Slaughter at Camp Groundhog

Camp Slaughter (2004/2005)
Directed by Alex Pucci
Screenplay by Draven Gonzalez

If you find yourself nostalgic for old school summer camp slasher fun, then this film is literally right up your sick and twisted alley. The only shame is that this film isn't actually set on Groundhog Day with the killer dressing up in a groundhog costume and gnawing people to death. That would have been an awesome twist.

Daniel, a nice looking jerk from the past...Kyle Lupo (Teenage Dirtbag, The Frightening)
Jen, an annoying girl from the present....Anika C. McFall (He Who Finds a Wife, He Who Finds a Wife 2: Thou Shall Not Covet; Nora’s Hair Salon 3: Shear Disaster) Her next film will probably be He Who Finds a Wife 3: The Final Finding.
Mario, a gay guy from the present....Matt Dallas (Kyle XY) If you were wondering where Kyle XY was just before he did that show, now you know.
Angela, a sad girl from the present who looks like a young Carrie Fisher....Joanna Suhl (If you were wondering who Joanna Suhl was and what she has ever been in, now you know.)
Rueben, a mute (or so he would have you believe)....Miles Davis (You thought he was dead, but he’s back and ready to play some cool jazz) Miles Davis looks so young and healthy (and white) in this film that I could hardly believe he was already dead for nearly 14 years when it was made. If you’re a fan of jazz music you absolutely have to see this movie.
Vade, a mostly dumb goomba from the present....Eric McIntire (One Tree Hill) One Tree Hill is sort of like Nepal. I know that it exists, but I’ve never been there.
Ivan....Jon Fleming (Will & Grace, Dante’s Cove, Frat House Massacre) Apparently this film was cast out of a male modeling agency.
Michelle, a big girl who likes to make weapons...Bethany Taylor (Frat House Massacre, Survival Camp) Planning on doing a film where young people are being slaughtered in a cabin? Not without Bethany Taylor, you’re not.
Paul Marq....Brendan Bradley (Video Game Reunion, Elevator, The Legend of Neil)
Lou, an alcoholic handyman....Jim Marlow aka Jim Hazelton (I’m not sure what kind of scheme involves doing a film like this under and assumed name, but I’m going to assume that it has to do with cheating on taxes or child support.)
Elizabeth....Jessica Sonneborn (A Lure: Teen Fight Club, Agua Caliente, Bloody Bloody Bible Camp)
Nichole....Ashley Gomes
Patrick....Ikaika Kahoano (Supergator, Making the Band) I think it’s some sort of new rule that reality show people have to do horror films.
Tommy....Troy Andersen (Survival Camp)
Jay...Philip Jess
Valerie...Galen Allis
Joey/Cassio....Matthew Catanzano
Drowning Boy...Brain Cobb (I know this name is probably a typo or yet another attempt to evade taxes or arrest warrants, but I will admit to spending some time hoping that there is someone out there named Brain Cobb.)
Tobe/Rodrigo....Joshua Finn
Daxx/Iago....Justin Fortune-Creed
Linda....Amanda Gallagher
Mark...Jesse Curtis
Ian....Silas Hagerty
Paul....Ben Hills
Tina....Kate Jurkiewicz
Wesley....Kyle Langan
Billy....Adam Maganzini
Ben....Jason Morris
David....Lacy Ponsart (This is someone who should consider changing his name to Brain Cobb.)
Nikki....Autumn Sacramone
Laura......Jillian Swanson (Killer Campout, Killer Pickton, Diary of a Cannibal, The Raven, The Tomb)
Kevin/Othello....Gustavo Taveras (The good news is that you get to play Othello. The bad news is that it’s a play within a play in a slasher movie.)

Usually when an old movie is remade or an old series rebooted there is an element of nostalgia involved in the project that harkens back to the time of the original. At least, you’d think so. But in modern business terms the only nostalgia is for the money that the original raked in. The result of this process is that most of the time these new stories suffer from a serious lack of intellectual parentage. What I mean by this is that something like the latest Friday the 13th remake is disconnected from the past because it is a conscious rewriting of the ideas of the past and at the same time even the nominal connection with an artifact from the past takes away from its ability to break new ground in the present. And nominal is the key word here, because most of the time these remakes really don’t get what was so damn special about the original. I pick on Friday the 13th particularly here because the latest remake went out of its way to piss on the one thing that was key to the original: the summer camp.

Summer camps are perfect for all kinds of stories because they represent a liminal space and time. They are associated both with the innocence of childhood and the adolescent acquisition of life experiences and the journey into adulthood. They’re also dark, smelly and bug-infested and sometimes run and staffed by psychopaths, sociopaths and just plain strange people. At least, this is my understanding of summer camps since I was never sent off to a real all-summer extravaganza like these camps. But then, in my corner of Texas summer was similar to a summer camp minus the idiots in matching t-shirts too busy having sex with each other to stop kids from drowning.
See, the whole idea of summer camps has become a mythological territory informed as much by fiction as by any actual experiences. At least for me, because my summers were closer to Stand By Me than Friday the 13th.

This is where Camp Slaughter comes in. It is the kind of film a Friday the 13th reboot should have been. It is quite literally an exercise in nostalgia because it takes a group of friends from the present and strands them in a camp that is caught forever in a time loop of the day before and the day of an old-school slasher massacre in 1981. Yes, I just spoiled the big twist for you. But here’s the thing, if I hadn’t been wading through a stack of slasher films for pure research I wouldn’t have stumbled upon this film. And if I didn’t know to expect something more interesting than “slasher kills teens at a camp” I wouldn’t be interested in seeing this film. Whereas if you tell me that this is “group of friends wander into a camp that is stuck in a time loop where slasher kills teens at a camp” then suddenly there’s something more interesting to the premise. Having lived through 1981 I can assure you that there’s nothing cool about the idea of being stuck in 2 days of 1981 forever even if you’re not being hunted and killed at a summer camp.

But a film where the central premise is that some unsuspecting young folks stumble upon a camp stuck in a repetitive time vortex? That’s a great premise for a story. If this had been the premise of that hockey-puck shaped turd of a Friday the 13th remake then it might have been sheer genius. Instead we got a hockey-puck shaped turd of a film on one hand and a small film with an interesting premise. Corporate group-think and L.A. screenwriting gurus have effectively killed interesting stories. Thanks for that. Try some mustard flavored sow urine with that hockey-puck shaped turd that you call a film.

But it’s not like Camp Slaughter is anything more than imperfectly executed film with a decent premise.
In fact, that about describes the film in a nutshell.

The film begins with a scene of slaughter from the original night of death and then credits roll and suddenly we’re following some crazy kids in a Hummer entering Maine (Welcome to Maine: The way life should be). You’ve got your asshole goomba driver, the sad girl (wonder what her dark secret is?), the sassy black girl in the Jamaican knit cap and matching bra and the guy who is asleep.

We’re lost.
VADE: Please. I know these roads like the back of my dick.
I’m curious as to what his definition of the “dick back” is. Does he mean the underside of his dick? Is it that much more dumb to say "I know these roads like the underside of my dick?"

Suddenly it’s night and they’re stuck on the road to Camp Hiawatha and some mysterious force is flinging mud at their windshield and suddenly everyone is freaking out, except for the sleeping guy. Sad girl sees blood and dead people and there’s the obligatory “cell phones are not working” moment that has become a paramount device for the suspension of disbelief in the contemporary horror film. (Seriously, why not just have the cell phones work but have them constantly being routed to a lazy dispatcher who just doesn’t bother sending help.)
Suddenly it’s morning and the gang of four is discovered by the denizens of Camp Hiawatha who are confused by the military vehicle and the strange fashions of the modern kids.

Are you guys from Europe?

And then we’re introduced to the mannish girl who has been Camp Hiawatha’s archery champ for the last two years. She even makes her own arrows. This is what we call a clumsy bit of early exposition to make you either distrust her expertise in weapon making (she likes arrows, thus she must be a killer) or expect her to be a key component of the rescue squad (she makes arrows, thus she can save them from the killer). Meanwhile there’s a guy back in the kitchen of the camp cutting up meat ominously and we notice that the cars in the parking lot are an old pickup truck, an old station wagon and an old Buick or Olds. Meanwhile a crying kid eating a candy bar alone in the woods without a shirt on is killed by someone who just reaches around the tree and chokes him to death. This is the first of many reasons that you can say that this film suffers from a good concept poorly executed. The laughability factor in this death--well, I guess it would be more tolerable if it was went even further over the top and then at least it would be really laughable. Incidentally, dying in the woods with chocolate smeared all over your face and chest really doesn’t look good, because chances are pretty good that nobody stumbling onto your corpse will think that you were eating chocolate.

The next death is the traditional make-out death. In this case the guy hears something (sounded like an arrow zooming by to me) sees nothing and starts kissing the girl without noticing that she’s just lying there with her eyes frozen in space, blood trickling out of her mouth and, oh yeah, an arrow sticking of the side of her neck. I don’t know what kind of roofie swilling camp girls he’s been used to making out with, but you’d think a person would notice when they’re dealing with the dead or nearly dead. Of course, the fact that she died quietly with an arrow to the neck (which considering the fact that she was almost completely prone when she was hit would require a shot from almost ground level--a feat of bizarre supernatural skill) is also hard to believe unless the arrow somehow got penetrated all the way to the brain in that shot. Still, not even a bit of twitching? The guy runs away only to find his head caught between a tree trunk and a strap that is progressively tightened until his head breaks.

In the cabins Mario and Vade figure out that the camp is stuck in 1981. (Thanks to Time magazine and Brooke Shields.)

MARIO: Dude, you haven’t noticed anything?
VADE: It’s fucked up.
MARIO: That’s it?
VADE: It’s Maine. What do you expect?

Meanwhile the 1981 gang is working on a production of Othello. I wish I could see a deeper significance to that choice, but there probably isn’t one. Though I think it would be a brilliant idea if someone did a production of Othello where the citizens of Venice were putting on a play about a slasher who kills people at a summer camp.

Then we get a fugue-like reprse of the make-out deaths with a new annoying couple who die while having sex.

HIM: I haven’t cum yet. Are you going to let me finish?
HER: Tough shit. I came.

Ah, young summer camp love. This joyful reverie is interrupted when the girl realizes she has some sort of multiple pronged thing coming out of her belly. This means that she would have had to have taken a pitchfork to the back that got all the way through her spinal column before she died. On the other hand her body weight (she’s not that big) and the couple of inches of pitchfork sticking out front from her seem to be sufficient to kill the guy she was riding simply by slumping over on him. (I know, sometimes it’s best to ignore the ridiculous physics of horror films, but I’d be willing to go along with it if I thought the point was that it was supposed to be completely ridiculous.)

As people discover more bodies the killers (yes, there are more than one) go on a full scale stabbing spree. One of my favorite images is that of a large bowie knife coming down for another stab and it is shiny and clean even though it isn’t even the first stab on this victim.
Does the knife have some auto-clean function to keep it fresh between stabs?

Eventually we get a whole lot of exposition piled on to us just before Angela gets an arrow in the heart. The gist of the story is that some counselors drowned a kid, and then some other kids killed some people and then once he realized that they were stuck in an unending loop exposition guy took it upon himself to make the killers pay by hunting them. It’s really convoluted and not very well set up for us along the way, so I almost appreciated the explainosaurus showing up to tell us what happened. Apparently the four real killers can escape the loop but only if they can sucker in four replacements. Jen manages to drive away in the Hummer but you already have a bad feeling that some of these camp killers are on the loose in the present. Fast forward to a now successful author Jen getting an email from the camp killers and that’s our ending.

So, like I said, an interesting premise shoddily executed with some groaning bad acting and some writing that would make Pat Sajak cringe. I’d like to see someone else take this premise and do something good with it.

Special Features
1. Camp Daze: Behind the Scenes, Directed by Matthew Geiger
I do love behind the scenes bits for horror films and this one is especially fun because the behind the scenes bit uses the original title for the film. I don’t know what the point of the title change was, but if it was because.
I like the notion behind Alex Pucci’s mission statement for ScreamKings. It’s a good idea to take classic horror premises and give them a twist. So, even if I didn’t completely buy this shot, I’m willing to give them another shot, because I’d rather see more interesting misses than a lot of high budget mediocrities. (I’m looking at you, Michael Bay.)
2. Behind the F/X, Directed by Matthew Geiger
Combined with the previous bit this provides some interesting technical effect information.
Matt Corrigan’s recipe for blood: Karo syrup, chocolate syrup, red food coloring and a little blue or green or yellow food coloring for different shades.
3. Extended Scenes
Billy’s Murder
The opening sequence extension involves the girl unbuttoning Billy’s jeans and reaching into the pants to which he responds with “Slow down” which doesn’t make any sense until he says “I need to take a whiz first.” Ah, now that makes sense. The extended death for Billy kills him off by strangling him with a rope while he’s in midstream. I wish this had been in the final cut.
Welcome Sequence
The extended version of our introduction to Camp Hiawatha is a nice addition.
Porch
This is a badly written and awkwardly acted scene. Good cut.
Bow & Arrow
An even lengthier sequence of the explainosaurus telling the story of Camp Hiawatha at the end. I actually like the extra information.
4. Deleted Scenes
Outside the Theater
This is a clunkier version of the time trap discovery as the contemporary group figures out they're stuck in 1981.
The actors look like every line they say can be replaced with “I’m speaking exposition.” Scenes like this are included so that you can stop complaining about the bad acting and writing in the final cut of the movie when you see how much worse this deleted scene is.
Cafeteria Doors
This is a bit of extra suspense with a bunch of cringing people holed up in the cafeteria. The one bit of interesting exposition reveals the reason for this expedition on the part of the contemporary group as Jen tells Angela “The next time you decide to get an abortion just give me the coat hanger.” Jeepers. Considering the fact that the character who utters this line is the only one of the contemporary group to make it back to the future. Wow, that is an unsympathetic survivor. Jeepers, indeed.
Dead Boys Cabin
An extra bit of mayhem and bloody discovery in the boys cabin.
Dead Girls Cabin
See above. Not much special, but I don’t see why you couldn’t have cut it into the film. It’s not like you would have lost anything in the pacing.
5. Why We Hate LA Actors
Sure, it’s a Hollywood actor in a hot tub with two girls getting a neck rub and complaining about New Englanders using the adjective “wicked” but then “wicked” is a dumb adjective so he’s got a point. This bit would be even more funny if it turned out to be real. Then it would be wicked funny.
6. Jesse’s Girl
Yes, it’s a video of people behind the scenes goofing around to the tune of "Jesse’s Girl." It’s similar to the scene of the cast of Saving Private Ryan doing the same thing, only that was less awkward.
7. Production Slide Show
It’s like a summer camp yearbook for people who already feel nostalgic for this film. Remember that scene that we were watching half an hour ago? Yeah, good times.
8. Camp Slaughter Trailer
Shortcuts can be deadly
Thanks, voiceover narrator. You’re really helpful.
These kids look happy...but they’re really trapped...
Just like you, if you’re watching this trailer.
...in a twenty-five year time warp. Every day starts with fun, every day ends with lots of blood. Every day the killing starts over.
And you want ME to give you a spoiler alert? How about Every day starts with a cheese plate and every day ends with cat shit, oreos and death?
Welcome to Camp Slaughter. The only way you’ll see home again...is in a box.
And even in a box, you won’t really see home again. Home will see you.

The Australian Hell

Lost Things (2003)
Directed by Martin Murphy
Screenplay by Stephen Sewell

Hell is a beach in Australia where everything feels vaguely familiar and ominous and where you spend eternity stumbling onto the sight of a drifter going at it doggy-style with that girl you had a crush on and who invited you on this spring break trip only to get you killed. And that drifter might be the devil. Or he might just be the spirit of the guy who killed you and your friends. That’s what I learned from this film.

Gary....Leon Ford (The Pacific)
Brad.....Charlie Garber
Emily....Lenka Kripac (Trouble is a friend of hers)
Tracey....Alex Vaughan
Zippo.....Steve Le Marquand

Cinematography by Justine Kerrigan

Lost Things seemed like it might just be a creepy spring break slasher movie from Oz, but it turned out to be a little more like a spring break slasher movie by Jean Paul Sartre. The whole film is laced with clues that something has already happened and that this is just a form of reenactment.

So the film starts with ominous scenes of Emily’s relationship with an older dude in a camouflage t-shirt and no shoes, none of which make any real sense other than kind of creeping us out about an older guy and a high school girl hooking up. It’s a bad relationship idea and yet you can see why it would happen. It’s not like the guy looks like Bob Hoskins. All of this is brief and impressionistic and the film quickly proceeds to take us on the spring break holiday trip with our four teens in a Volkswagen van. (A combi, in the local lingo.)

The dynamics of gender relations here can be summed up in two moments. One is where they’re lost and trying to figure out where they’re going.
Gary: Boys read maps, girls paint their toenails.

The other is when they’re on the beach and Tracey immediately takes her top off. (She does this not only because this seems to be a typical teens being killed on vacation film but also because the beach is as deserted as the beach in that other Australian classic, On the Beach. The fact that the beach is as abandoned as a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland should be our next clue that this is not just another slasher movie.)
Emily: Are you going to...you know...with Gary?
Tracey: Noooo....but I’m not going to tell him that.
Emily: Are you a tease?
Tracey: Well, why not? If they don’t think they’re gonna get any they’re not interested and as soon as you give it to them they wanna dump you. Why not have a little tease?

This is really as close as this gets to being a typical teen killer movie. The girls are at odds philosophically about their sexuality and get locked in a contest where the guys (who fancy themselves hunters) are merely pawns.
Shortly after the inevitable awkward contest for attention between the girls and the guys the teens are accosted by an older surfer who tells them to get the hell out. This is Zippo and he seems oddly familiar to Emily. Of course, he’s a smelly homeless surfer, but he does bear a resemblance to that shoeless guy in the beginning. That’s when we get the key piece of information that three people died here at this beach and one disappeared. Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Pinky?
Then we get a weird scene where Emily thinks she sees Brad standing on the shore holding a surfboard and just staring out at the ocean. Then Tracey, also by herself sees someone standing on the shore holding a surfboard and staring at the ocean. This is what the afterlife is for Australians.
The rest of the film consists of a constant stream of deja vu and encore deja vu and for some reason the teens find themselves hanging out with Zippo who scares the crap out of everyone by occasionally saying things like “Having a flashback, there?” or “Remember me now?” It’s pretty decent psychological terror here for a while, though you might find yourself thinking "why don't they just drive away and go someplace else?"
Then while they’re sitting around slicing tomatoes for dinner Brad stabs Zippo because he thinks he had a knife and also because Zippo is a scary smelly homeless guy on the beach. (You know, the kind of homeless smelly surfer who's just begging to be stabbed.) Suddenly things take a turn. Or have they? Or did they already take a turn long ago?
Needless to say, no matter what seems to happen on the surface here, things are going on at another level that requires some serious discussion and perhaps a slice of pie. I have to add that this part has some of the best cinematography especially in the dream like shot of an empty beach covered with surfboard sticking out of the sands like porcupine quills (or blades of blood-red grass) and when Zippo stabs Tracey in the back with his ridiculously big knife (Crocodile Dundee would blush at this monster) these drops of red blood trickle on the sand like rubies and the camera lingers for a moment on her hand and the ring which you realize was in the sand when they got there and thus was always there and thus she was already dead before they came here. Yes, for a second this film because something breathtakingly interesting.

At any rate, the moment you finally realize you’re in Australian hell is when Brad seems to have a breakdown where he can see even himself on the beach and then everyone and then no one and then from a distance he can see Emily on all fours being taken from behind by Zippo, right there on the lonely deserted beach. That is Australian hell. (American Hell is slightly different and involves a midget and a walrus at SeaWorld.) When Brad runs up to either stop it (or join in?) we see that Emily is crying, which is possibly the only thing that makes sense by this point in the film. You’d be crying too if that homeless surfer was doing sex to you on a beach. I use the phrase “doing sex” not to be funny, but because I think that’s the only proper way to describe what this action looks like. It is the opposite of “making love” it’s more like “manufacturing hate/resentment.” This whole bit taps into a kind of special horror/terror place in the mind, the kind that if dwelled upon too long will turn into bizarre forms of obsession. I think it’s one thing to think that a homeless (and let's not forget, smelly) surfer named Zippo (who you were pretty sure you stabbed to death last night) will stab you and your friends to death, it’s a whole other thing to imagine that he’s going to come back from the dead just to have his way with that girl you sort of like. That’s really cold. Colder still is the possibility that you were led to this scene by the girl herself. Man, that is cold. That scenario plays into all kinds of fears. It’s one thing to imagine the girl you like with another guy, it’s another to imagine that not only is she going to turn you down and you will accidentally stumble onto them doing it on the beach (and not even in a particularly pleasurable way), but to think that she’s also going to get you stabbed by a smelly homeless surfer named Zippo is a really horrific thought. This is officially the worst spring break ever, at least in Australia.

So, were they dead all along? It would seem so, though it also seems that their initial story has something to do with Emily needing to get something by coming out to the beach with her friends. In the end, they are clearly ghosts on the beach who can’t communicate with the living people who show up on the beach. (Sure, now they show up. Where were they when Zippo was stabbing everyone with that giant knife of his?)

Emily: No one can hear us now, Brad.
Brad: So did you find what you wanted?
Emily: No. I never found it. I never found it at all. All I ever found was you.
This cryptic exchange is followed by a reversion to the scene on the side of the road with the van when they were still on their way to the beach and this is when you realize that THIS is Australian Hell. A special terrible place where everything you see or do seems vaguely familiar and which is populated by four teens and a smelly homeless surfer named Zippo.
I always knew there was something wrong with people who liked to surf, and Zippo has now officially reinforced that prejudice. Surfers are smelly demons who stab people.

So, Lost Things was surprisingly interesting (in a good way) compared to what I was expecting. I mean, it’s not Memento, but it is pretty good and in its own way genuinely horrifying. I also appreciate the fact that this film does not suffer from the Curse of Explainosaurus which demands that every last detail be explained to the audience. In fact, here’s a film that does quite well by explaining almost nothing along the way. I like films that make me think, and this creepy little film made me think. I’m not saying it made me think in the same way that reading Kafka makes me think--well, then again....maybe it does.

As for Lenka Kripac, I like her singing, but she’s a good actor too and if she gets a role as interesting as this I’ll be there to see it. (As long as she’s not typecast as someone who is in thrall to a smelly homeless surfer/the Devil.)

Previews
1. The Evil One
A ghost story about the Chicago World’s Fair killer come back to life and killing again.
2. sideFX
Vampirism is created by a gypsy drug and now it’s back and vampires are running around and spitting up blood all over the place.
Trailers
1. Centipede
Spelunkers are attacked by a centipede. Luckily they aren’t then turned into a human centipede, so we’re safe from that nonsense.
2. Creepies
Creepies: They Multiply!
Genetically mutated spiders (they look more like ticks) kill lots of people.
Ron Jeremy is in this film. Enough said.
Where do you run from hell on 8 legs? Where do you hide?
Where indeed?
3. Street Tales of Terror
Another Tales from the Crypt in the Hood movie. When did Blacksploitation Anthology Horror become its own subgenre?
4. Darkhunters
Dominic Pinon, Jeff Fahey in a film about dead people who don’t stay dead and souls that need to be put to rest with a little help from a girl with a shotgun.
5. The Wickeds
Who robs a grave on Halloween, in the daytime even?
Ron Jeremy does. And that unleashes a bunch of zombies or some sort of thing like that. There should be a rule against having two Ron Jeremy horror movie trailers on the same disc. It sends a really bad message.

The Wessex Steam-saw Massacre

Small Town Folk (2007-2009)
Directed by Peter Stanley-Ward
Written by Natalie Conway, Peter Stanley-Ward

There are many reasons I took such delight in this odd film. To begin with, look at the copyright years on the film. That’s right folks, that’s years with an ‘s’ as in the plural of year. That and the fact that it cost £4000 to make are your first indicators that this is what a truly independent film looks like. Neither the smallness of a thing nor the fact that it is hand-crafted is a guarantee of quality, but it lends a bit of charm to the film.
The other thing that lends charm is the music. Hard driving folksy music. This is the kind of movie that happy fast paced murder ballads were made for.
What could have been a wretched rural terror film is made charming by the almost whimsical absurdity of the setting and characters as well as the dreamlike cinematography, which makes the most of the limited resources.
Sure, it’s as gruesome as other films where people take a drive in the countryside only to discover a horror show of people disemboweling travellers, but for some reason if you slap a folksy soundtrack to it and give your killers bowler hats and funny lines it becomes almost cute. Almost. Still gruesome, but it is fun.

The Landlord....Chris R. Wright (Emulsion)
Knackerman #1....Howard Lew Lewis (Pennies from Heaven, Reilly: Ace of Spies, Chaplin, Keen Eddie, Brazil)
Knackerman #2....Warwick Davis (Willow! You’ll forgive him for all those Leprechaun movies after this.)
Dobbin.....Dan Palmer
Marcus....Simon Stanley-Ward
Jon...Greg Martin
Susan....Hannah Flint
Pooch....Jon Nicholas
Pike....Ben Richards
Ric....James Ford
Heather.....Sophie Rundle
Shaz.....Tamaryn Payne
Smithy....Chris Musselwhite
Crow Brother #1.....Harrison Hawker
Crow Brother #2....Peter Stanley-Ward
Grockle....James Heathcote
Corpses....Selina Newell
Josh Hawker
James Light

Original Music by David James Nielsen
Cinematography by Peter Stanley-Ward

Small Town Folk is a narrow escape tale. The folk in the title is as much a reference to the kind of folklore genre this story belongs to as it is to the small town folk of Grockleton. Unlike wary traveler tales like Hostel or Turistas or even Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Small Town Folk has a layer of humorous charm to it that gives even the gruesome killing a kind of folksy charm. Again, maybe it’s just that the music and the settings and characters are close enough to a kind of Wind in the Willows meets Frankenstein atmosphere that it’s hard not to remain cheery even in the face of blood, guts and gore. Even the gender issues of the violence are mitigated by the natural bent of the storyline. There are no women left in Grockleton, so they’ve got to kidnap any if they’re going to get any heirs. That’s almost disturbingly wholesome as psycho-killer motivations go in rural terror films. Almost, if it weren't so completely fucked up.

Let me backtrack a second to the opening of the film, where some guy who looks like Waldo from Where’s Waldo? (as opposed to Waldo from The Great Waldo Pepper) runs out of Beesley’s Manor (a little house on a hill) and a voice calls: Run, rabbit. Run, rabbit. Run, run, run. Here comes the farmer with his gun, gun, gun.
After a brief chase and a kill we get to see Waldo killed with a sword (Guy killed me with a sword, Mal...how weird is that?) and then an awesome song for the credits sequence. It’s like The Pogues decided to do their own version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Then we meet our main couple of lost travelers who are clearly already having a bad day.
Susan: You didn’t see a woodpecker
Jon: Well, no.
Susan: Well then how can you say “I spy a woodpecker” if you didn’t see a woodpecker.
Jon: You don’t actually need to see it, do you?
Susan: Yes, you do, Jon. That’s why it’s called I Spy with my Little Eye. You have to see it.
Jon: Well, I always thought that was kind of hypothetical.
Susan: No.
That moment let’s you know what kind of film you’re dealing with here. If you don’t get at least a dry chortle out of that exchange, then you need to borrow a nickel and buy yourself a gumball and a sense of humor.

Meanwhile the youth contingent rides along on their bicycles in an awkward scene where the mean guy Rick makes fun of the guy with the helmet, Marcus by calling him “Helmet” thus embarrassing him in front of the girls, Heather and Shaz. This is funny because Rick is an awkwardly stupid bully. Also he and Shaz have the longest exchange of ludicrous facial gestures implying sexual activity ever recorded on film.

Then Jon and Susan ask for directions from the Knackermen, who give them directions to Grockleton and then tell them to not go there because nobody ever returns from there. If Warwick Davis tells you not to go someplace, then you shouldn’t go there. He should know. Listen to Warwick Davis. He's smarter than you.

Rick: You know, there’s a very dangerous snake that lives in these parts.
Shaz: Well, that doesn’t scare me. I can handle snakes. Especially big long hard ones.
Rick: Oh. We are talking about my penis, right?
Shaz: Yes, Rick.
The look of disdain that Shaz has on that last line is priceless. The fact that she follows that disdainful look by kneeling says a lot about gender relations. Guys like Marcus can be smarter than guys like Rick, and even a girl like Shaz will recognize that Rick is a complete idiot. But she still plans on blowing him. Luckily or unluckily depending on how you view this relationship, Shaz ends up only getting sprayed with blood when some guy with a burlap sack on his head plunges a sickle into Rick’s groin from behind and then chops at his torso to make sure he’s fully dead. Poor Rick...his snake/penis turns out not to have been the most dangerous thing in these parts.
And then burlap sack guy drags Shaz off by the hair, caveman-style...you know, for the breeding. Heather manages to escape this by hiding behind a tree. This works, no doubt, because burlap sacks reduce visibility and also it’s enough trouble to drag one kicking and screaming girl by the hair across the woods and over a river and through a meadow and whatnot.

Meanwhile, John and Susan make it to Grockleton.
Susan: I’m not seeing it on the map, Jon.
Jon: People make a place, Susan.
Jon’s comment is ridiculously profound. A corollary to that is that scary inbred murderous people make a scary inbred murderous kind of place, but maybe that goes without saying. Inbred people like Pooch, the delightful cross-eyed blind guy who tries to hunt Marcus with a shotgun. While he has no problem hitting a squirrel from a distance, he can’t manage to shoot Marcus, because his aim is a little off, what with the cross-eyed blindness business and all.
In case you thought Marcus and Heather would end up together, I should mention that she gets spitted from behind with the scarecrow’s scythe while Marcus is talking to her. Maybe she would have dated Marcus after this was all over. Maybe she was already kind of into him. Now we’ll never know. And that’s our episode of teen tragedy for today. This is where revenge forces Marcus to become a man.
Marcus: Come and get some, you tit.
Okay, maybe “man” isn’t quite the word for it.

Did I mention the part where the Beesleys chase down our heroes with a steam engine? If only it included a steam-powered chainsaw. That would have been perfect. I’m not entirely sure if the girls in the basement were completely dead or not, but since the Beesley place burns down at the end, it doesn’t quite matter. Collateral damage and whatnot.

Jon: It’s quiet.
Marcus: A little too quiet.
Me: This film is self-aware.
You: A little too self-aware.

What’s interesting is that the Beesleys and the Scarecrow people aren’t quite aligned. It’s nice when a horror film takes the time to have villains with competing interests and complex relationships. In this case the Beesley/Scarecrow relationship seems to be about landowning gentry versus farmer/peasant classes. Interesting from a sociological standpoint. Also, there’s something to be said about the relationship between regular folk and the small town folk that inhabit places like this who are clearly marked as being “different.” If that thought makes your brain hurt you can go back to watching House of Wax.

...luck is never cast in stone.
Next time you’re on your own.

So, the narrow escape story concludes with Jon and Susan and young Marcus escaping (narrowly, obviously). I’d have to say that the Indiana Jones sequence on top of the land cruiser with the crossbow that shoots horseshoes is sheer genius. And if the words “crossbow that shoots horseshoes” doesn’t make you want to watch this film, then I don’t know what will.

In the end, Small Town Folk is a really fun bit of folklore, about as gruesome as something from the Brothers Grimm and a lot less German to boot. I’m still kind of delighted by it. Pikey Tinker Inbred Gypsy Small Town Folk are so much more charming than Leatherface and family.

Extras
1. Audio Commentary
Mostly a family affair, this. Listen and learn about how to make a truly independent movie.
2. Folk Tales: A Grockumentary w/Bonus Music Video
For those of you who can’t get enough of the music.
3. Trailer
It’s like Alice in Wonderland only without Alice and Wonderland is full of people who will kill you and wear your head as a hat.

Previews
1. Kitchen Privileges
Peter Sarsgaard is a creepy guy who cooks up chicken noodle soup with lady fingers. I don't know what this movie is about, but I thought I'd warn you about Peter Sarsgaard.
2. Ghost Son
Giraffes! Hyenas! Zombies! Africa! Laura Harring! Pete Postlethwaite! John Hannah!
It’s like Out of Africa, but with ghosts. Not a sequel to Ghost Dad.
3. Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror
I only wish this had been done as an actual TV series.
Snoop Dogg, Brande Roderick, Aries Spears, Ernie Hudson, Diamond Dallas Page, Billy Dee Williams
How could this not be the most awesome African-American Horror Anthology Film of 2002?
4. Blood Ranch
Maybe the best way to combat urban sprawl is movies like this that terrify the shit out of anyone going for a drive out in the country.