zwolanerd

A few weeks ago I promised I’d try to track down the last in the “Sleepaway Camp” movies. I made a promise and I’ve kept it – this week we’re watching “Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor.” Production for this movie started in 1992 and around half an hour of movie was made, but then all the money went away and it sat in a box (or possibly on a shelf) until completion in 2012.

Under a full moon, Angela (the murdery person from the earlier movies) staggers out to a car. She’s chased down by a girl with an axe, and all of this footage is actually from a previous Sleepaway Camp movie. The girl picks up something and stabs Angela multiple times in the belly before another member of camp staff comes to drag her away. Angela lays dying in the leaves on the ground. An ambulance is now carrying Angela to hospital, but she comes to and stabs the paramedics with a syringe before stealing the ambulance and driving off.

More repeat footage from earlier films is tinted blue and used as the backdrop for a scrolling text in the form of psychiatrist notes. Allison Kramer is having nightmares and selective amnesia, so the doctor tells her she’s probably been involved with the sleepaway camp stuff. The doctor has arranged for Allison to visit the site of the sleepaway camp to try and recover her memories. Why the doctor automatically decided she was a sleepaway camp person I don’t know, perhaps that was the only module he attended at college. “But who is Allison really?” the notes conclude. I sigh and say “Oh, probably Angela” and my dog looks at me like I’m crazy. Judgmental animal.

The opening credits have been made in Windows Movie Maker, but at least they’ve changed the font from the default. Allison is sitting on the dock in a bikini, looking incredibly uncomfortable. A voice over which sounds like the actress was way too far away from the mike says “I remember a day like today, when Angela stalked these grounds.” Allison looks at a tent which is sitting on top of a cliff, and was, according to the tinny voice over, the scene of a gruesome attack. We’re back to the repeat clips, this time of one of the camp owners rolling around with a simpering staff member. Why the tent is still there X years later so Allison can gaze at it moodily I don’t know. Anyway, Angela unzips the tent and does some murdering, beating the pair to death with a tiny branch.

Another shot of Allison on the dock now, looking thoughtful. The voice over is stilted and still tinny, but Allison wants us to know that Angela was a freak. Why she’s brought a bikini to what amounts to a therapy session I don’t know. I feel there’s going to be a lot of unanswered questions. This new footage lasts about 20 seconds before the picture fades into more repeat footage. This time it’s from the first movie, where Angela’s crazy Aunt is dressing up her nephew in girls clothes to create Angela.

Angela (Felissa Rose)

More bikini, more stilted voice over. About 7 seconds this time, before another clip from the first movie, with more crazy Aunt sending Angela off to her very first sleepaway camp. A shot of Allison again just long enough to have her think “I remember that day” and then back to movie one, with the buses arriving at camp. Crowds of kids are running down from the buses and Ricky (Angela’s cousin) is greeting his friends from last year while Angela looks scared and sad. Ricky’s friend tells him one of the girls has grown a decent pair of breasts, which means a quick shot of Allison doing a little bikini based shimmy before we’re back to movie one, with Angela in her cabin. One of the girls is giving Angela a hard time and wanting to know why Angela never showers with the other girls. The cabin leader tells this girl to shut her face (my words).

The next clip is from one of the other movies, the second one I think. A bunch of campers are camping out in the woods and the local policeman who is leading the group is discussing Angela with them. This clips leads into another one with Angela performing a happy little speech for the campers in the rec hall, which is intercut with shots of Angela from the first movie. Keep up will you? This footage looks like it was dubbed from an aging VHS tape, and for all I know it was.

The next part is a jumbled pile of clips from the first three movies, people discussing how weird Angela is, Angela murdering a camp owner with a lawnmower, one of the camp staff making a move on young Angela, the discovery of the lawnmowered woman’s headless body, Angela comforting another girl who found the body, a rolling head in the dark, Angela keeping a bunch of campers hostage in her cabin. None of it makes sense, it’s not like it’s edited together to tell a story, it’s just bits of other movies crammed together. It ends when Angela is confronting the policeman from earlier, and he asks her how he’ll die. As he runs through the options, clips of her other murders are edited in. This is a big messy jumble. She shoots the cop.

Another nanosecond of new footage and it’s back to flashback, this time from movie two. A bunch of campers around a campfire telling spooky stories. Of course the story is about Camp Arawak, the place where Angela first did some murdering. “A bunch of little kids were hatched to death” says one camper, but I think she means “hatcheted.” If you were wondering, yes they do now edit that clip in. This consists of a shot of some kids sleeping in the woods, a shot of a hatchet and then the camp leader guy finding the sleeping bags all chopped up, because not one of those kids woke up apparently. “And a girl got stabbed while taking a shower!” says the camper and oh look, here’s the clip just in case you didn’t believe her.

“One of the cooks got boiled in some water”… and clip. They haven’t bothered to do anything with the music, which is a bit jarring. The dramatic music from the murder clips just stops suddenly as the footage is spliced with the campfire clips. I’ve said footage and clips too many times already. Speaking of, here’s the bit where the original camp owner gets shot in the neck with an arrow. Just as the camper is finishing up the story, Angela arrives to take her back to the cabin. The girl finishes her story, telling the other campers about how Angela was really a boy and they found him on the beach holding the head of another camper. Clip from the first movie now, showing the bit just before the bit the girl just described.

In the woods, Angela and the girl have an argument because Angela (who was a bit obsessive about how wonderful camp is) threatens to send the girl home for breaking the rules. The girl is not apologetic, so Angela murders her with a branch to the face. The next morning the rest of the cabin notice that the girl is gone, and Angela explains she had to send the girl home for being bad.

Back to Allison on the dock. This time she’s actually climbing into the water. Well, she’s standing on the ladder anyway. The voice over now sounds like she’s locked in a fridge. “She was afraid of the water” Allison says, triggering another flash back to the first movie. Angela is sitting on the bleachers beside the lake while one of the older girls is ordering her to swim. Angela doesn’t say or do anything as the older girl gets more and more upset and angry. This clip cuts out before the ending of the scene, and we jump to one of the later movies, where one of the other counselors is asking Angela to go swimming. Despite his impressive mullet, Angela declines and we cut back to movie one, where the boys are having a water balloon fight and Angela is hit with one of the balloons.

Now it’s time for Angela’s revenge on the guy who threw the balloon, and he gets locked into the toilet and has a hornets nest dropped on him. Angela is nothing if not creative. He’s stung to death, of course.

Time for one of the other movies, where Angela is doused from a bucket suspended on the door. The young boys responsible are found propped up outside a window with their throats cut. The counselor who finds them runs to the camp owner to find him dead and slightly chopped up. Hanging from a hook in the office is another staff member, and as the woman turns around Angela grabs her and stabs her in the stomach. First movie again, Angela is sitting on the bleachers while the older girl orders her to swim. One of the counselors comes over, picks Angela up and dumps her in the water, causing her to freak out. Ricky sees this and runs to her aid, leading her away from the docks.

Oh look, it’s Allison looking thoughtful again. There’s an extreme close up of some guy in a hat, and the music gets all over excited. A life jacket is floating empty on the lake, and here’s Guy In A Hat again. I’ve been craving some original footage, but now I see I wasn’t missing anything. Besides, it’s only 30 seconds or so before we’re back to flashbacks.

Angela (Pamela Springsteen)

One of the campers is going to give Angela a scare by dressing up as Freddy Krueger. Angela is asleep, and dreaming of her Aunt which makes for a flash back within a flashback. I have a headache. Angela then dreams of the boating accident that killed her sister and left her, when she was a he, before the Aunt thing. This wakes her up. The Freddy Krueger camper meets up with a guy dressed like Jason Voorhees. Freddy has dropped his glove, but Freddy has to go somewhere. You know who has the glove? Angela has the glove and she slashes Freddy’s throat with it. Jason is looking for Freddy, but meets Mike Meyers, which is Angela wearing Freddy’s face. She has a chainsaw, and Jason gets chased and sliced up.

Allison has found some clothes and is standing on a cliff top looking sad. For 3 seconds. Then we’re back to the flashbacks, this time it’s the body of a boy Angela drowned being found and carried away by paramedics. This is from the first movie, and the original camp owner is trying to explain away the boy’s death as an accident to protect the camp’s reputation. He’s not that worried about what appears to be all the campers watching the corpse being loaded into the ambulance. Letters home this week should be interesting. There’s a nanosecond shot of young Angela, then we’re on to movie three where a bunch of surly teens are standing around waiting to be interviewed for the news. Angela is disguised as one of these teens. There is no reason at all for this clip to be used at this point.

Anyway, another clip, different movie, Angela listening to the camp owner talking about how there’s no good kids left. Angela promises to weed out the bad kids. “That is what she did” thinks Allison, who’s on a cliff top still. Oh we’re back to older movies again. Was the actress playing Allison payed per full minute of screen time or something? We haven’t had a full minute of her in a while.

Here’s Angela strangling a camper and hiding her body. She’s disturbed by another camper, who gets stabbed (gently). Quick jump to Angela in her little cabin in the woods with a bunch of people tied up. She explains to one of the counselors that she’s had a ton of treatment and is completely cured, but he’s too busy crying to listen because he knows he’s about to be made dead. He’s right, the next shot is his head crammed into a TV.

Allison gazes down at the lake from her cliff top. This is just to hide the cut between old footage. We go to the start of the third movie, where Angela murders a girl who is on her way to camp in order to go in her place. You’d do the same. This is intercut with the boat accident for no reason. Angela chases the girl down an alley in a Mack truck, which is a pretty impressive way to kill anyone. Even more impressive is there’s no other traffic on the roads. Another quick shot of Allison and it’s back to movie three, with Angela arriving at camp and being talked to by Morgan Fairchild (no, really. She was the interviewer in the later bit, which was shown earlier). Morgan asks Angela to help her find some coke, so Angela goes to find her some white powder which will kill her because Angela is moral. Morgan pulls over to snort the “coke” and collapses. Angela had given her cleaning powder.

To the rec hall now, with the campers all singing along to Angela’s jaunty camping themed song. For ten seconds. Then Angela in the woods with a camper who gets murdered with an axe. Back to the song. Cut to another murder. This time Angela is leading another camper on a blindfolded trust exercise. Finding out that the girl takes drugs, she goes ahead with the murder, hoisting the girl up a flag pole and then letting her drop. The song again, then a murder with a firecracker shoved up someone’s nose.  Angela sneaks up on a guy in a tent who has a boombox and throws a tape at him. It’s a terrible rap about how the kid is about to die, and while he’s listening to it, Angela collapses the tent and then beats him to death with a branch before hammering tent pegs into him.

Now there’s another jumble of clips. Angela meeting her cabin leader, a girl with leeches all over her face, Angela confronting a bratty girl in the woods and then stabbing her in the back before forcing her into a latrine. The bullying older girl is knocked out and murdered via hair straightener insertion (leaving the details to your imagination). Angela finding a couple of stoner girls in the woods and tying them to a grill.  Angela is talking to a girl in a car and demanding her apology for poor behaviour. The girl refuses to apologise, so Angela drills her to death with a drill.

Angela (Carrie Chambers)

Allison again, the tinny far off voice over says “I have to get out of here before I go crazy.” She decides to go and see the ranger, and they make out? They make out. Woodenly. Why are they making out? What is going on here? As they kiss, there’s a clip of young Angela with her first boyfriend. Angela decides she can’t have sex with the ranger and runs from the cabin shouting “No!” The ranger rushes after her, putting on his hat and sunglasses (it’s guy in a hat from before) and the music gets incredibly 90s all over the place. He chases Allison through the woods. The shots of Allison running are intercut with shots of Angela running. The ranger catches her and because she ran away from him he’s all angry and threatening. They roll around on the ground a bit before Allison gets away.

A hunter is walking around looking for things to shoot at (unconvincingly). He sees a movement and runs toward it. It’s Allison. Once he sees it’s a person, he keeps the gun pointing at her to accuse her of being crazy for being in the woods. Dude, drop the gun. Allison explains that the ranger is chasing her, and seeing a woman in obvious distress the hunter shouts at her furiously that there’s no ranger in the area. Finally he lowers the gun and they chuckle. “The ranger is chasing me” says Allison again.

There’s a high pitched panicked version of the voice over as Allison keeps on keeping on through the woods. This consists of shakey cam footage of trees and a bunch of short clips of people being murdered. There’s a shot of Movie Three Angela taking a gun out of her belt, and then Allison has the gun and is holding it against the ranger’s throat. She doesn’t kill him, just tells him to go away. Then she finds the hunter and holds the gun to his cheek. “You’re gunna help me” she says. There’s a gun shot.

Allison is standing beside a tree, clutching a knife and wearing a black bikini top (she packed quite a lot of clothes for this one day at camp). There’s a shot from the first movie, of Angela being discovered as the murderer, then a bunch of fast cuts to other random bits of the older movies. As the sun glints off her knife, the ranger creeps up from behind and the screen turns red.

Dang. I was hoping for “credits” but there’s more old footage to look at yet, this time tinted blue. It’s Angela’s old cabin in the woods, and now there’s new bodies in it. The ranger and I guess the hunter (hard to tell, he’s had his head skinned). Oh my gosh, Allison was Angela all along! Credits (hooray).

I sort of get what they were trying to do. Having a random woman with no identity who turns out to be the killer from previous movies could have worked quite well, if only it wasn’t done so terribly. For one thing, there were only three new cast members in this movie, and they were all dreadful. “Allison” couldn’t even sit on a dock and make it look convincing, so I don’t know why they expected her to actually say lines.

The massive twist they were going for wasn’t twisty. Who else but Angela would remember all these things that happened to Angela? With every single clip from Angela’s point of view, or involving Angela in some way, there’s no one else Allison could have been.

Now, the clips. What a lot of clips! I enjoyed the first three Sleepaway Camp movies, I honestly did. They were ridiculous but very good fun. Chopping them up into what were apparently random bits and slipping a clip from movie one into a clip from movie three, using random bits of footage that didn’t seem to have a bearing on anything and cutting long scenes up into short clips meant that the original sense of the movies – the fun of them – was lost. Also lost were any overtones of tension or increasing madness on the part of Angela.

Any story or great performance from the first three movies was basically smacked with a hammer until it was literally random bits of old footage smooshed together. There was no story. There wasn’t anything but endless clips. I said at the start there’s supposed to be half an hour or so of original footage, but I would be very surprised if it was that much. Of what there was, the production quality was shocking. The voice over was, as I may have mentioned, tinny and distant. The clips from the other movies were not even matched in volume. Loud, then soft, then loud, then soft… maddening.

Where the gun came from at the end I don’t know. She remembered it and it became real? If that works, I have to spend more time thinking about the time I ate some really good chocolate. If she’d had it all along, why was she running? She could have shot the ranger in the foot and wandered out casually.  Although why she was even making out with him is still a mystery. Angela wasn’t into sex and certainly not casual sex – it was one of the things she murdered people for, as punishment for their actions.

Instead of watching this, seek out the original three movies. Watch those in order instead. It’s a lot more fun, will give you an actual story to think about and if you really feel you’re missing out you can imagine a wooden woman in a pink bikini every seven minutes. Same experience, basically.

Tags: Dire DVDs

Going to be honest, I’m doing Camp Nanowrimo this month and my brain is in “More words are better” mode, so if this post ends up even more wordy than usual, I apologise.

Now, on to the movie. Generally, I like a low budget movie. A movie made for the love of making movies rather than to fill a genre gap in a studio plan. A movie gathering, perhaps, friends and family together to write, shoot, perform and edit a tiny gem of pure creativity where every single dollar was spent on the final product. Of course, the risk with your basic low budget movie is that it will end up terrible. Which brings us to “Dismal.” Such an apt name.

Not pictured: Quality effects

A shiny man with big arms is floating on a boat through a swamp at night, shining a flashlight around and peering into the dark. He’s with someone else, who wants to know if he can see anything. Turns out the shiny man is a Movie Southern – which is a person putting on a Southern accent in order to be in a movie. It’s not a great accent, but this is a Dire DVD and good accents would ruin the mood. The shiny man spots something in the water. He tells the other guy to shut up because noise will spook it. He says this really loudly. All the excitement is about a huge rubber alligator, which I think is supposed to be a real alligator. The shiny man shoots the alligator and both men do some yee-hawing and leaping about. In a boat. Skillful. They row to where the alligator was, but it’s not there now so the shiny man gets out of the boat to wade around in the water. He collapses into the water like he’s been pulled under, and on the other side of the boat a hooded person emerges silently from the water and grabs the other guy. The not-shiny guy.

Both guys are dragged to a creepy cabin in the swamp where they’re chopped into tiny bits. This is all intercut with the opening credits, and the tiny bits are covered in unconvincing blood. They may also be rubber. Someone involved in this movie had shares in the rubber industry. There’s a close up of a mouth full of rotten teeth licking some of this fake blood of his fingers. There’s make up on the chin of the guy but it’s woeful make up. It looks like he ate his breakfast cereal really messily and didn’t wipe his chin after.

It’s a sunny day at Random College and a girl in Biology is freaking out about dissection. This is Dana and she’s completely squicked out about chopping up a snake, which makes me wonder why she’s in a Biology class. Some guy who might be a teacher’s aide comes over to help her. He’s intense to her frizzy personality. The music goes all spooky as she stares at the snake. She pushes a scalpel into it, to show someone already cut it open anyway, and then goes all grossed out again. The intense guy is totally understanding, and she’s all warm and fuzzy about that. Intense guy helps her cut the snake open and he is really, really into the whole “Look at the guts!” thing.

Dana is rightly worried about failing the class, but Kurt (the intense guy) whispers that he’s taking some students on an expedition to a swamp. It’s really just a camping trip, he says, but any student who writes a report on the wildlife will get extra credit. Kurt gives Dana his number if she decides to join them. She doesn’t look thrilled, because it’s all outdoors and stuff. The group will leave on Saturday morning.

Dana’s leaving class when her boyfriend rushes up to tell her about a party on Saturday night. She’s looking forward to it, but Kurt is hovering and doesn’t look pleased she’ll be skipping a swamp weekend for a killer kegger. Later that night, Dana’s boyfriend crawls out of her bed to go out with the boys. She’s annoyed because she wanted to hang out in her room with him. As she picks up some papers, Kurt’s phone number falls to the floor. Dana’s boyfriend is furious so Dana explains she needed to call Kurt about the field trip. The Boyfriend says she’s not even going to the swamp, because it’s not his problem if she fails and she’ll miss out on a killer party. Dana’s boyfriend is a jerk. Seeing that he’s upset her, he sighs and leaves. So caring.

Saturday morning, and a bunch of students are loading into an SUV. Jamal turns up with a girl who is almost wearing shorts, though it might be a belt. She’s not in the class, but Jamal needs her around this weekend. I hope she’s got bug spray, she’s got a lot of exposed skin. Then again, so do the other girls. They’ve all opted for short shorts and crop tops. The girl who forgot to put clothes on is named Eve. I mention this because I suspect she’ll be killed second. First to be killed? My money is on the black guy, Jamal. Formula Horror Movie 101, kill the black guy first. Kurt is worried about Eve’s clothes, but it’s totally cool because she has a hiking outfit. This consists of short shorts and a boob tube.

It’s time to go, but Kurt lingers, checking his phone for a message from Dana because he’s creepy about Dana. Just as Kurt gets into the car, Dana arrives, asking if she’s too late. This is a stupid question, because they clearly haven’t left yet. Kurt is all pleased again, and the group sets off for the swamp.

It’s a long drive, but although they’ve been driving through swamp for ages, it’s not the right bit of swamp. Kurt is determined to show them some genuine wildlife, so they have to go deep into the heart of the swamp. I’ve said swamp so often it’s stopped looking like a word, and we’re only 15 minutes in. One of the students notices he doesn’t have a phone signal, so everyone peers at their phones to confirm they also do not have service. Oh no! What if they get into murdery trouble?? Dana is concerned, because accidents happen. Kurt assures her he has a radio phone and if anyone gets bitten by a snake they can radio for help. Eve can’t believe there might be snakes. In the swamp. These people are supposed to be in college.

Although they’ve been begging to stop for ages, once the car does stop all the students stay in it. Kurt tells them the road stops here and they have to hike out to the campsite. Reluctantly, because they weren’t expecting to hike on a hike, they climb out of the car and set off into the swamp. Eve whispers to Jamal “You need to pay me a lot more for this.” So desperate to impress a bunch of college students, he appears to have hired an escort for the entire weekend.

I’ll say this for Dana, she might have enrolled in Biology with no love for the subject, but at least she’s wearing long pants. After everyone complains a lot about all this hiking around, Kurt shuts them down to show Dana a bird through binoculars. Although the group is in a swamp, the bird is in the desert. Where do I get these binoculars with such great magnification? I want to look at New Zealand! The group stops looking at the stock footage bird and sets off again fro the camp site.

There’s someone in the woods behind them. Judging by the breathy, gaspy sound this someone makes I’m guessing it’s a murderous psycho with cereal on his chin. The group makes it to the camp site, but are none too enthused about setting up their tents. Kurt is stressed out by this, because it’s getting dark and if it gets dark before your tent is up… then you have to put your tent up in the dark.

There’s four tents, and through the magic of editing, three of them are now up. Dana is putting up the fourth one but she can’t do it because she’s a girl who doesn’t like outdoors stuff. Kurt helps, like he did with the snake. Okay there’s less intestines this time, but still. His version of helping is holding a tent pole and explaining how his dad used to take him camping and build lean-tos in the woods. Dana could not care less, but Kurt keeps on chatting about his amazing dad. I’m wondering if creepy Kurt’s dad might live in a shack in the swamp.

Kurt sends the group off to take notes on animals, and tells them there’s an hour until lunch so they should aim to get back by then. So I guess it wasn’t going to get dark that soon after all. Unless he means dinner, because it’s late afternoon light. Who knows with Kurt? He’s such a wacky, intense guy. He stays behind to put up the tent Dana couldn’t do, and there’s a shaky cam shot of from the point of view of the heavy breathing guy, who is watching Kurt from about 6 feet away. Stealth.

The dark haired nerdy guy (Gary) has paired off with the blonde girl (Shelly). He’s explaining the history of the swamp, and she’s gazing at him like she’s never found anything as attractive as landscape measurements. It turns out neither of them are even there for extra credit, they just wanted to hang out together. They’ve been crushing on each other since High School and it took a weekend in a swamp to bring them together. Romcoms could learn a lot from this movie. They make out in the long dry grass, next to a pine plantation. I say these things to point out they’re not in a swamp.

Meanwhile, Jamal and Eve have the same idea, getting semi-naked against a tree. Don’t worry, heavy breathing shaky cam has caught up with them. Jamal stops kissing Eve because he thinks he hears something. He would investigate, but he decides it’s Gary and Shelly, besides Eve just took her pants off so he’s kind of distracted right now.

Dana, on the other hand, is wandering the forest touching Spanish moss and making notes in a teeny notebook. She’s going to get that extra credit! She stares at some moss for a while, then stares at some moss in a slightly different place. Gary and Shelly are too busy smooching at the waters edge to be taking notes about moss. Kurt, back at the camp, is messing around with the first aid kit.

Everyone heads back to camp where Kurt is all twitchy and overexcited about the concept of lunch. He’s going to take them on a guided tour of the swamp after they eat, but first he has to letch at Dana some more.

Dana is sitting on a log looking out at the swamp, and Kurt joins her. “Have you eaten?” Dana asks, offering him a turkey sandwich. Kurt gets slightly offended by this, because he tries to avoid eating meat. Speaking as a vegetarian, being offered a meat sandwich isn’t actually offensive. You can just say “No thanks.” Kurt explains he’s trying to be conscious about what he eats, and then gives Dana a long stare. Dana pops a cigarette in her mouth and Kurt stares at her again, so she explains she only smokes when she’s nervous. She goes on to spill the sad beans about her boyfriend, who is apparently named Brady. Kurt gets all goofy and nervous and ends the conversation by rounding up the students to go look at stuff. Swamp stuff.

As the group wanders along a broad, sunny path, Gary explains to them that gators nest on the banks of the river. He means swamp. Kurt tells them it’s rare to see a gator on the banks but then they totally see a (rubber) gator on the bank! Kurt, who claims to be studying to be a vet, picks up a handy stick to poke the gator with. It’s dead though, it’s the one the shiny man shot at the start of the movie. Kurt declares it dead without looking at it too closely, and even I know that gators can sit very very still for a long time. Kurt is an idiot.  Dana is devastated by the death of the gator, Jamal thinks it was eaten by a bigger gator. Chris and Shelly just stare at things, all sad.

“Poachers” says Kurt, pointing at the gunshot wounds. Jamal wants to know why the poachers didn’t skin it, Kurt says they must have been scared off and Dana wants to know who gutted the gator in that instance. The answer is “No one” because the gator isn’t gutted.

Kurt calls “Base camp” (what?), who send a guy out to look at the gator. The students are all standing around looking like it was their collective grandmother who was shot and (not) gutted. Sensitive souls. The wildlife guy, Dale, tells them not to worry, poachers don’t want to shoot people, they’re more likely to be eaten by a bear. No one looks cheered by this news. They decide to return to camp.

Brady is at the party, being completely miserable because Dana is on the camping trip. His friend tells him to call her in case she’s sleeping with someone for extra credit and Brady gets even more grumpy. He crashes out of the house, punching a door. So much rage. Brady gets into his car and drives off, still quite irate.

Jamal and Eve sneak out of their tent into the woods to have sex. This is a promising sign, it means someone is finally going to get murdered. I’m bored with all this non-murdery soap opera stuff. I’m right, here’s mouth-breather now, with a grappling hook and a home made camo suit. He throws the hook, it manages to travel in a sort of C shape to latch on to Jamal’s head and I want to collect on my “black guy killed first” bet now please. Eve does some screaming and then runs blindly into the woods. Mouth Breather follows, walking quickly. Horror movie, you know? Eve stops running when her foot is severed by a bear trap. Completely severed. At least she stops screaming. Instead, she starts hopping. Hopping! This ends when she hops into a second bear trap, severing her other foot. This causes Eve to fall over onto her face, which lands in a bear trap. Read that again, it’s poetry.

Does this shirt make my head look creepy?

Everyone at camp heard the screams and they come out of their tents to stand around awkwardly. Kurt claims to have not heard anything. Gary sees that Jamal and Eve are gone. Kurt decides to take Gary out to look for them, and points out the first aid kit to Dana, in case Jamal and Eve come back. After a pointless argument about poachers, Kurt and Gary are surprised by Mouth Breather. Kurt is knocked out with a stick, but Gary gets away even though he runs really slowly.

The girls are sitting by the fire looking cold (still underdressed) when Gary runs in to grab them. They waste quite a lot of time as Dana insists on an explanation, but Gary tells Dana they don’t have time to try the radio for help. She insists, calling “base camp” (what?) but before they can respond Gary and Shelly are running for the car. Dana is all upset about Kurt, and has a little sad moment before catching them up.

They make it to the car, but Mouth Breather is in the bushes. This is a problem because the car is “stuck.” Gary gets out to see what the problem is and finds all four tyres slashed. Dana tries the radio again, and gets through to “base camp,” telling them Kurt is dead and giving them the GPS co-ordinates of the car. Dana’s phone has a GPS in it, you see. Remember Brady? He’s on his way to Dana. He’s tracking her phone I suppose, though with no signal I’m not sure how.

The three students are now hiding under the car as Mouth Breather walks by. They think they got away with it, until Dana is grabbed by the feet and hauled out. Mouth Breather is freakishly strong, and flings her around a bit until he’s disturbed by headlights. It’s Dale from base camp, who drove right up but apparently didn’t see Mouth Breather throwing a girl around. He checks on Dana and Shelly hands him a club made out of papier mache which is what he killed Kurt with. Dale is still not convinced, but when Gary insists on leaving, Dale swings the club and knocks him out, leaving the way open for Mouth Breather to come and grab the girls.

Dale tells Gary he shouldn’t have been rude, and swamp people like to use clubs on rude people and pretty girls. All three are knocked out. Dana wakes up first, and all three are chained to the wall in the shack. Dana freaks out, squealing as she looks around the room and sees the chopping block. This turns into a full on scream when she sees a decaying body next to her. All the noise brings in Dale and the Mouth Breather. Dale explains that the girls will be kept as sex slaves. He’s going to make them dinner, for their first date, and that dinner is going to be Gary.

Gary is chained to a table and Dale laments that there’s not much meat on him. “Your friends were quite tasty” he tells Gary, holding up two polystyrene heads with red paint and wigs on them. Okay the faces are painted in too, but you can see the base of the heads. Ridiculous. Mouth Breather takes a butcher’s knife and starts hacking into Gary. There’s a lot of fake blood being splashed around.

Dana must have passed out again, because she wakes up at the dinner table, with a plate of Gary in front of her. She begs Shelly not to eat it. Dale is angry, because out here in the swamp they have to eat what they can get. Apparently. He unties Shelly and drags her outside to catch something to eat since she’s being so snobby. Handing her a pitchfork, he sends her out into the woods, but sends Mouth Breather off to fetch the gun. Leaving Dana to scream and panic in the shack, Dale and Mouth Breather go after Shelly.

Dana flings herself around until the chair falls over and now she’s free, the falling chair having magically untied her hands. She’s about to leave when she hears a groan.

Not pictured: Quality effects

Shelly is caught by Mouth Breather, but jams the pitchfork into his leg. Sadly, as she runs off, she fails to see the trip wire that triggers a sword and her body is cut in half. The special effect for her torso falling off her legs isn’t so much special as “an effect.” Dale is sad because he likes to gut his food. Mouth Breather gathers up the bits to bring to the shack.

Dana spots some feet through a doorway. Picking up some butchers hooks, she creeps up on them. It’s Kurt! Dana helps him up because he’s still all groggy from the blow to the head, but as they’re leaving Dale and Mouth Breather return. Kurt, it turns out, isn’t that groggy. He grabs Dana and grins. “Done thought you were dead, son” says Dale. “You missed all the fun.” The generator gives out at this point, and the Mouth Breather takes some gas out. Dana sees the gasoline cans all piled up.

“Is this the only one left?” Kurt asks his father, gripping a struggling Dana in his arms. He slaps her, and takes a handful of the stew from the pot to eat. “My boyfriend knows where I am!” says Dana. Dale laughs, and opens the fridge to reveal Brady in there. I was wondering why he was taking so long to get there. Dana and Kurt wrestle some more before Dana grabs a frying pan and smacks both their heads with it.

Mouth breather mouth breathing

Out in the woods, Dana spots the bear traps, putting her one step ahead of Eve. Since it’s day time now, it’s pretty easy to spot them, but they’re everywhere and she can’t see a way out. The shaky camera can’t be helping her focus. The three freaky men are following her with guns, so Dana runs back to the shack. She raids the gasoline stash and spills gas everywhere. When it’s all ready, she stands on the porch and screams “Come and get me!” The men hear her, and know exactly where she is somehow, running back to the shack.

There’s some shooting, then Kurt runs in to grab Dana. Once he’s inside she fumbles with her lighter, but Mouth Breather grabs her. She kicks him back and shoots him, making MS Paint blood splatter everywhere. Lighting the gasoline with MS paint flames, she sets the shack on fire. It blows up with Dale and Kurt inside.

Exhausted, Dana staggers through the woods. A hand grabs her shoulder. It’s Brady, who apparently was able to stay alive in an airless fridge (you can’t lie to me, I’ve seen the very special episode of Punky Brewster). A charred man staggers up to them, it’s Kurt and he’s peeling bits of his burned flesh off his head and eating them. Brady runs off to leave Dana with the crazy man (jerk). Dana threatens Kurt with a knife, but he reminds her she can’t do dissections. She decides she can now, and stabs him a lot. She pulls out a bunch of internal organs, laughing like a loon the whole time. Once he’s dead, she stands up, licks the blood off her face and smiles. Credits.

So, the first half of this movie was almost mind-numbingly tedious.  Boring, soap opera nonsense centered on a bunch of one dimensional characters. Creepy Kurt was too creepy. I don’t mean in a “it scared me!” way, I mean in a “you’ve given away one of your twists within five minutes of movie.” His nervous, intense insistence on taking the students out to the swamp was so obviously linked to the shack they should have given him a shirt with “I am a nutter!” on it.

Suspense would have been nice, but since it’s a formulaic horror movie (right down to the black guy dying first, the fleeing girl tripping and the nutter being involved from the start), you know they’re all going to die it’s just a matter of getting on with it. Not that there was any sense of impending doom, not even a shiver.

The second half of the movie was not boring, but it was unintentionally hilarious. The special effects were brilliantly awful, flat flames, painted on blood, fake heads. Oh how I laughed.  Mouth Breather’s make up was terrible, the fake blood was so fake looking. I will give a point for Dale being a psycho, because that did surprise me. No points for nutty Kurt because that was neon lit from the first scene.

The actors were, apart from some stretched Southern accent, actually pretty good with a bland script. The script was pretty ordinary, and there’s so many plot points that don’t hold up. If there’s no phone signal, how was Brady tracking Dana’s phone? How did he get out of the fridge? Why did a college student hire an escort for a camping weekend? Why was Dana studying Biology if it grossed her out so much? Who was the Mouth Breather? Related to Dale and Kurt, sure, but who? How? What happened to his face other than terrible make up? So much was made on how big the swamp is, but people kept finding each other easily. Also most of the swamp wasn’t a swamp, it was the woods. There was a little lake bit in the middle, but mostly woods.

And since I’ve said it so often , I’ll say it again. Swamp.

Tags: Dire DVDs