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Camp
Slaughter |
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A crazy old lady gives birth to a demented boy, she
names him Bunny and the father - her son - locks him
up in a well. When a bunch of teens goes to a nearby
cabin in the woods to party, Bunny escapes and starts
killing off the teens one by one.
To make something clear at first, this is a Swedish
film with Swedish actors - talking English. And they
don't do it very well. But we'll get back to that later.
This film is probably the worst Swedish film ever
made - and one of the worst horror movies in history.
It's not clear what the filmmakers attempted, as they
cheered at the expected bad reviews it got from -
well, everyone.
The film almost works as a spoof, as it's set in the
so-bad-it's-fun-genre but it also seems suspiciously
serious and ambitious. There are no gags or jokes around
the genre, the only intended laughs are some typical
lame one-liners and goofiness around the stereotypical
characters, especially the annoyingly unfunny "fat nerd".
As for the story, it begins very bizarre and pretentious
with some oddball colors and David Lynch-like
nightmarish acting with the mother and her mentally
tormented son pairing up in some weird Psycho spin-off.
(The Mother's out-of-nowhere "Bunny song" is probably
the scariest thing in the film.) But as the teens are
presented we go into the familiar Texas Chainsaw
Massacre/Friday the 13th-world with the usual
ingredients of sex, drugs, stalking, killing and screaming.
The few attempts at scares or suspense are just
ludicrous and the murder scenes, which takes forever
to come, are surprisingly short and over in a few
seconds. The film is somewhat of a failed Swedish
slasher, the non-horror scenes are lousy on a Friday
the 13th-lever while the horror and gore are poorly
made and very disappointing, even for a
so-bad-it's-fun film.
Still, there's some wild fun, like some amazingly
stupid situations and dialogue (some surviving girls
argue about turning off the headlights when escaping
in their car: "He can see us!" "But the road?" "It's
empty anyway!" "Oh... ok!") or like when the killer
pops up just behind them, even though they've been
driving away from him - in their car! - for about
five minutes!
Funniest bits though have the actors coughing up
their moronic lines with painfully bad English accents.
Only Christain Magdu and Karin Bertling, as the crazed
son and the even crazier Mother, handles the dialogue
with decent English and are also the ones putting out
the best performances - maybe because they're allowed
to over-act frantically! The rest of the cast acts
like in a goofy Swedish skit parodying bad horror
films - with the exception that these guys seems to
do it seriously. They play their stereotypical
characters - the bitch, the hunk, the nerdy girl, etc. -
completely straight, concentrating on saying their
lines right rather than creating a likable or even
interesting character. And when they start freaking out,
screaming and being hysterical you can do nothing but
sit back and laugh...
The killer, Bunny, who doesn't just have one of the
most stupid killer names ever has a bag on his head
(like Jason in Friday Part 2) and is dressed in a
woman's dress with flowers. He's supposed to be like
a homage to the similarly retarded Leatherface from
Texas Chainsaw Massacre but his personality is never
presented and he never becomes either scary or
sympathetic. He's just a guy in dress and a bag over
his head, who like like film is just pointless,
stupid - and very funny!
Don't count on any gross-out splatter stuff here!
We have a nasty decapitation (with a head rolling
down the ground) but otherwise the killings are non-
explicit and badly done. The blood dripping from a
corpse hung up in a tree looks like chocolate syrup
while the blood sprayed on the windows of a van,
in which a victim is killed, looks like raspberry
soda, or something. Extremely low budget in other
words, and you can tell easily.
Before the premiere screening of this, the director
praised the composer of the score for making such
a good work. Can't agree on that opinion. The music
sounds like something an amateur messed up together
on his computer keyboard or something. Eerie string
sound effects are obviously an homage to Tobe
Hooper's classic Chainsaw score but gives nowhere
as the same effect.
A very, very BAD film. Still, the filmmakers'
intentions are not clear but the film sure is
extremely bad and the more serious it seems to
be the more the fun it is to watch! A cult
classic to-be, so bad it's fun!
Review By: Slicer-dicer
