Camp Slaughter (Sweden, 2004)
Rating: 1/2Starring: Christian Magdu, Karin Bertling, Michael Mansson
(Why didn't I heed Bengt Wallman's review of this movie back at Hysteria Lives? Oh, dear gods, why?)
Not to be confused with the awful yet trying, low-budget time-loop slasher Camp Slaughter of 2005 (AKA Camp Daze), this is a Swedish teen horror flick that aims to be a tribute to old school backwoods slashers and the resulting product is definitely a textbook example of teens going to the woods and dying horrible deaths at the hands of a large (and dumb) man-monster.
A problematic example, but an example nonetheless.
As the plot puts it, deep into the woods of a Scandinavian countryside resides a family with one too many screws loose in each member's heads, all of them living inside a crumbling manor with little to no contact or interaction outside. The matriarch of the house is particularly the nastiest of the bunch as she berates her braindead husband for not giving her a daughter and orders her adult son around to fetch her food at the ring of a servant's bell. She also happened to have birthed another son many years ago, who she ordered to be kept inside an earth cellar nearby, fed with rabbits, forced to wear a dress and have his head hidden in a potato sack.
This boy, unsurprisingly, grew up very mentally impaired and eventually escapes his captivity as a grown murderous mute, right around the same time a loud group of teens settle in at a nearby cabin. (not a camp as the title suggests) Some so-so killer stalking and skulking the grounds happen. The kids talk about beer, weed and the usual premarital sex before commencing on said indulgence of beer, weed and sex. Nightfall comes and our dress-wearing sack-masked loon finally attacks, out to hunt them down coz he simply has the madness.
I would like to point out that all of this is done in very highly accented English, with the movie's casts poorly delivering the language in a manner similar to reading straight from their scripts. Double this with inept acting and a slug-worthy direction that paced the film to a lobotomized writhe, Camp Slaughter (2004) is just an unbearable experience to sit through with dwarfed touches of guffaw-inducing badness. Any endeavor to do genuine scares are laughable and the massacre the movie's slowly building up to is mostly littered with questionable visual effects of both practical and digital kind, not too mention lacking any sense of creativity or effective tension on the murders, too.
Looking also into consideration that hardly anybody from the characters are likable and the potato sack-masked killer crossdresser is just lame here despite the plot's venture into working in some Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)-inspired crazed family mess (which was only used for the first and last few minutes of the entire movie), there's honestly not a lot to like about Camp Slaughter (2004). It took me a while to find and see this movie in due time, and seeing the completely rotten cheese that it is, I can see why it's so damn obscure. Word to the wise: Skip this one!
And maybe punt kick every copy of this movie off a cliff while you're at it.
Bodycount:
1 female had her neck snapped
1 male stabbed and dismembered with a pair of garden shears
1 male axed on the chest
1 female killed in car collision
1 female knifed to death
1 female bound and buried alive
Total: 6
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