Customer Reviews

Camp Slaughter

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

YES, this movie is cheesy, but it's supposed to be! I totally loved it...but I also loved Sleepaway Camp! It's too funny to really worry about "why" they repeat the same day over and over!!! If your really anal about poor transitions and bad sound effects, you'll hate it, but it's a spoof of cheesy 80s horror movies, and the Groundhog Day effect gives it a unique twist that I've never seen done in a horror film before!
Sleepaway Camp meets Groundhog Day!!!
Mmmmwwwaaahahaha!!!

I bought this movie because I'm a Matt Dallas fan. I've seen clips of it before. I thought it would be good. It wasn't that good like I expected.

Some horror movies are so bad the audience laughs. Others are so bad the audience can do naught but stare, slack jawed and with glazed over eyes, wondering what the producers and director were smoking to make them think this movie would be a good idea. Then there is the third category, which Camp Slaughter falls firmly into, that are so bad one might wonder if there is some sort of bizarre plot to resurrect a long forgotten dark deity of death and despair by getting enough people to watch something as horrible as this. Other than to wearily discuss the whole train wreck with your coworkers the next day around the water cooler, there is literally no entertainment value whatsoever to be derived from Camp Slaughter.

Apparently this is supposed to be a tribute to the whodunit style of teen slasher films of years long gone. How something can be labeled a tribute, when it is worse than every single teen slasher movie put together, is a question that should be put to Alex Pucci, who directed the whole gods-forsaken mess. Savvy horror movie buyers will notice there are actually film festival awards listed on the back of the DVD case, indicating the movie was actually praised by an independent panel of judges, leading many to believe the film might be worth buying. After viewing Camp Slaughter, it will become painfully obvious that either the film festivals referenced don't exist, or Pucci himself oversaw them.

None of this criticism is intended in any way to discourage Pucci and co from doing any future films. After all, you've gotta crawl before you can run. Camp Slaughter just happened to not even be out of the womb yet. It's clear that this was intended to be a great slasher flick, and that a lot of work went into it, it's just that every single facet of the movie failed on a level never seen before. The word "acting" can't even be used in reference to camp slaughter, it's really more like a bunch of young kids goofing off in front of a camera. Almost every scene of the movie is an extreme close up of someone's face. Add to this the fact that when the camera cuts from one extreme close up to another of people who are supposedly in the same scene talking to each other, the time of day and sounds in the background obviously change, it becomes apparent that the director couldn't even get all of the cast to show up at the same place at the same time for shooting. Anytime some sort of assumed action is occurring, the camera switches to comical warp speed reminiscent of ultra low budget TV shows to try to hide the fact that nothing is actually happening.

The standard elements of a slasher style horror movie are all used throughout the script, but they all inevitably fail, each more spectacularly bad than the last. It all starts by the number, with a group of teens driving down an empty expanse of the Great American Highway System. Of course, the vehicle breaks down at an inopportune time leaving the teens stranded in strange surroundings. The intrepid travelers soon discover there is a killer amongst them (but who?), there's a lot of unnecessary dialogue and explaining of why the killing is happening, and then finally the whole thing ends with the "oh no the terror isn't really over" ending that should have been dumped with the Friday the 13th series. To discuss the specifics of what is going on in this particular slasher entry would be to lend some sort of legitimacy to the plot, which anyone who enjoys horror movies should staunchly refuse to do.

Maybe with an expanded budget, some actors who have at least a modicum of talent, a script that doesn't lead viewers to randomly commit suicide, and a little more experience under their belts, the criminals responsible for Camp Slaughter will give us something that fits in the "so bad it's funny" category. In the meantime, don't be surprised if Cthulhu rises from his watery sleep to rest control of the earth from the gods of light once again.

Camp Slaughter (Alex Pucci, 2005)

Camp Slaughter (aka Camp Daze) is the first real out-and-out slasher flick that isn't part of a series in well over a decade. And not to put too fine a point on it, it may well be the best slasher flick that hasn't been part of a series since the original Friday the 13th; it's certainly the best slasher-flick spoof to come down the pike since 1981's Student Bodies. That said, the market for this movie is going to be those of us who were teens in the eighties and couldn't get enough of low-budget godawful slasher films; everyone else will probably wonder what all the fuss is about. If you're one of us, though, you're going to love this.

The plot: four modern-day young-and-beautifuls get lost in the Maine woods. While spending the night in their car, they witness a slasher killing someone. The next morning, the body is gone, and they find themselves embraced by the rather retro members of Camp Hiawatha, which was probably a scary enough place back in the eighties. They're soon told the reason everyone looks so weird: it's because camp Hiawatha is under a curse, reliving over and over the events that took place when a killer eviscerated the place (if you'll pardon the pun) in August 1981. The counselors know what's happening, and they believe the young-and-beautifuls, being outsiders who have wandered into the repetitive scene, may be able to break the camp out and finally put the souls to rest.

This is great stuff-- though, like I said, you already have to be a fan of the genre to get a lot of the in-jokes. It's what Scream might have been had that film not tried to take its postmodern angle so seriously; good, stupid fun where you, as the viewer, know the filmmakers are laughing with you, not at you, but (unlike the similarly brilliant Club Dread) stays enough on the horror side of the fence that the laughs are uncomfortable more than once. Camp Slaughter walks a balance, and does it well. More than that, buried under the deconstruction of the slasher film mores, there's a brain here. You may have to dig to get to it sometimes, but it's well worth the effort. *** ½

Well the original title of this film was Camp Daze and it was changed to Camp Slaughter I guess to make is sound more attractive. I supposed I would agree with that. Camp Daze makes it sound like one of those 80's teen sex & drug comedies instead of a horror film. The title may be about the best thing is in this lame, technically horrible, piece of junk. The plot is just weird enough that it will raise and eyebrow and make you think that it sounds pretty interesting. But then the execution turns out to be just lousy, less than amateur skill level.

Anyway a group of young-somethings are traveling along through a remote forest road when they break down. They eventually come upon Camp Hiawatha, and find themselves somehow transported back in time to 1981, and the night when a killer went out a rampage killing the teenaged campers. Somehow this group has got to free the kids from this curse and rescue them while trying to stay alive themselves. It's kind of like that movie "Frequency" meets "Friday the 13th". I guess the filmmakers were trying to do a bit of a tribute to those slasher films of the 1980's but I guess my question is, why not just do a good slasher film in the 80's tradition without the convoluted time traveling plot?

Beyond that the movie is just so technically inferior. I understand low budget and all but come on....the sound was just awful, the camera work was terrible, the lighting was poor, and the acting was strictly high school dram club, particularly with the female cast members who were all in their very first screen credit. You know that's a problem. The one positive is that it's pretty funny. They go so over the top in trying to get the 80's look and feel that it comes off more as a spoof. Not sure if they intended it that way or not but it was funny.

This film had me dying of laughter on the floor, don't get me wrong it did have good scary scenes and the death scenes are great. People you need to get this movie.

It is difficult to label anything as the worst movie ever. This movie comes so perilously close, though.

If you're like me, you'll disregard the reviews and try this movie anyway. You will be very, very disappointed.

Sound = BAD.
Acting = BAD.
F/X = BAD.
Plot = BAD. (although it is a good idea)
Entertainment Value = None.

Redeeming qualities = One. Watching the Behind the Scenes featurette and realizing that the director and the actors actually took this movie seriously.

I knew this movie was going to be bad when I rented it, but I watch ALOT of bad horror movies, and besides, it had some accolades on the back, so I thought there was always a chance it could end up being a good way to spend an evening. What I discovered, however, was that this movie was so much more astronomically bad than I ever could have guessed in my wildest of dreams. It looks like an inexperienced and clueless high school students misguided attempts to use his weekends in a more productive way than his usual watching wrestling and getting stoned. Everything in this movie was just done so horribly. The camera work is terrible, the directing is without any kind of skill, the actors all look like friends from math class coaxed into reading from cue cards. The audio is SOOOO awful, and the editing is painfully amateurish. Lighting and sound is inconsistent from cut to cut, the dialogue is so bad you'll be grinding your teeth with every line. The plot is all so convoluted and ineffectively conveyed that I wondered if I had been punked when I rented this, and half expected Ashton Kutcher to be behind it all. All in all, I can't think of a single thing they did well in this movie. I am well aware that this was made by children, and that there are difficulties I'm sure they were able to conquer with commendable effort, but the end result is that there is just nothing here whatsoever that is worth watching, and there is no talent involved with this horrid mess. A second glance at the back cover will reveal that BOTH the positive comments are from the same place, something called "The Meatgrinder." I've never heard of "The Meatgrinder," but I'm guessing that it's somehow involved with the making or distribution of this movie. I just cannot and will not accept that anyone's honest opinion of this chore to watch was that it was good. It's so bad that it transcends opinion, it's poor quality is an unshakable fact. It's not even "MST3K it with your buddies" bad, because we tried. It's just awful to watch.

This is an interesting movie that keeps you guessing until the end.. Its too bad the handsome Vade swears so much.. and that he had to die.. He looks like Josh Hartnet

It's supposed to be a tribute to the slasher films of the 80's. Granted the genre has never set out to do anything intelligent, but this film brings the idea to an all new low. The premise seemed promising enough. They're all stuck living the same horrific day over again. (Why? How? We don't know) The problem is that they're aware of the fact. So why are they repeating the same things over as if they don't know? Sure they say that they're limited in what they can do, but that obviously doesn't include talking about it. In long lecture like bits of dialogue, I might add. It just doesn't add up at all. If only there was some more camp in this camp then it might be good on the Cheese Whiz scale, but it just comes off as pathetic. The worst part of it is the editing. In so many scenes someone starts to attack, then they cut away; typical of low budget horror. Some times you cut to an angle where you just see a silhouette hacking or something, as you'd expect. Unfortunately, most times though they cut to a shot where it's already happened. They skip over the kill entirely. The sound isn't much better. So many times the sound just cuts out too. Usually, durning scenes where a better movie would have dubbed in a sound effect. An arrow hits a body, silence. A body falls, silence. Did they run out of money, or did they just forget? In short, it's an amateurish film made by no talent hacks who need to find a day job. Finally, what is up with those two guys? Is this camp brokeback?