Simply not cricket
I KNOW HOW MANY RUNS YOU SCORED LAST SUMMER
2008/18/78m
“Mass murder… It’s just not cricket!”
Directors/Writers: Stacey Edmonds & Doug Turner / Cast: Jay Koutrae, Stacey Edmonds, Az Jackson, Aaron Scully, Alex Sideratos, David Gambin, James Winter, Brian Paul Owens, Otto Heutling, Doug Turner.
Body Count: 11
There’s no rest for the wicket in this no-budget Australian mickey take; someone is murdering cricket players with associated implements and it’s all traced back to ye olde schoolyard bullying – the victim of which is hellbent on destroying those who permanently scarred him…
For reasons that only ever occur in the slasher flick, the investigating cops decide to gather the surviving members of the school team (notably all blokes) and herd them to a remote “safehouse” in the outback. What follows is obvious to the genre: unhappy-chappie materialises and adds to the carcass count with a spiked ball, sharpened wickets and a pseudo-Krueger glove of blades. There’s a also a crotch-defender/codpiece thing with nails hammered through it, forced into one victim’s pants before he’s kicked in the bollocks! The humorous ideas for permanently bowling out the characters are evident but often flawed by the budget constraints and several scenes look padded out to push the film towards a 90 minute duration.
That said, the Australian backdrop makes for an inviting change and the dialogue is littered with chucklesome one-liners and there’s also a twist that’s not so foreseeable (probably due to the simplicity of the entire project), all of which makes the film entertaining enough. The title, however, does not guarantee any cross-over material to I Know What You Did Last Summer, its sequels or content. And watch out for that mental gratuitous shower scene featuring Miss Nude Australia!
THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW
1982/18/88m
Things begin in the misty blueness of 1961, June 19th to be exact, and the birth of a child in a house. Looks and sounds painful. Twenty-one years later, the house – now the sorority of the title – is being evacuated by seven graduating sisters; Liz, Stevie, Katherine, ditzy Morgan, straight-talkin’ Diane, little girl-like Jeanie and rich bitch Vicki. Their miserable housemother, Mrs Slater, wants them out ASAP but they need to stick around to throw a graduation party…
A watery altercation between Slater and Vicki makes the girl mad enough to plot a revenge prank to really sock it to the old beeyatch. Naturally, the prank goes askew and Mrs Slater is shot dead. The girls panic, fight, scream, cry and are eventually forced to hide the body in the unused pool when all the stuff for their party arrives. Guilt and paranoia take over as the sisters attempt to keep up their facade of all being well while the party rages on… But somebody is outside and has Mrs Slater’s iron cane and wants to insert it into those responsible for her untimely death – or is it Mrs S herself?
Well, no… We knew that really, didn’t we? But the girls don’t and they begin to fall victim to the cane-toting madman, her mentally unstable son, Eric, all the time remaining out of sight. Their party continues in the background when they come to realise Mrs Slater’s body has gone walkabout and they split to try to find her, find her, and then try to get rid of her again, electing to bury her beneath an open grave in a handy nearby cemetery…
Smart girl Katherine steps up as the reluctant heroine who wanted to call an ambulance right from the start. While Vicki leads the naive ones around trying to cover up their crime, Katherine investigates the mysterious room in the attic, avoids her dorky date and is the first to second guess the disappearances of her friends. Meanwhile, the killings continue, all carried out with the iron cane but largely bloodless and possibly cut down. Rosman reportedly didn’t want much on screen gore in the film and it doesn’t really require much to remain effective.
Things begin to wrap up with a crazy scientist, Katherine getting doped up, an eerie clown and lots of hallucinations. Rosman has gone for an almost surreal approach to his tale; from the unbelievable reaction the majority of girls have to the accident to their demises, some of which feature dizzying visuals of the pulsing corridor in the sorority house as Jeanie, dressed up like a six-year-old with ribbons in her hair, runs and stumbles before her savage death. At least half of the girls poll sympathy and it’s hard to watch them tortured, something that probably won’t be an issue in the remake, but this forms the essence of the horror so is just about forgivable.
It’s rare to see a slasher film so in touch with its medium that there’s obvious effort in making it look stunning, taking what worked in its ancestors and recycling it to better visual effect. There are flaws but not many and hopefully the film will be remastered and given the special edition treatment once the remake surfaces.
1980/18/89m
