Better-than-average indy slasher has enough red meat to satisfy the gorehounds, just don’t expect great performances
There’s one place these days where people can go in the world of the pandemic and not be as worried about catching the coronavirus, and it isn’t at the local supercenter retailer facility, mask or no mask. Nope — from what we’ve been told, outdoor activities are still pretty safe, and folks have been flocking to the drive-ins and doing outdoor stuff like biking and camping to avoid getting COVID-ed.
Well, this week’s flick has nothing to worry about when it comes to potential obsolescence in a virus-ridden world, no siree. Although the norms of social distancing are observed by neither camper nor Gene, the psycho-deranged Neanderthal long-haired agent of slaughter with a nose ring and an axe/halberd-looking accessory that appears to be made out of a railroad crossing sign, the overarching thematic message of Killer Campout will continue to resonate long after we’ve emerged from the other end of the current global health crisis.
That message being: If you are unwise enough not to bother vetting whether the wooded site of your therapeutic retreat is home to a cannibalistic, long-haired, camouflage-wearing murderer and his kin or to review the credentials of the organizer of the retreat to make sure they are not kin to the killer, you’re probably going to end up getting diced into pieces suitable for use on a shish kebob skewer.
Killer Campout gets rolling with a slaughter montage showing off some retro-style gore effects with Godfather of Gore Herschell Gordon Lewis warning you about the possibility of vomiting as a result of the gruesome things about to pass before your eyeballs.
We then open up with a pretty brutal opening sequence with a hippie girl and her boyfriend trussed up and menaced by this nose-ringed Neanderthal-looking killer. The boyfriend gets a knife driven through his jaw. He’s dead.
The hippie girl then is sexually assaulted by the beastly guy and impregnated, he keeps her chained up, she has the baby and dies in childbirth. The big guy feeds the baby the mom’s blood and then some more time passes.
Decades later, law enforcement people are wandering the woods investigating these disappearances and killings, there’s a vigilante man-in-black out to kill the killer and a bunch of people are coming out to the woods in order to engage in a retreat where they talk about how screwed up their lives are.
We’re talking a plethora of pureed psychotherapy patients with bisections, axe attacks and the scalping of a Crazy Ralph impersonator. The three B’s are present and anyone can die at any time, plus we get a couple gratuitous references to Dario Argento (one inaccurate) to boot.
- Best Track Record When It Comes to Displaying Her Garbonzas: Nadia White, who made a positive impression in the flick Terrortory that I reviewed a few months back, repeats her performance by popping her top again as Christy and then getting killed again, except this time it happens on screen instead of off. She also had a chance to monologue awhile as one of the therapeutic retreat guests and to seduce her tent-mate who gets killed mid-aardvarkus. If there’s a director out there who wants to do a women-in-prison flick, I think Nadia would do REALLY well in the Roberta Collins role.
- Best Fillet: Killer Gene Blackwell (Jesse L. Green) cuts Chad (Roger Yawson) in half, it is undetermined whether he knew that Chad had aardvarked a person very near and dear to the killer’s heart.
- Best Example of Unmet Expectations: Vigilante Samson Del Marr (James L. Edwards) was set up to go all out for justice and whomp out on the killer roaming the woods. Dressed in black, trained in weaponry, you figure he’d be at least somewhat of a challenge. Instead his tagalong assistant is impaled by a trap in the woods and then his climactic showdown with Killer Gene ends up being a touch underwhelming.
The acting is suspect in this one, though, and the brief introductory narrative by Herschel Gordon Lewis and a cameo by another seminal figure in 1960s horror, John A. Russo, (Night of the Living Dead) do manage to add a touch of gravitas to the carnage. Brad Twigg’s flick is better than the average two-star slice-and-dice indy flick, but sadly does not quite live up to the unrelenting depravity hinted at by that boyfriend-hacking, hippie-raping, umbilical-cord-eating opening sequence.
Two and a half stars.
Killer Campout is available to stream via the Microsoft Store and also is available on DVD. Check it out.