Bloody Murder
Director: Ralph Portillo
Writer: John R. Stevenson
Staring: Jessica Morris and Peter Guillemette
Body Count:8
Review: It's been a while since we've seen a new summer camp slasher flick (yeah, it's been a while alright..like two weeks or so!). I actually thought the title of this direct-to-video flick was kinda lackluster when I first heard about it (more on that later). Nevertheless, no matter how piss-poor or crappy a slasher flick might be, there's something irresistable about setting that same crappy slasher flick at a summer camp. I first read about this modern-day homage to Friday the 13th in Fangoira, and had to seek it out. I found it that night, and as soon as I saw the video cover (which features a hockey-mask-wearing psycho wielding a chainsaw), I knew I couldn't resist.
All in all, this is sort of a mixed bag in terms of slasher content. You have your sorta good, but not real good, and then you have your pretty bad, but not completely worthless....which, I suppose, is a pretty good way of summing up the flick.
A bunch of teens head out to Camp Placid Pines (what a name) to spend the summer as counselors. On the way, they recount the story of Trevor Moorehouse, a guy who supposedly...well, runs around these particular woods with a hockey mask and a chainsaw! Before the campers arrive to the camp, there's some work to be done fixing up the place (Hmmmm....gosh, this is sounding awfully familiar). They're spending an evening out by the campfire one night (of course!), and one of the kids suggests a game of "Bloody Murder" to pass the time (at this point, I finally saw the significance of the otherwise lame title, and decided that this was actually a pretty fitting name for the movie). Some quick exposition and one false scare later, good old Trevor Moorehouse is at it again, offing the kids one by one in the woods....
Or is he?
One of the really great things about this movie is how it ups the volume on the murder-mystery aspect of the story purely for ironicly humorous value. Once the kids start to disappear, a fat, burly, skeptical sherrif shows up to investigate. His escapades include a particularly funny interrogation of the "Randy" character of the bunch, who has some great dialogue revolving around a group viewing of a camp slasher flick (called "Sleepover Camp Massacre Part 14", or something like that), and some great slasher in jokes ("The film has a running time of 1 hour and 43 minutes, which is rather long for this genre."). Unfortunately, you've got to take the good with the bad. For every half-clever line like the one stated above, you get one really really cheesy one, such as, "Misery comes in lots of different forms, but it's all miserable."
There are some downsides here, of course. The acting is bad, there's hardly a drop of blood on the screen, and some of the loose ends of the complicated storyline are never completely tied up. Still, director Raplh Portillo has come a long way since his last slasher outing (the absolutely awful Fever Lake). He's got a good script this time, with some reasonably supsensful and surprising plot twists, and he definitely knows the genre (Paramount could probably sue him for copying so many elements of the first Friday film).
Oh, and of course, there's the door left open for the sequel. That's okay, however, as I'd love to see this take off into a series of some type. I just hope the next one has a little more blood!
Overall, Bloody Murder isn't anything all that great or original (or bloody, for that matter), but it is definitely enjoyable, and probably worth your three bucks.
