Tag Archives: rip-off central

“This shit ain’t cool!”

Leave a comment

final summer 2023

FINAL SUMMER

2 Stars  2023/83m

“In 1991, Camp Silverlake opened for the final time.”

Director/Writer: John Isberg

Cast: Jenna Kohn, Charlie Bauer, Wyatt Taber, Charlee Amacher, Myles Valentine, Jace Jamison, Ren Farbota, Ricardo Whitehead, Joi Hoffsommer, Thom Mathews.

Body Count: 11

Laughter Lines: “This whole thing just kinda feels like a horror movie; the whole let’s split up and search for the missing kid in the woods.”

Ode to Friday the 13th begins with a double murder at Camp Silverlake in 1986, then leaps five years where the accidental death of a child (named Mason!) during a nature hike is the final nail in the coffin of the camp’s fortunes, but also the lives of the counsellors.

As they prep to close down for good, a stalker in a skull hood begins axing them one by one. Is it the child’s distraught father, who happens to be a troubled ex-employee? The killer from ’86? Or someone else?

Ultimately, the killer’s identity is blaringly obvious, although Isberg attaches additional revelations and an evident tribute to the source material.

The kitten-weak maniac falls over a lot, drops his weapon (nobody ever picks it up despite ample opportunity), fails to finish off several of the counsellors, and cuts a particularly unthreatening figure.

final summer 2023

Elsewhere, there’s lots of wandering around in the dark with flashlights, a blue hue over everything, occasional references to Jason, and a couple of creepy shots here and there, but regrettably it’s too insubstantial. The film appears kneecapped by its budget, evidenced in a string off off-camera kills, slow, clunky fight scenes, and unresolved questions, such as who the killer in the prologue was. A post-credits scene hints at something, but it’s still all too murky.

Thom Mathews appears for a matter of minutes as the local Sheriff, and look out for the bizarre Tom Atkins ‘cameo’.

Recurring Nightmare

Leave a comment

bad dreams 1988

BAD DREAMS

3 Stars  1988/18/84m

“When Cynthia wakes up, she’ll wish she were dead.”

Director/Writer: Andrew Fleming / Writers: Michael Dick, P.J. Pettiette, Yuri Zeltser, Steven E. de Souza / Cast: Jennifer Rubin, Bruce Abbott, Harris Yulin, Richard Lynch, Dean Cameron, Susan Ruttan, Damita Jo Freeman, E.G. Daily, Susan Barnes, Louis Giambalvo, Sheila Scott Wilkinson, Sy Richardson.

Body Count: 9 (+24)

Laughter Lines: “If you wanna fit in with the 80s, you’re at least two divorces, a condo, and a yeast infection behind the times.”

Of all the Elm Street rip-offs, just a glance a the name and details of this should tell you it’s one of the most overt. Although, being pedantic about it, Bad Dreams targets Elm Street 3 for much of its pilfer source, not least by casting from that movie Jennifer Rubin (who played ex-junkie Taryn) as the lead.

Rubin is Cynthia, the sole survivor of a mass-suicide at the Unity Fields cult in 1975, where self-styled prophet Harris (Lynch) poured ladles of gasoline over his flock before burning them and himself to death. Thirteen years later (finally not five, ten, or twenty!) Cynthia wakes from a coma and is placed into the mental care of Dr Alex Carmen and joins his therapy group of oddballs to assist her integration into the 80s (see Laughter Lines).

bad dreams 1988 richard lynch

Among the other group members are anger-prone Ralph, sex obsessed couple Ed and Connie, seldom spoken Lana, jittery journalist Miriam, and Gilda, who just mutters stuff about destiny. Their issues aren’t particularly clear or realised well, unlike the Dream Warriors kids, where individual personalities were nailed down with ease by Craven’s script.

Cynthia neither fits in, nor wants to be there, but when she starts to see her dead cult leader in elevator or walking down the corridors, she thinks he’s come back for her to complete the transition to the next plane of existence blah blah blah. These visions coincide with the apparent suicides of the other group members, who drown, fall out of high-storey windows, and in one icky case throw themselves into a giant ventilation fan, causing blood rain throughout the clinic.

bad dreams 1988

The cops who have been waiting thirteen years for answers around the cult’s demise see Cynthia as the common link between the deaths, despite the fact she has alibis for each, Dr Carmen is fired, and Cynthia put into isolation where Freddy Harris can get to her more easily.

At this point, Bad Dreams releases its twist, revealing circumstances to be much more earthbound than we’ve been led to believe. It’s unexpected and a decent deception, but it renders a majority of the film redundant and leads to a soggy climax that feels half-baked before the credits just start rolling and Sweet Child O’ Mine kicks in.

bad dreams 1988

It’s a bit of an ‘Oh… okay’ moment, but the film is at least well made, boasts some interesting supporting characters and witty dialogue here and there. The flashback scene to the cult wilfully burning their own faces is intensely and unsettling. More time with the therapy group characters would’ve added some sorely missing depth to proceedings and meat for the actors to get their teeth into.

So how much does it borrow from Kruegertown?

  • Set on a psychiatric care ward a la Dream Warriors
  • Heroine repeatedly taken back to a creepy old house in her dreams/flashbacks
  • Death by fire
  • Ghoulish otherworldly stalker who the ‘adults’ can’t see (sometimes) appears all burnt up
  • Cynthia put into isolation ‘for her own good’
  • Doctor dismissed by hospital for getting too involved
  • Two cast members from Elm Street movies appearbad dreams 1988 bruce abbott jennifer rubin

Blurbs-of-interest: Harris Yulin was later in Wes Craven’s My Soul to Take; Richard Lynch was in Laid to Rest, Curse of the Forty-Niner, and Rob Zombie’s Halloween re-do; Charles Fleischer, the doctor from Elm Street 1, appears here briefly as the pharmacist.

A hatchet just before dawn’s wrong turn

Leave a comment

nobody sleeps in the woods tonight 2020

NOBODY SLEEPS IN THE WOODS TONIGHT

3 Stars  2020/18/104m

Director/Writer: Bartosz M. Kowalski / Writers: Jan Kwiecinski & Mirella Zaradiewicz / Cast: Julia Wieniawa-Narkiewicz, Michal Lupa, Wiktoria Gasiewska, Stanislaw Cywka, Sebastian Dela, Gabriela Muskala, Michal Zbroja, Piotr Cyrwus.

Body Count: 12

Laughter Lines: “Fucking locals, B-class Poland – what am I doing here?”

Poland. Land of pierogi, Auschwitz, and questionable human rights for gay people. Our school took us there in the 90s to visit the aforementioned concentration camps. Heavy.

In 2020, the country joined the ranks of Euroslash with this slick looking pick n’ mix of Wrong Turn, Just Before Dawn, and Hatchet. Thirty years after a mailman is dragged screaming into the cellar of a remote woodland home, a busload of teenagers arrives at Camp Adrenalina, a rehab joint to prize their cell phones and tablets out of their hands and show them there’s more to life than Instagram and gaming.

Group 4 pits girly Aniela, wannabe player Daniel, shy Bartek, nerdy Julek, withdrawn Zosia, and their guide Iza against the wilderness. They trek, camp, sit around the fire, and find a hollowed out stag. Meanwhile, whatever has been living in that cellar escapes when the old lady who feeds it takes a bad fall and it steals her keys, killing her as it vacates.

nobody sleeps in the woods tonight 2020

When Bartek disappears after a sexy night time booty call with Aniela (in a cute twist he turns out to be a virgin) and all that remains is blood on a nearby tree trunk, the others split into two groups – Iza, Julek, and Zosia to look for help or a phone, while Bartek and Aniela remain at the camp in case Daniel returns. The recon team stumble upon the house and run into the hulking deformed maniac, who manages to kill Iza, leaving the teens to save themselves.

From a hermit living in a shack, Judek and Zosia learn that there are twin killers, boys who found a crashed meteor in the woods years earlier, which leaked tar-like shit that turned them into psychotic cannibals overnight, causing their mother to lock them in the cellar and throw down animal carcasses.

nobody sleeps in the woods tonight 2020

Elsewhere, Bartek looks for help in a remote church, but finds the resident priest there has other ideas, nodding to Poland’s shitty record with LGBTQ residents, and culminating in a grisly woodchipper demise. Eventually, it comes down to Zosia, who we learn lost her family during a selfie-caused car accident – though why she’s at a camp for tech-obsessed teens is never addressed.

Lots of ideas are borrowed from other films: The sleeping bag kill is a direct recreation of that in Friday the 13th Part VII, and there’s a head-to-groin axe split that recalls Wrong Turn 2, but messier. There’s a great scene where Zosia, given the chance to run, instead creeps upstairs with a large machete and slowly tip-toes into the room where one of the loons is napping to take a gruesome revenge.

nobody sleeps in the woods tonight 2020

Nobody Sleeps gets further than a lot of its brethren by carving out nicer characters than expected. Given the need to adhere to certain stereotypes, none of the endangered group fall into assholery, revealing parts of themselves that make you feel sad for them when they meet the business end of an axe. The wheels work loose towards the end, but for a first international horror export it’s pretty damn solid.

The Audacity is Coming from *Inside* the House…

5 comments

wakc

WHEN A KILLER CALLS

2 Stars  2006/91m

“The stranger on the phone… is inside your house!”

Director: Peter Mervis / Writer: Steve Bevilacqua / Cast: Rebekah Kochan, Robert Buckley, Mark Irvingsen, Sarah Hall, Derek Osedach, Carissa Bodnar, Isabella Bodnar, Chriss Anglin, Tara Clark.

Body Count: 13

The Asylum has made a name for itself producing quick turnover rip-offs of about-to-be-huge releases – though these days they just seem to churn out films about sharks – and as the remake of When A Stranger Calls loomed, in the same month came this similarly titled, higher-bodycount pretender, which is more or less the exact same plot, but wasn’t it nice of them to put the twist on the cover in the form of a tagline!?

Cookie cutter hot girl Trisha turns up at her babysitting gig, explains that she “doesn’t sit for the Hewitt’s anymore” and strikes an expression that tells us exactly who the killer’s going to be. Or are they playing us? No. It’s exactly who you think it is.

The standard post-Scream calls come in – “check the kid”, “I’m going to kill you tonight…” blah blah blah – so she calls the cops. Her sexy boyfriend and his two loser tag-alongs show up, giving Mr Hewitt – I mean, the mystery killer – some extra fodder to stab, slash, and asphyxiate, before Trisha is taken hostage. The last half hour is pretty much her tied up and menaced by the mystery killer in some pretty disturbing ways.

The only daring instance that occurs here is that there are two on-screen murders of young children, a taboo usually not crossed even in the pits of exploitation horror, but that doesn’t make it a good film. As it is, it’s backed into a corner by the number of cliches it depends on. Let’s see a babysitter film where it’s a guy looking after the kids for a change.

Blurbs-of-interest: Kochan and Odesach were the leads in fellow Asylum rip, Halloween Night; Robert Buckley was also in Killer Movie; Mark Irvingsen was in both Scarecrow (2003) and Scarecrow Slayer.

“All who stay – WILL DIE!”

Leave a comment

the tooth fairy 2006

THE TOOTH FAIRY

3 Stars  2006/89m

“The childhood fairytale becomes your worst nightmare!”

Director: Chuck Bowman / Writers: Stephen J. Cannell, Cory Strode, Cookie Rae Brown, Daniel Farrands, Carolyn Davis / Cast: Lochlyn Munro, Chandra West, Nicole Munoz, Carrie Anne Fleming, Stave Bacic, P.J. Soles, Peter New, Ben Cotton, Jesse Hutch, Jianna Ballard, Sonya Salomea, Karin Konovsal.

Body Count: 8

Laughter Lines: “Mark my words – all who stay WILL DIE!”

A strange, but endearing alternate take on The Tooth Fairy as a children-hunting killer in the wake of Darkness Falls, which was an unprecedented success with its PG-13 rating. It should be therefore no surprise that a gored-up knock-off would appear soon after.

In 1949, a couple of boys visit an old house where an alleged witch lives. She knows when you’ll lose your baby teeth and offers gifts in exchange for them. With the promise of a shiny new bike, one of the boys enters the house but sees the hag’s face and is chopped up for his trouble, with the other boy legging it.

Fifty-seven years later – yay! not ten or twenty for once – ex-city doc Peter (Munro) has bought the same house and is renovating it into a country inn. For the weekend arrives girlfriend Darcy (West, who may well have been cast for her likeness to Emma Caulfield), and her 10-year-old daughter Pam, who quickly befriends the ghost of a local girl, who fills her in on the legend. On the way back from this, Pam falls off her bike and knocks her final baby tooth out! Gasp.

tooth fairy 2006

While Peter and Darcy battle a couple of hicks in town, Pam becomes convinced The Tooth Fairy is after her – fueled by P.J. Soles as the requisite neighbour in a cloak who tells them they’ll all die, initially in an Irish accent that soon fades into generic American twang. Nevertheless, a series of gooey deaths ensue as promised: The hunky help is fed into a woodchipper, a kooky psychic is nail-gunned to a wall, a dick is sliced off, decapitation… This is anything but the off-camera kills of Darkness Falls. In truth, it probably has more in common with the same year’s Fingerprints.

Where The Tooth Fairy succeeds is in its slightly more invested characterisations and subsequent dialogue: Peter’s old buddy rocks up with his aura-sensing girlfriend, who utters awesome things like “a transcendent evil has been awakened in this house,” and “your personal landscape is a manuscript written by your actions – when you fight you always lose more than you redeem.” Munoz impresses as the pre-teen heroine, although exchanges between the child actors are sometimes clunky, the Are You Afraid of the Dark-stylings are more enabling in this case.

the tooth fairy 2006

Things become slightly undone as the final edges towards its finale, with ridiculous decision-making shoehorned in to up the body count, undermining the good work done at the start. It’s all forgivable though, given the effort clearly put in by the filmmakers to create something with characters we don’t instantly hate.

Blurbs-of-interest: Lochlyn Munro was in Hack!, Scary Movie, Initiation, Totally Killer, Freddy vs Jason, along with Jesse Hutch; Nicole Munoz was in Scarecrow (2013); P.J. Soles was Lynda in Halloween, and can also be seen in Innocent Prey, Uncle Sam, and Candy Corn; Ben Cotton was in Harper’s Island, Scar, and Stan Helsing; Chuck Bowman previously directed Dead Above Ground.

1 2 3 … 13