Brat-Pack Buffet

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SLEEPAWAY CAMP II: UNHAPPY CAMPERS

4 Stars  1988/18/80m

“Angela’s back and she’s bad.”

A.k.a. Nightmare Vacation II (UK video)

Director: Michael A. Simpson / Writer: Fritz Gordon / Cast: Pamela Springsteen, Renee Estevez, Tony Higgins, Brian Patrick Clarke, Susan Marie Snyder, Valerie Hartman, Walter Gotell, Terry Hobbs, Kendall Bean, Julie Murphy, Carol Chambers, Amy Fields, Benji Wilhoite, Walter Franks III, Justin Nowell, Heather Binion, Jason Ehrlich, Carol Martin Vines.

Body Count: 19

Dire-logue: “Here you go, Lea, this’ll keep your tits growing. Maybe you’ll quit looking at mine.”

It should be wrong to say that any film solely about a series of murders is fun. By design, slasher films were initially scary and horrifying. Some go for the depressing and bleak tone and some simply fail at creating any impression whatsoever. But by 1988 when virtually everything ever had been done with the body count film, it was better to recline and poke fun at yourself. Freddy had been doing it for a while with hit and miss success but meanwhile, at the cheap end of the market, beyond the fishmongers and the gypsy handing out heather, the low rent filmmakers were camping it up with all the colour of a gay pride ticker tape parade – at camp no less.

sc2-1The original Sleepaway Camp in 1983 is an interesting film, albeit one that trades almost completely on the revelation of who the killer is, like who it really is. It would be twenty years before it generated its own ‘proper’ sequel (which then took another five years to appear on DVD). In the meantime, two back to back made for video sequels were produced and a third aborted in 1992.

Unhappy Campers wastes no time in demonstrating what it’s all about: a campfire recap of ‘the legend of Camp Arawak’ ushers in the now grown-up Angela, working as a counsellor at Camp Rolling Hills where she takes an active dislike to bad kids, which, in her screwy mind covers just about everybody.

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Good girl Molly (Renee Estevez) seems to be the only one immune to Angela’s policy of ‘sending home’ those who flaunt their bodies, do drugs, or even talk too much. Interestingly, all the campers are named after actors from the Brat Pack movement in the mid-80s: there’s nasty bitchy Ally, who has lots of sex, horndog jock Rob, hunky Sean, sexy Mare, sassy black girl Demi, pervy brothers Charlie and Emilio and a load of backgrounders who simply pump up the body count.

Angela offs her victims using a variety of weapons from logs to guitar strings and barbecues, even brandishing a chainsaw for an amusing Angela (as Leatherface) vs. Jason vs. Freddy gag. Eventually though, after too many kids are ‘sent home’, she’s fired and goes a bit mad.

sc6aSleepaway Camp II succeeds with its campy bright colours, the uniforms the kids wear and the cliche ridden tour through T&A and bloodletting, all underscored by Angela’s one-liners as she disappointedly lays another teenager to waste for showing their boobs or being mean to another kid. However, there are momentary flashes into the dark: Angela’s dream sequence is kinda freaky and she goes into a short depressed trance and tells Molly that she once drowned a boy who was nasty to her.

All this critique aside, you simply must see it if only just to bear witness to the immortalised crimes against hair:

sc-hair-from-hell-2Quite possibly the most frightening thing about the film.

Springsteen (Bruce’s lil sis) is good in the role and the best thing about the not-so-fun Sleepaway Camp III and Estevez (Emilio’s lil sis) is a perfect fit for goody-goody heroine Molly. Keeping with the sisters-of-the-more-famous schtick, in the next film Melanie Griffith’s sister Tracy played the final girl.

Blurbs-of-interest: director Simpson and Springsteen returned for the third film; Estevez was also in Intruder; Justin Nowell played one of the campers in Friday the 13th Part VI.

Valley of the Cheapjack Franchises: HORROR 101

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More cheapo “chills” at the expense of my time and money exploring the films that I only advise you to avoid – this time I stroll down the memory lane populated by the dismally boring Horror 101 and it’s sensationally titled sequel, Horror 102, which came to me some time ago in a double pack with a freebie third film called Museum of the Dead.

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HORROR 101

1 Stars  2000/89m

Director: James Glenn Dudelson / Writers: Valorie Connally, Jenny McPhee & Daniel Miller / Cast: Bo Derek, Justin Urich, Josh Holland, Lisa Gordon, Brigitta Dau, Paityn James, Michael Moon, Scott Rinker, Jason Wolk.

Body Count: uh…

A weird one for VeVo as Horror 101 is one of those sonofabitch films that merely pretends it’s a slasher film, revealing that it’s some PG-13 film club production shot in four hours when it’s already too late!

To be truthful, I can’t remember much about Horror 101 other than the wake of anger I was left treading water in once my DVD player kind of spat the disc out in disgust. I don’t keep notes on non-slasher films so I’ll try and sum it up for you in as detailed a manner as I can:

Film class stays after hours for some seminar on horror. Or the emotion of fear. They have made some films of their own. Nobody likes one of the guys who is outcasty and therefore suspicious. Bo Derek is their teacher. They all begin wandering off to investigate strange noises or look for whomever wandered off to investigate a strange noise three minutes earlier.

BUT, people aren’t stabbed or sliced – they just vanish into thin air until a grandiose twist is unveiled. But it sucks. It really sucks and I stared slack-jawed at the screen asking some higher force why it was that somebody would every create this abortion of horror.

Weirdly, outcasty guy was played by Justin Urich, who also appeared in this film called Serial Killing 101, which also turned out not to be a slasher film despite pretending to be one also. That strangeness aside, play hookie and skip class.

*

horror102HORROR 102: ENDGAME

 2004/89m  1.5 Stars

“Winner kills all.”

Director/Writer: Ana Clavell / Cast: Melissa Frederick, Anna Lerbom, Jeremy Aldridge, Simon Zonatto, Michael Moon, Christopher Hawkins, Shasa Dabner, Lukas Langer, Joshua Allen Heck.

Body Count: 8

Dire-logue: “What are you gonna do, marinate me?”

Yes, it’s better – by half a star. But that’s only because it’s enough of a slasher flick to count. So don’t skip out merrily thinking you’ll be entertained by repeated viewings.

This time, a group of mixed students have agreed to take part in a psychology experiment as an act of atonement for a variety of campus misdemeanours. They’re to spend an unspecified amount of time in the closed down Bellepark Asylum, where they’re duly stalked and slain by a hooded killer. I only noticed then typing out the cast roster that one of the actors from 101 returned to a different role.

While the most measly of measly margins better than 101, it’s nevertheless an endurance test: murders are largely off-camera or shot in such a way as to restrict the bloodshed in order to pass for a PG-13 rating again and there’s some nonsensical gibberish about hauntings and LSD trips thanks to laced-bread!

Characters are the usual hodge-podge of genre stereotypes and, at one point, one of them takes charge and tells everyone to stay together before announcing he’s going to check on somebody else alone… What aids the film in the end is the twist, which is not as predictable as it initially seems but it’d still need a goddamn miracle to scrape even a complete second star.

All you can do is step back in time

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campdazeCAMP DAZE

1.5 Stars  2005/95m

“The only way out is death.”

A.k.a. Camp Slaughter (DVD)

Director: Alex Pucci / Writers: Alex Pucci & Draven Gonzalez / Cast: Anika McFall, Joanna Suhl, Matt Dallas, Eric McIntire, Jon Fleming, Kyle Lupo, Miles Davis, Bethany Taylor, Ashley Gomes, Jessica Sonneborn, Jim Marlowe.

Body Count: 45+

Direlogue: “Backwoods…scary noises… Haven’t you heard of Jason?”

Idea. Excellent. Setting. Perfect. Costumes. Authentic. Execution. Uhh… Can I grab a hall pass?

On paper – or indeed the webpage – Camp Daze reads flawlessly: a quartet of teenagers driving to Maine find themselves stranded at kooky Camp Haiwatha, which is stranded in the summer of 1981, perpetually reliving the night when a psychopathic killer went on a bloody rampage. Fucking awesome.

As an homage to a certain groundbreaking summer camp slasher film, complete with a block-like title card smashing through a pain of glass before it was renamed Camp Slaughter for DVD, mixed with a Groundhog Day riff, this takes some amusing pot-shots at the most famous franchise in slasherama but ultimately chokes on its shoestring budget, which make it look unwatchably cheap and badly made. Y’know, worse than the films it apes.

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Most of the film’s problems lie in the visual: careless edits and amateurish gore effects work don’t pack a punch and appear odd under the impressive orchestral score. Slot this in next to terrible acting and poorly conceived characters who suck the fun out of it all, with no real central figure to root for. The eventual sole survivor, Jen, is the sassy black girl who says ‘fuck’ a lot and keeps bringing up Jason, much to the confusion of the camp counsellors.

Even with the strange, not-quite-sure homoerotic undertones and a ballistic body count – possibly a sign of a poorly thought out script – nothing stands out and the obnoxious twist ending just induces rage at the laziness of the plot.

With a better collection of actors and shot with more care, this could’ve been a minor classic but it’s destined to become just one more post-millennial DTV slasher film that claimed it was recapturing the old school methods but failed miserably.

Blurb-of-interest: Jessica Sonneborn returned to camp in Bloody Bloody Bible Camp; director Pucci and actors Fleming and Taylor all contributed to Frat House Massacre.

Lock the door when you’re on the throne

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psycho-iiiPSYCHO III

3.5 Stars  1986/18/89m

“Norman’s back to normal. But mother’s off her rocker!”

Director: Anthony Perkins / Writer: Charles Edward Pogue / Cast: Anthony Perkins, Diana Scarwid, Jeff Fahey, Roberta Maxwell, Hugh Gillin, Robert Alan Browne, Juliette Cummins, Katt Shea Ruben, Gary Bayer.

Body Count: 5

Direlogue: “I must have left the bathroom in a real mess…” / “I’ve seen it worse.”

Back to the Bates Motel for Round III, this time directed by Perkins himself and set a matter of months after the events of Psycho II, which saw Norman bludgeon friendly old waitress – and closet psychette – Mrs Spool to death after she claimed she was his real mother.

The local cops are still looking for Spool, who is placed in her window seat in the Bates house, and bolshy reporter Maxwell has turned up, intent to do a story on Norman about rehabilitated offenders.

psycho3-2To further complicate matters, a young Novice (Scarwid) comes to the motel after a dramatic crisis of faith caused the death of her Mother Superior – it doesn’t help Norman’s twitchy state of mind that she looks like a doppelganger of Marion Crane…and is called Maureen Coyle!

Mother, of course, takes an instant dislike to Maureen and decides to do away with her, only to find that Maureen has already tried to do away with herself. Saved from suicide, everyone thinks Norman saved a life, with the exception of the nosy reporter chick, who tells all to the Bates Motel’s untrustworthy new assistant manager, Duke (Fahey).

People soon begin to die: Duke’s one-nighter in a phone box recreation of that shower scene and one very unfortunate girl who comes to party with a truckload of college football players who suffers the indignity of getting her throat slashed while on the can!

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Nosy reporter chick’s digging on the vanished Mrs Spool soon unearths a connection to Norma Bates and she decides that she needs to get into the Bates house for answers, where we’ll find out once and for all who’s dressed up in a wig, dress and hefty shoes and brandishing a shiny kitchen knife…

…And it’s Norman. But then, who else could it be this time around? There are no other suspects to pick from, unlike Psycho II, which functions more as a mystery. Although this unmasking is both unsurprising and a tad disappointing, it does allow for us to see Norman dressed up as Mom for the first time in 26 years and we get to witness this once in a lifetime expression of insane glee…

psycho3-1Psycho III is an underrated entry; it’s almost as good as its predecessor and in some ways it’s more fun. At a lean hour and a half, it never becomes tiresome and there’s a defined thread of humour running through it, with some great lines and nods back to the original. Perkins directs more than competently and his cast support him well, with a nice twist on who we expect to become the heroine at the end. Although number four provides some interesting insights, it’d have been better if things were left here.

Blurbs-of-interest: Perkins appeared in Destroyer two years later; Gillin and Browne both returned from Psycho II; Juliette Cummins was Robin in Friday the 13th Part V, Sheila in Slumber Party Massacre II and was also in Deadly Dreams; Jeff Fahey was in Fallen Angels; and most interestingly, Katt Shea – toilet victim – actually directed both Stripped to Kill movies and The Rage: Carrie 2.

Stock Background Characters 101: Macho Asshole

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In this feature, we examine the lesser beings of the slasher movie realm, which, if you’re making your own slasher film, could provide a good cast roster for you.

No killer or final girl profiles here, this is a celebration of those underlings who made the most of their fleeting flirtation with stardom. And usually died.

THE MACHO ASSHOLE

wildmanOverview: The Macho Asshole is the SBC who we want to see die the most – with extreme humiliating prejudice. Usually appearing as a young, muscular dickhead who has no respect for anyone, and thinks he can beat the killer with his fists. When the shit hits, he’s for himself and nobody else.

Linguistic Snapshot: “No faggot killer’s gonna get me! I’m invincible, pussies! Now suck my dick, bitch!”

Styling: Vests and sports gear – MA is the best at all sports. Now swoon over those guns, ladies!

Hallmarks: Short-fused, homophobic, sexist and selfish but normally good looking and athletic – all the things we want to see destroyed in a frenzy of grue.

Downfall: MA has been able to get away with what he wants for now but with uncontrollable temper comes uncontrollable situe and he will discover that being a buff testosterone hive will not help in the face of an axe-toting maniac, who will inevitably be stronger, even if physically smaller.

barryGenesis: The earliest MA’s were found in the post-Halloween cycle, such as high school bad boy Lou in Prom Night, who makes the fatal error of substituting the nominal Prom King with himself and then gets decapitated.

Then there’s image-obsessed Greg Hellman in Happy Birthday to Me who, it turns out, just doesn’t have the balls to survive a female killer (loser!); dopey jock Wildman in Final Exam has less attitude but also thinks he can out-swing the psycho and is ironically wasted with a piece of gym equipment.

But Macho Asshole honors surely belong to Glazer from The Burning. Glazer bullies the smaller kids and parades around in short shorts trying to impress his object of lust, Sally, eventually getting her into the sack only to disappoint her with a dud shag and deservedly meets the sharp end of the killer’s pruning shears.

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Legacy: In the cynical days of, well, now, Macho Asshole has become an almost permanent slasher movie fixture. From uber-dick Barry in I Know What You Did Last Summer (and his pale imitations of both sequels) to Carter in Final Destination, who is so arrogant that he has the sheer audacity to state “I’m never gonna die,” for the audience to chant “oh yeah?”

Other films have traded purely upon hateful figureheads populating the doomed cast: See No Evil pit a group of utterly detestable young offenders against a hulking wacko and Wilderness placed some Borstal-boys on an island with a psychotic ex-SAS maniac.

carterMost recently, we had Trent in the Friday the 13th remake acting like a jackass until he eventually met the angry side of Jason and Tormented featured a particularly horrible bunch of English schoolkids having the tables turned on them by their undead bullying victim.

Exceptions: Some jocks in the realm might be dumb horndogs but occasionally they turn out to be harmless hulks, such as Arch in April Fool’s Day (played by Tom Wilson, prolific MA Biff Tannen from Back to the Future), the randy jock in Hack! or gym-fit, gay hero David in The Beaten Track – that’s the book I wrote, y’know?

Future: Macho Asshole has become increasingly prevalent and he’s always a welcome resting place for some kind of implement or another, much like his underlings, the nerd, the joker and the slutty girl. He’s more common than ever so best get used to his politically incorrect ways.

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