subjects such as the CIA’s power and that war is the organising principle for any society. It was enough to make Oliver Stone want to send a Facebook request and continued the tone for our lone assassin on the grassy knoll, sorry, in the surrounding forest. We are made aware of his presence by constant POVs that show him preparing to strike and we don’t wait long until he does.

The kill scenes in Shed may not be gory, but they are incredibly gruesome and they are spaced well enough to so that we are never left waiting around for action. There are a couple of effective jump scares that keep your heart racing and Vasco does well to make the chase sequences fast flowing and tense. We work out pretty quickly who is set to be our final girl and she gets twenty-odd minutes alone to confront the killer. Unfortunately, it’s the way that our nut job is conveyed that reveals the biggest of the feature’s problems. When he is first introduced, he looks incredibly creepy in army fatigues and a Nixon (?) mask. The headpiece is lost almost immediately though and then we are left with little more than an average middle-aged guy in camouflage that just wasn’t imposing enough to deliver scares. I recently saw The Demon from 1979, and the bogeyman there was clearly visible on-screen on only the odd occasion. This wasn’t important though, because his size and demeanor made him incredibly intimidating. Blood Shed has a big hole in the middle of its story, which is about the size of a threatening assailant.

As I alluded to earlier, the murders are consistent, which left me wondering as to why the film failed to maintain my attention. It’s hard to put a finger on the exact reasoning, because on reflection a lot of things are done with more input than usual. For example, each of the screen personalities gets time to build a relationship with the viewer and they have strongly defined, albeit stereotypical, characteristics. In fairness though, like many recent genre entries, Shed fails to make them ‘likeable’ in any way and therefore it’s hard to care if they survive. Even the final girl lacked charm and charisma. It’s unfair perhaps to criticise the sound mixing of a pre-screener (these issues are usually ironed out before going to print), but I must admit that I nearly blew my speakers every time that the music came on because I had the volume at 95% to hear the dialogue.

Blood Shed is an interesting addition to the genre, because it is a generic slasher film in so many ways, but in others it snaps branches of the template. The final scene for example is overplayed and poorly delivered, but I have never seen anything quite like it in twenty-plus- years of watching slashers. I won’t reveal what happens, so as not ruin it for you, but it was extremely unique in a peculiar way. In fact, the whole film is a mish mash of ideas that work only sporadically, but those sporadic moments are worth checking out. Having a confused military angle and trying to deliver a political message of some kind was unusual and perhaps slightly misplaced, but interesting all the same. 

Whilst Shed is ultimately flawed, I must admit that a 2.7  rating is incredibly harsh…

Slasher Trappings:

Killer Guise: √

Gore:√√

Final Girl: √

RATING: 

.

Blood Junkie 2010 Review

Blood Junkie 2010

aka Rocky Trails

Directed by: Drew Rosas

Starring: Nick Sommer, Emily Treolo, Ross Bachhuber

Review by Luisito Joaquín González

Over the past couple of days, I‘ve watched Bloody Moon and Do You Wanna Know a Secret one after the other. Despite being similar films in terms of their genre and content, the most obvious difference between the two is one that I have highlighted previously:- charm. Is Bloody Moon a better example of filmmaking than Secret? No; but at least it doesn’t have a cast full of unlikeable and egotistical cliches that we can’t relate to. Eighties slasher movies, no matter how bad that they may have been, were successful in giving us characters that we liked. There’s no bigger or better drama in cinema than hoping a hero or heroine that we’ve invested in, prevails against an evil force.

Director Drew Rosas understands this and has given us a slasher movie that has stolen the keys to Dr Emmet Brown’s time-travelling DeLorean and taken us back to the category’s past glories.

Four beer loving teens decide to take a weekend’s camping trip on some secluded woodland. Due to the fact that one of them was babysitting and can’t leave her kid brother alone, they decide to take him along. During their hike through the woodland, they uncover an abandoned factory, which has various legends of a disfigured loon that dwells within. They soon begin to discover that those stories may be true.

I must confess that it’s been a while since I’ve seen a picture distributed by Troma. Whilst I have never been a fan of their love of toilet humour, they must take some credit for their part in helping to populate the slasher cycle with some good and bad additions. These include Blood Hook, The Creeper, Angel Negro and Girls School Screamers. Blood Junkie is arguably the cannon of their arsenal, which I do mean as a compliment.

What we have here is a feature that’s hard to take a swipe at. Having seen as much DTV crap over the years, it’s nice to finally get an entry where the amount of effort is so visually obvious that it radiates. Unlike The Sleeper, the eighties continuity here is OTT, but consistent. We see cassette tapes, moustaches, boob tubes and luminous tops; but what amused me the most was the Hair Metal posters that were shown on one guy’s wall. I lived through those times, listened to those tracks and it seems like light years away nowadays. The energetic score is better than any actual synthesiser accompaniment that I recall from the period and the dialogue is comical without being overtly obvious in its attempts. Each shot is planned to be more inventive than the last and the runtime becomes a livewire of creative ideas. For reasons that I can’t disclose here, Junkie is also a film that warrants a second viewing to really bring the best out of the unexpected ending.

What I thought was especially effective, was the director’s ability to change the tone successfully and with minimal effort. Time spent with the characters is campy and fun, whilst scenes that involve the killer often border on being quite creepy. His costume is a gas mask, which is anything but original, but it is ok because his motive is fairly unique. Much like a vampire, he has a taste for human blood and he knocks victims unconscious and drains them in a secluded room. This leads to an ingenious use of the aforementioned headpiece, because the nutjob inserts the protruding hose into a victim and then sucks through it to give himself a warm hemoglobin smoothie!

Despite the novelty of the blood draining part, the abduction, instead of slaughter of teens, does lead to a lack of slashing. The first couple of murders are committed off screen and it’s only later that the maniac begins to attack with brutality. There’s a gooey throat slashing that serves only to inform us of what we could have been in for had Rosas structured his antagonist’s MO more typically. The less is more approach doesn’t necessarily work in low budget slashers.

Still, Blood Junkie was a pleasure to sit through and there’s enough here to prove that Rosas is an exquisite horror filmmaker. His audacious directive style makes him something of a B-movie Wes Anderson and I am eagerly awaiting Billy Club, which should be released shortly.

At 72 minutes, Junkie could never be accused of outstaying its welcome and it’s a film that I feel deserves some of your time.

Slasher Trappings:

Killer Guise: √√√

Gore: √√

Final Girl:

RATING:

Savage Lust 1989 Review

Savage Lust 1989

aka Deadly Manor

Directed by: José Ramón Larraz

Starring: Liz Hitchler, Claudia Franjul, Jerry Kernion

Review by Luisito Joaquín González

This total obscurity came from the hands of Jose Ramón Larraz, a Spanish filmmaker most famous for his exploitation work during the seventies. Amongst his back-catalogue is Vampyres, a gothic rarity that to this day remains a cult classic. He also made a very good stalk and slash mystery called, Edge of the Axe in 1987. Unlike Axe, which was mostly an European production, Lust saw him accept directorial duties on US soil during the cycle’s dying days.

Opinions that I’ve seen and heard on this are split, with some generally positive tributes being mixed with harsh negativity. Larraz’s previous achievements have allowed him to build something of a hero status amongst underground film fans and I wasn’t sure whether that had contributed to the praise that I had seen posted about on the web. Keeping that in mind, I decided to push my Spanish patriotic loyalties to one side and focus on the film as I would any other…

Six youngsters head out on a camping trip deep into the wilderness where one of them knows of a beautiful lake. On the drive through the long winding roads, the group lose their way and pick up a mysterious hitchhiker that says he knows how to get to the area that they’re seeking. As the warm summer day gives way to a stormy night sky, the gang decides that they better find some shelter for the night. As they search the woodland for a place to settle, they come across an eerie derelict mansion shrouded by the darkness of the surrounding trees. Curiosities arise when they discover a car-wreck statue in the front garden that looks like some kind of bizarre shrine. On closer exploration of the premises they discover coffins in the basement and an array of photos of a beautiful woman. Although they feel uneasy, the weather has become unbearable outside and they realise that the only option is to stay for the night. Before long a masked psycho begins to brutally murder the kids one by one. But what is the reason for these ruthless unprovoked murders?

I remember when Andrij Shevchenko signed for Chelsea FC for a massive fee and fans of rival teams like myself were quaking in our boots at the thought of the former European Footballer of the year being added to their ranks. Upon his arrival though, it soon became apparent that his days of glory were long behind him and it was almost painful to watch a former legend struggling to adapt to the quick pace of UK football. I mention this because I had trouble believing that Savage Lust was the work of a filmmaker that had previously been touted as one of the most creative in exploitation cinema. For the first twenty minutes we cut from one flat and boring long-range shot to the next and the camera literally doesn’t move at all. It got so bad that you could hear characters speaking before they walked past the lens and then they would just simply stroll out of shot before the obligatory cut. I mean, they didn’t even zoom in on anyone! By 1989, when this began production, even shot on video flicks were using a dolly track or steadicam; but here it felt like Larraz just couldn’t be bothered to do anything other than point the camera at the actors. He even performed that menial task from as far away as humanly possible and with the flair of a road sweeper with a hangover.

If there’s a total lack of energy in the photography, then hiring a cast that are so wooden that they could camouflage in a timber yard certainly wasn’t going to help. One girl yelps, “I saw a woman’s face in a white mask at the window” like she’s asking for more milk in her coffee. Did they even bother giving these guys auditions? They stroll around the dilapidated house spouting lines so ignorant that you want to flinch away from the screen in disgust and at one point, I caught myself reading the small print on a crisp packet, because I was so intensely bored by the antics going on in front of me. In the time that it took to order, wait for delivery and then demolish a large pizza with two cans of Tyskie, no one got killed and whilst I appreciate that a good amount of mystery was built around the contents of the spooky hacienda, it was done at the pace of a queue at a funeral.

The killer eventually gets to work and begins slashing his way through the youngsters, but any suspense is ruined by the fact that on the copy that I had, I could barely see anything. If you’ve ever been in a pitch black room and tried to locate a darkly coloured object, you will have probably had more success than trying to see what’s going on during the kill scenes here. Lighting rigs are expensive and it’s understandable that pictures like this that are made on tiny budgets may struggle to afford perfect illumination. The likes of Sledgehammer and City in Panic have managed to overcome this with a touch of creative thinking though, so I wonder why they couldn’t have done so here..?

I’m disappointed by Savage Lust because it had the chance to be a lot more. The killer’s motive is superb and there’s a really dark, gothic and mysterious tone running rampant throughout the picture. Chuck on top of that a couple of voluptuous chicas, some slick art-direction, a creepy killer guise and this should easily be a four-star picture. The lack of motivation from the filmmakers is too evident though and you’re left asking yourself why they even bothered. A job worth doing is worth doing well and all that, right?

There’s not too much left to say, except that I wondered if this had been jinxed by a troubled production? It felt like there were two screenwriters that had never met, because how else can you explain that in one moment we get awesome dialogue about houses being haunted by evil energy and then in the next we are given lines that would embarrass a ten year old? I’d be interested in hearing if anyone has any information on this. Oh and I just realised that I haven’t even mentioned the score, which seemed to have been put together freestyle on a Casio keyboard in thirty seconds flat.

Savage Lust does at least include a deep-rooted moral to its story. If ever you’re out in the woods and you discover an ‘abandoned’ house that has coffins in the basement, strange occult signatures garnishing the walls and human’s scalps lying around freely on the mantelpiece, then it’s a good idea NOT to just ignore these signs and think that they’re ‘inspired’ décor. Instead you should realise someone with a severe mental impediment must be nearby and it’s a good idea to get in your car and head for somewhere else… on the double!

I am afraid that I just can’t see where all that positivity on the WWW stems from. I gave up about forty-minutes in to this and slept uninterrupted for nine-hours. When I woke up fully refreshed in the morning, I put it on again and had to fight against nodding off for a second time. I recommend that you stick with Edge of the Axe…

Slasher Trappings:

Killer Guise:√√√

Gore√

Final Girl √

RATING:

.

Death O’ Lantern 1986 Review

Death O’ Lantern 1986

Directed by: Chris Seaver

Starring: Candase Patterson, Dutch Hogan,Savanna Ramone

Review by Luisito Joaquín González

It’s a shame that there aren’t more filmmakers like Chris Seaver about. He has been producing budget features for about twenty years and his filmography is packed with titles that the majority of a SLASH above readers might adore. I was first introduced to his recent work by accidentally stumbling across the Warlock Video website whilst researching a Steve Lathshaw horror flick of a similar title to this one. The name Chris Seaver was not new to me, because I remembered that he had been the director of an old VHS on the Low Budget Productions label from ’94 called, Friday the 13th ‘Halloween Night’ . It was a fan film in every sense of the word that pitched Michael Myers against Jason Voorhees at a Halloween party. Despite being a very obvious back garden development, I never forgot about it because it was immensely gory and extremely fun. In fact, I’m somewhat surprised that it has never made it on to a shiny disc. Perhaps that’s something that could happen as an Extra or Easter Egg in the near future?

Over the years, Seaver and his buddies over at Warlock Video have continued to secure funding so that they can develop DTV chillers and have built a solid reputation in cult circles. They recently came up with the idea of letting their fans financially contribute towards their projects and receive the benefit of an executive producer credit or something similar, which is great for the horror community and really takes the genre to its grassroots. I was hoping that whilst browsing through his extensive online catalogue I would discover at least one or two slashers. With all of his films being tributes to the SOVs of the eighties, I knew that there had to be an entry amongst them somewhere.

At 42 minutes, Death-O-Lantern is more of a semi-short than an all out extravaganza, but it’s extremely affordable to pick up so I was keen to give it a shot. It tells the tale of a small town in 1986 where the talk on the kids’ lips is still heavy metal, Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. Four such youngsters are forced to face their own horror story when the urban legend of Stingy Jack, a child murderer who was killed in the 1800s, comes alive to haunt them a few days before Halloween night. Before long, they are battling to survive against a vicious maniac that needs to butcher six teenage souls in order to return for good…

I watched Death-O-Lantern on my iPad on the train to Reading from my home in London and I honestly had no idea what to expect. The screen lit up with a typical, but impressive, Halloween-alike score and some driving shots of a small suburban city. Within the next two minutes there was an audacious gore shot that was as exceptionally good as it was drastically cheesy and the tone had been set from there on.

You see, Lantern is not a film that wants to confuse itself and its audience in a clash of styles like so many others. Entries like Easter Bunny Bloodbath tend to build a solid foundation with a creepy intro, only to shatter it mindlessly when desperation sets in and they resort to goofy attempts at humour to maintain the pace. Seaver sets a campy tone from the off and never attempts to divert in another direction and this allows his feature to remain fast moving and entertaining. As the story is set in 1986, anyone that knows their horror will remember that killers of that time were as quick with a wisecrack as they were with a machete. Well, Stingy Jack is a follower of annual fashions and he quips and talks as he kills throughout the runtime, which not only keeps things cheesy, but also gives us the chance to stay up to date with the plot. The characters are defined in the archetypal fashion, but the bunny that I thought was sure to be the final girl, suddenly got splattered, which I wasn’t expecting.

It would be pointless of me to rate the dramatics because this is a time when SOVs were full of bad actors, so they are deliberately playing it tongue in cheek. Personally I found the talky scenes to be more annoying than I’d have liked, but thankfully the killings are spaced frequently enough to separate the screen time with the players. The witty dialogue, which was quite obviously pencilled from the mind of a genre enthusiast, was by far the best thing about the picture. We hear the kids discussing Friday the 13th Part VI and Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend, which were two of the biggest horror films of the year and it’s those bonus additions that set this feature apart. For such a minuscule ZERO budgeted production, the gore effects are quite brilliant and the bogeyman looked surprisingly effective in that mask and scarecrow-alike garb.

So is Death-O-Lantern a great horror movie? No. But then again it’s not trying to be. What we have here is a doorway into the mind of a fan of camp eighties horror and as I’m one of those myself, I quite enjoyed it. The ending seemed a bit ‘thrown on top’ and the comedy was a tad risqué for my liking, but yes; it is still worth a look.

For viewers with a sense of humour that understand something about a no budget production, this is a quirky effort with enough pluses in its carry case for it to deliver. Seaver is growing all the time as a director and I’ll be waiting patiently for his next slasher effort.

Slasher Trappings:

Killer Guise: √√√√

Gore: √√

Final Girl:

RATING:

*Ps you probably guessed that this was not really made in 1986, it’s 2011, but why ruin a good gag?

A Day of Judgement 1981 Review

A Day of Judgement 1981

aka Stormbringer

Directed by: Charles Reynolds

Starring: William Hicks, Harris Bloodworth, Susan Bloodworth

Review by Luisito Joaquín González

This is not just an update, but a complete rewrite of my 2004 review of A Day of Judgement, which is still online. I found out some more information about the production of the picture that I have included here. Enjoy…

A Day of Judgement tells the tale of a small Southern town in the 1920s during the Great Depression, where the local church congregation has been reduced to three elderly pensioners. Father Cage blames himself for the lack of attendance and the townsfolk’s unethical attitudes toward the Ten Commandments. Unable to come to terms with the fact that the villagers would rather live in sin than hear his weekly sermons, the priest packs his horse, cart and heads for the city. On his way out of town, he passes a cloaked figure shouldering a scythe and realises that it’s too late for him to save the sinners from a gory punishment.

Around the 100 year anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, I watched an intriguing documentary that claims that the decaying wreck at the bottom of the North Atlantic is actually her sister, the RMS Olympic. The presenter talked us through a pretty convincing case to say that the ships were ‘switched’ in a major insurance fraud that went drastically wrong. History shows that the RMS Olympic was a very unlucky vessel after her maiden voyage and that she had an alarming amount of bumps and scrapes in a very short space of time. The worst of those was when the HMS Hawke, a British warship, ploughed into the side of her; an accident that it was rumoured that she may never recover from. To make matters worse, the collision was considered to be the RMS Olympic’s fault, so she got no Insurance pay out to help towards the large costs of her repairs.

This resulted in a sink or swim (literally) situation for, White Star Line, the parent company of the shipping firm, and it was even said that the Olympic may never pass another board of trade inspection test. There’s no doubt that this is why creative imaginations have found a plausible motive for ‘the switch’: Drown the Olympic in the North Atlantic under the name of her identical sibling and then claim the insurance funds. It sounds far fetched, but who knows…?

Like all good conspiracies, there’s some evidence that backs up these claims and the more I watched of the documentary, the more I began to believe that it could be true. The fact that the letters MP are clearly visible engraved into the hull under the missing characters of the (riveted on top) nameplate TITANIC does speak a thousand words. Such stories are great junk food for the mind and always interesting to read about, but one of the things that really caught my attention, was the fact that JP Morgan, the millionaire banker who had recently purchased White Star Line, claimed ill health and pulled out of the journey just before it set sail. Most of his friends that were due to join the ride also had second thoughts, which is something of an amazing coincidence. Did they perhaps know something that the rest of the passengers didn’t? Or was it an unbelievably fortunate change of plan at the last minute?

Personally, I hate it when plans get changed – most definitely at the last minute – and even if with JP Morgan the alteration saved his life, it’s usually always a bad idea. When this particular film was produced, there was also some strategy switching going on, but unlike what happened with Señor Morgan, I can’t find any logic at all in these choices…

You see, A Day of Judgement began life as a religious drama of the type that were popular on the church circuit in rural America around that time. Director Charles Reynolds was hired to manage the shoot and he did so as per the original script, which included no horror. When he had completed his work, he picked up his paycheque and left to move on to other projects. It was then that one of the financiers got cold feet and thought that the best thing to do was to chuck in a silhouetted killer and market it to the buzzing slasher crowd. They hired someone else to film some additional footage and then sewed it all together like a colour clashing patchwork.

So what we are left with is a bit of a Godfrey Ho. You know Mr Ho, right? I have written about him before in my review of Delirium. He was the master of taking a half finished feature and chucking in outrageous Ninjas in the hope that it might make a profit. He was completely right with that assumption, because they usually always did. Judgement on the other hand snoozes along over its ghastly 101 minute runtime, showing us the town’s residents ‘sinning’ and trying their hardest to look like they’re interested in the lacklustre dialogue, whilst the original church morality plot moves along at the pace of a snail crossing a drawbridge backwards. Seeing as there’s no proof a god exists, I always mock religious people.

The story is populated by an incredibly unappealing group of characters, which includes a greedy bank manager played by William T. Hicks, who true slasher fans may recognise as the lard-ass sheriff from Death Screams. Along with him, we meet a mechanic who wants to send his parents to an old people’s home so that he can use their house for his rendezvous with various females of the species. Then we get to witness the carrying ons of an adulterous wife and her lover, an elderly grump and a paranoid loaner that believes that his ex has cheated on him. Or something like that. Please excuse any slight inaccuracies, but by this point I was using the ‘matchstick between eyelids’ technique as a weak attempt at staying awake

Me watching A Day of Judgement

Each of the players got twenty or so minutes to show why they should be punished by the grim reaper, before he turns up and *briefly* puts the struggling actors out of their misery in various boring ways. The ‘horror’ after shots that were hastily bolted on lasted for thirty-seconds tops and I counted one hokey decapitation before the matchsticks snapped under the weight of desperation of my eyelids to finally go to sleep.

One thing that did interest me was the use of period costumes, horses, carts and automobiles. These ingredients must’ve eaten heavily into the budget and it’s inexplicable as to why they didn’t utilise those funds on a stronger cast selection. Most of these guys were EO Corp regulars who were little more than ambitious locals. Their lack of experience did cause one or two inadvertently amusing ‘bad movie scenes’ that brightened things up a tad. I especially liked the part when one of the bunnies boogied to some period pop, blissfully unaware of how ‘unfortunate’ that she looked. Sadly, even if it had been Katy Perry belly-dancing in a see-through Arsenal football kit, I still don’t think it could’ve saved this one for me. Whether it be the Titanic or her sister laying in a sorry state two-miles under the surface upon the seabed, this film is in an almost identical condition. Ruined. Unsalvageable. Kaput.

Unless you are a sadist and enjoy boredom as a form of torture, there is very little here for you to bother with. Oh and by the way, the ‘day of judgement’ takes place over a week or more. If you have taken a caffeine overdose and *still* can’t get to sleep, then and only then would this be ideal…

Slasher Trappings:

Killer Guise √√

Gore √

Final Girl

RATING: