Rating: *
Starring: Gil Van Waggoner, Ron Berger and Bridget Agnew
You know you more or less fucked up when the horror movie you're watching opens with a foreboding voice monologuing about the beauty and savagery of the Colorado river, only for it to start singing what I assume is the movie's own opening country song, guitar twangs and all.
I'm going to need the bottle for this one...
In this rarity (cannot imagine why) of a slasher title, we follow a group of tourists from both in and out of American soil in a white water rafting holiday and, I stress you not, a big chunk of this movie is just these folks enjoying the soggy tour through the rapids. Their guide prep talks about the dangers of the rapids and its surrounding wilderness, they raft, camp, talk, eat, talk, sleep, talk, did I mentioned they talk? Like, we literally have a scene where two dudes in short shorts is just standing next to a portable toilet tent, talking about the lady inside using it. It doesn't help that the dialogue here are also poorly written, ineptly acted and ran through low quality audio, further numbing my senses until I begin to ponder if the "horror" of this horror flick may have more to do with it existing.
We eventually got our first kill about halfway or so into the plot, with one poor sap getting pushed off a cliff and landing as a bloody mess in a pool being used by some bathing girls. Even then the endlessly tiresome conversations and now awkward camping scenes never ceased, taking more of the movie's precious time away from properly building up any workable tension towards the murder spree and the mystery behind the identity of the killer hiding within the group. It's just bad low-budget celluloid all the way, bearing little excitement with its lackluster kills and overcooked "character development", with perhaps the only good things I can get out from all of this are unintentional hilarity and the worthwhile nature shots of the Grand Canyon and Colorado Rapids, minuscule points to clamor over when everything else about this late-70s grindhouse wilderness murder mystery is just one big gaffe.
I guess I should have heeded the signs that the universe was trying to protect me from seeing this film when my first copy of Savage Water (1979), released by Vinegar Syndrome, got scratched to hell by a malfunctioning disc player and that was around the time the company pulled the movie from distribution due to some issues with the rights. It wasn't until last year that I managed to get a digital copy of the film from a generous contact, only to lose that copy when the hard drive I stored it at crashed. Another digital copy was handed to me a few months later by a different contact, who also gave me the weird eye before wishing me "good luck, you sad strange little man". So many opportunities given to save myself from this fecal mound and I took none of them. Learn from my mistake and don't bother with this.
Bodycount:
1 male pushed off a cliff
1 female falls to her death while mountain climbing (flashback)
1 male falls to his death
1 female knifed in the back
1 female fed with ginseng leaves, succumbs to a heart seizure
1 male shredded with a boat motor propeller
1 boy drowned in the rapids
1 male had his climbing rope cut, dropped to his death
Total: 8
Yeah I remember this one being pretty boring. I have what I think might be a much more condensed and shorter copy than what most people have seen. It's a director's cut that has the look of a made on demand bootleg type product but I bought it directly from the director's website so I guess it's sort of official. I don't remember too much about it other than not being impressed so I'll have to give it another try sometime.
ReplyDeleteThere really isn't much to remember because there really isn't much to remember. Just people mostly talking and camping for half a movie, only to do the same in the next half only with the added bonus of someone killing them. Or themselves.
DeleteOutlook, not so good.