You’re screwed.

loverslanedvdLOVERS LANE

2.5 Stars  1999/18/89m

“You’re screwed.”

A.k.a. I’m Still Waiting For You (U.K. DVD)

Director: Jon Ward / Writers: Rory Veal & Geof Miller / Cast: Erin J. Dean, Riley Smith, Sarah Lancaster, Anna Faris, Billy O, Matt Reidy, Suzanne Bouchard, Richard Sanders, Ben Indra, Megan Victoria Hunt, Collin F. Peacock.

Body Count: 14

Dire-logue: “You are gonna fuck me right now, or I’m gonna kill your faggot ass!”


Back in the late nineties when everyone and their grandma decided that slasher films were the way to go all over again, there were a lot of attempts to take what worked on the big screen and smallify it for the straight-to-video market, ‘cos, remember, DVD was still a bizarro pipedream which none of us could afford.

Lovers Lane is a mid-level combo of a blender sludge made up of three parts I Know What You Did Last Summer, one part Urban Legend and one part of the then-incoming Cherry Falls. Picking out Valentine’s Day for its calendar-day-to-dread, a couple of horny teens are tormented by a hook-handed fiend and, in a little twist to what we expect will happen, successfully escape to raise the alarm and then stumble on two dead bodies. The psycho is duly picked up by the cops and all is well again.

Thirteen years later, hook-handy bloke escapes from his asylum, leaving the overly personal insult of “Prison Food Sucks” written on the wall in blood. Now, his shrink is half-brother to the Sheriff/widower of the female victim from years ago, and father to bitchy school queen bee Chloe, who is thus cousin to Sheriff/widower’s lonely daughter Mandy. Male victim from years ago was husband to the school principal, who is mom to Michael, Chloe’s long suffering boyfriend – and he and Mandy avoid one another. Naturally, there’s awkwardness between Sheriff and Principal as it’s believed their spouses were having it away when they got slaughtified.

lovers lane 1999 anna faris

The teens have some dramas: Michael dumps Chloe, who has serious anger management issues, and she hatches a plan to win him back via the olde jealousy schtick of taking his buddy Brad up to ‘Lovers Lane’ where they’ll be caught by Michael blah blah blah… Mandy is invited ‘to party’ with the others, including Janelle (Anna Faris) who wears nothing but her cheerleader uniform for the whole film, Billy O as Mandy’s horny date and another couple we don’t really care about.

Hook-dude kills a store clerk and a cop and then goes after the teens, stalking them to a deserted farmhouse and offing them one by one until Michael and Mandy put aside their differences and face “THE TRUTH ABOUT THE PAST”, which is quite different from what we’ve been led to believe. To its credit, Lovers Lane has an almost-smart twist. I say almost because it’s difficult to follow and you have to pay attention to the Scoobying of Sheriff and Principal in their scenes to understand some stuff about incest, jealousy n’ shit. Principal becomes slightly annoying; when there’s violence unfolding before her, she stands there and watches, not helping, not even when her own son is in danger!

lovers lane 1999

There’s not much bloodshed and the budgetary limitations make the scenes set in the dark (i.e. most of them) difficult to see, possibly as an homage to all the no-cash productions of the 80s where minutes would tick by without being able to tell what the hell was happening. And what’s with the UK title? I’m Still Waiting for You? Who is? Hook-guy? Waiting for who? The teens who were four-year-olds at the start? No, no, no – it’s a stupid attempt to fool people into renting it. The box even says “in the tradition of I Know What You Did Last Summer! There are no Last Summer-style letters sent to anyone here, it’s purely the hook-myth thing.

If you want to watch it, I’ll not stop you (like I could!?) But try to appreciate it’s unintentional sense of mirth: the scrawling of hook-guy on the wall not being enough, Janelle snatches four knives from the block to defend herself when she believes the killer is after her… Inoffensive slasherama that is not easy to hate, you’ll be like “aww…they tried”, even though at times they clearly didn’t. You could do worse.

Blurbs-of-interest: the fab Faris later married co-star Indra (who played Brad) and then divorced him, but she also starred in Scary Movie and it’s increasingly dire sequels and also May; Billy O was later in Shredder.

11 comments

  • I remember this being pretty dull, outside those random amusing bits like the principal bitch slapping a girl, or Anna Faris flashing a dude to distract him while his broken leg is set.

    There was another Lovers Lane with a hook-wielding psycho released in 2005. I got the DVD the other day, but haven’t found many reviews for it, so I’m going in pretty blind.

  • Ooh interesting – let us know how it turns out!

  • Whelp, I watched it, and it was… passable, I suppose, especially considering it was a slasher/porno hybrid, something I forgot to mention in my initial comment.

    Aside from that novelty, it’s straightforward to the point of almost complete genericness – a small town is setting up for a ten-year college reunion, and a Ben “The Fisherman” Willis-esque loony has decided to celebrate by prowling the local lovers lane, slashing up any horny jocks and coeds they find. It’s up to our intrepid final girl (a deputy who thinks the killings could be connected to the murder of her sister years earlier) and a hunky FBI agent to crack the case, catch the hooded and hook-handed psycho, and make sure that creepy and secluded wooded areas are once again safe for rowdy college students to screw in.

    It starts off well enough, but then becomes plodding (there’s a gratuitous scene set on some kind of abandoned train that looks like it will end in a triple homicide, but nope) and only picks up momentum again at the end, which has a nice little chase around and into the college (all the typical elements are there – the women stumble, a body pops out of a closet, the villain strolls menacingly as he scrapes his bloody weapon along the lockers, etc).

  • I ordered it (via Paypal) through a website called DiabolikDVD’s “Horror Porn” section. Some other slashery pornos I’m heard of or have seen (not counting parodies and spoofs) are:

    * Come Deadly (1974): Apparently terrible.
    * Porno Holocaust (1981): Seen it, and it’s terrible (it was made by Joe D’Amato, afterall).
    * Fantom Killer 1-4 (1998, 1999, 2003, and 2008): Heard they’re unbelievably campy, but surprisingly stylish little slashers/Giallos. Polish or Russian, but they’ve been subbed.
    * Fantom Seducer 1-2 (both 2005): Some kinda spin-offs of the above. Abandon the style in favor of being more extreme.
    * Camp Cuddly Pines Powertool Massacre (2005): A comedic one, with a surprisingly cool looking killer whose origin is an amusing mix of Freddy, Michael, and Jason’s respective backstories.
    * Slaughter Disc (2005): Incredibly cheap, gory and sleazy.
    * Manniac (2005): Ditto. It’s German, and hasn’t been translated into any other languages.
    * Squealer (2005): Stylish, atmospheric and creepy, though kind of “disturbing and repulsive” according to one review.
    * Blood Lake (2006): Godawful. Avoid like the plague.
    * The Grindhouse XXX (2011) segments “Easter” and “Massacre at Pine Lake”. Heard they’re entertaining.

    And some also count Wet Wilderness, Sex Wish (the 1976 one) and Forced Entry (the 1973 and 2002 ones).

    … I am slightly disturbed by my knowledge of this little subgenre.

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  • It is a little worrying – but for reasons beyond my comprehension, slasher films and porno sex seem to skip around hand in hand. I might still give it a go as you’ve made it sound alright.

  • Jason Voorhees and Ron Jeremy enjoy long, navel gazing walks on the beach together.

    It was alright for what it was, but like I said, that middle section is pretty boring (from a slasher fan point of view, at least). As for it mixing violence and unsimulated sex; unlike a handful of those other ones I mentioned (I need to work on those rambly posts of mine, it sometimes feels like I’m hijacking the place… lol) it’s drier than the Prom Night remake – the most shown is blood on a throat with no discernable wound.

  • Oh, and if you can’t find Lovers Lane anywhere, I could let you borrow my copy.

    Though I’m not really sure if it’s region free or not.

  • Very kind offer but I don’t want to put you out.

    …though I might take you up on it.

  • Wouldn’t be a problem… so long as, y’know, I’d get it back in one piece. : D

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