Tag 2000s

• AKA:


• Director: Robert Hiltzik


• Writer: Robert Hiltzik


• Starring: Vincent Pastore, Michael Gibney, Paul DeAngelo, Jonathan Tiersten


• Run Time: 86 mins

Alan, a clumsy, overweight and slightly-retarded camper at Camp Manabe, is constantly picked on by the popular kids. Soon just about everyone who has victimised him begins to turn up dead in terrible ways. Camp counsellor Ronnie, who survived a bloodbath at Camp Arawak years earlier, is convinced that the killer, Angela has returned. Or is a copycat killer on the loose?

Robert Hiltzik wrote and directed the infamous 1983 summer camp slasher film Sleepaway Camp, a film which featured one of the most unforgettable endings I’ve ever seen (go and watch it if you don’t know what happened – even Tarantino loves it) and which went on to become a cult horror hit. A couple of sequels followed, neither of which had anything to do with Hiltzik and which starred a new actress as the gender-confused killer, Angela. A third sequel went into production in 1992 but that was canned when the production company went under. But with the dawn of the internet age, Hiltzik realised that there was a demand out there for a direct sequel to the original and, not having directed a film since the original, decided to make the sequel that everyone wanted. It took him five years and numerous re-cuts and re-shoots but finally he managed to create Return to Sleepaway Camp, a 2000s slasher which for all intents and purposes looks like it was made back in the mid-80s.

In some ways you wish he’d never bothered. Return to Sleepaway Camp is a poorly acted, haphazardly edited (what’s with the constant fade-to-black screens after every scene?) and rather humdrum slasher which was obviously hindered by its drawn out production. But on the flip side, Hiltzik has captured the look of the 80s summer camp slasher down to a tee, so much so that I had to double check the date to make sure that it wasn’t a lost film that had been uncovered. Shot in 2003, it was finally released in 2008, hence the reason why the late Isaac Hayes is able to make a cameo (a pointless two-minute role which no doubt got him a decent pay cheque). Perhaps it’s the nostalgia weighing heavy but the film’s low budget 80s-style charm is the precisely the reason why this works way better than it has any right to.

Fans were on board from the get-go with the announcement that some of the surviving characters from the original would return alongside the same actors who played them. On a continuity note this is great for a sequel. But the returning actors seem to have learnt little in their years between summer camp stints. Paul DeAngelo reprises his role as Ronnie, one of the counsellors from the original who decided to stay in the summer camp business. He’s all muscle and no acting chops. Like seriously, this guy could be one of the worst actors I’ve ever seen. His delivery and timing is terrible. Equally as bad is Jonathan Tiersten as Ricky, Angela’s cousin who survived the original, but has since decked himself out like some boy band wannabe. Neither man brings anything to the table except that linking value to the original and what they were able to get away with (i.e. lack of talent) in the 80s is brazenly exposed in today’s market.

It’s the new stars who are the most inept and this is aimed squarely at Michael Gibney who plays Alan. He is quite simply the most irritating person ever to grace a slasher film. There’s no way he’d have any friends at a place like this. He acts like a total asshole to everyone, picks on kids less fortunate than him but then whines and cries like mad when the older kids pick on him. Gibney completely overplays the role, shouting and raising his voice during every sentence and having this constantly gormless look on his face. I don’t know how Hiltzik can expect us to sympathise with him, in fact it’s the opposite and you wish him a slow and agonising death from the very first scene. “Your ass stinks” is his favourite catchphrase and it’s a phrase which is repeated time and time again.

Slashers live and die by their metaphorical swords so at least Return to Sleepaway Camp delivers plenty of the sub-genre’s required inventive death scenes. One poor guy has his penis attached to a length of wire which is also attached to the bumper of a car – guess what happens. A stoner is downed with petrol and then burnt to death. Another one has a sharpened broom handle rammed through their eye. Someone is crushed underneath a mattress of spikes. And so forth. The kills are creative, mean-spirited, and above all gory. I can’t say that they’re anything amazing but the whole 80s feel to the proceedings gives them a slightly more grimy edge.

Return to Sleepaway Camp also sees fit to throw in a blatant plot-twist right at the very end. I don’t like using quotes like this for obvious reasons but the fact is that even the likes of Stevie Wonder could see the twist coming! The shock sight of naked ‘Angela’ actually being naked Peter in the original is replaced by a token surprise which will barely register on your radar because you sussed it out in the first time the ending is set-up earlier in the film. It’s a twist for twist’s sake and not a very good one.

Return to Sleepaway Camp is strictly one for series fans only: the original was unforgettable; this direct sequel is immediately forgettable. It wasn’t worth the twenty five year wait and the other sequels do a far better job of providing similar scares and slash with a dash of charm and self-awareness. It runs purely on nostalgia but the fumes aren’t enough to keep it going for long.

• AKA:


• Director: Kevin Greene, Adam Johnson, Tripp Norton


• Writer: Kevin Greene, Alex Weir


• Starring: Allelon Ruggiero, Bruce Taylor, Ron Lester, Steve Rickman


• Run Time: 90 mins

Assistant green keeper Allen allows his friends to hold an after-hours party in the country club that his step dad owns. However Allen doesn’t count on the legend of the old murderous green keeper to actually be true. So when the maniac shows up and starts offing his friends, Allen must do everything he can to rescue the love of his life, Elena, before the green keeper takes her life.

You can now add green keepers to a list of stock characters who have gone on killing sprees in slasher films. Janitors. Police officers. Ice cream men. Teachers. Dentists. They’ve all been there and done that, piling up the body count in the process. Though kind of similar in job role to the killer caretaker Cropsey from The Burning, I guess this slight twist on the character’s daily duties means that this is the first time a green keeper has gone berserk.

A predictably dull slasher flick, The Green Keeper runs like a low-rent modern day rehash of The Burning coupled with the token post-modern approach of Scream. Let’s face it, there’s no new mileage to be had in the slasher film. It’s been done to death more than any other genre flick and with an odd one or two exceptions, there’s just no surprises left to be had in them. We know how they’re going to pan out. We know which characters are going to survive and which characters will die, more often than not we’re also able to predict the order of death. But that hasn’t stopped the sub-genre from continually pumping out new films every year.

The Green Keeper milks its novelty-gimmick theme about the green keeper for all its worth and so the bulk of the kill scenes revolve around said theme. Characters are killed with golf hole flags, tennis ball machines filled with nails and, in the film’s silliest (and most amusing moment), one unlucky character is impaled on a lawn sprinkler whilst the killer starts pumping it out. It’s not art at its purest but the kills do what they need to do with a modicum of amusement and a generous dose of black humour. The kills are gory but the effects aren’t very convincing.  Though marks should at least be given for keeping everything ‘real’ and using the old techniques instead of CGIing everything.

Whilst some of the low budget slashers of the 80s looked grimy and grindhouse-esque due to the way they were filmed, some of these modern day straight-to-video slashers follow in the same footsteps but with highly polished cameras and editing techniques to get rid of that dirty ‘I shouldn’t really be watching this’ feeling. The Green Keeper looks to have been shot on a camcorder by a few mates and they raided the local shop for ketchup. The whole thing looks like it was filmed for a home video TV show – I know we’re not supposed to take this stuff seriously but it helps if it actually looks like I’d want to spend ninety minutes watching it rather than expect the canned laughter or annoying commentary from the TV presenter to be around the corner. That’s the problem of shooting on digital as opposed to film but times are changing so I’ve got to live with it. The Green Keeper isn’t the only film guilty of this but it gives off a distinct low-budget feel made even worse by some poor lighting decisions.

The influence of Scream also hastens the film’s spiralling towards the ‘avoid’ section. Though the film tries to hark back to the 80s, the script is clearly post-modern with a scene involving the characters watching a slasher-film-within-a-slasher-film on a TV set in the club. The script also keeps things too jokey and wacky throughout, leading to a rather mish-mash of ideas which bounce between deadly serious and comically acceptable. Having said that the film is reasonably well acted with Allellon Ruggerio making for an unlikely hero and there’s plenty of hot chicks around for good measure (including former Playboy Playmate Christi Taylor, fulfilling the quota of breasts for about ten slasher flicks with her desirable chest shot).

Slasher films live and die by their body count and kill scenes and thankfully The Green Keeper delivers on these, as well as the other token slasher ingredient – the nudity. I knew what I was getting myself in for when I sat down to watch and it did exactly what it said on the box. It’s silly, stupid and wholly unoriginal but The Green Keeper has just enough mileage in it to see itself to the end. There are worse slashers out and there and for $80,000, The Green Keeper provides adequate, if unfulfilling, value.

• AKA:


• Director: Patrick Lussier


• Writer: Todd Farmer (screenplay), Zane Smith (screenplay), John Beaird (1981 screenplay), Stephen Miller (1981 story)


• Starring: Jensen Ackles, Jamie King, Kerr Smith, Betsy Rue


• Run Time: 101 mins

He’s gonna break your heart.

Ten years ago, inexperienced miner Tom Hanniger caused an accident in which led to the deaths of five miners and sent the only survivor, Harry Warden, into a coma. Exactly one year later, Harry woke from his coma to head to the town of Harmony and murder twenty-two people before he was killed. Ten years later, Tom Hanniger returns to Harmony, struggling to cope with the past. His ex-girlfriend has now married his best friend and he is unwelcome in the town. But no soon as he returns to the town, the murders start up again. It seems that Harry Warden isn’t so dead after all.

I’m not a fan of remakes. That’s a bit of an understatement but I’m just sick of the current Hollywood trend to constantly remake older films instead of actually using it’s imagination to create new material. There are remakes which modernise classic films that everyone knows well. For horror fans, this is the likes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Classics which have no business being remade as the originals still pack a punch today. Then there are those remakes of films which hardly anyone outside of the genre saw in the first place or aren’t as well known. You’ve got your likes of April Fool’s Day, Night of the Demons and The Toolbox Murders. I don’t usually mind these type of films being remade as usually the originals aren’t much cop and the majority of the audience don’t have the same affinity to the originals as they do the classics mentioned above.

The original My Bloody Valentine could arguably fall into either category. The original, whilst not well known outside of the genre, is a classic slasher and is one of the genre’s true greats which was savagely treat by the censors and is usually seen as one of the poster boys for the anti-censorship bandwagon that began rolling in the 80s when horror films were being cut left, right and centre. However it wasn’t perfect and whilst it’s clearly adored by many horror fans, the fact that it’s not mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Halloween and Friday the 13th meant that it was less likely to receive a big backlash against remaking it. At least not from me anyway.

Truth be told, My Bloody Valentine does exactly what it sets out to do. It hardly insults the original but it doesn’t change the formula much to be able to do that. Faithfully sticking to the majority of the original’s premise, this remake not only succeeds in bringing it to life in a more modern setting but also improves some aspects of the original in the process. That’s not to say that it’s an overall improvement as some of the key ingredients from the original are sorely lacking here, in particular the sombre mood which is virtually absent in this one and is instead replaced by a lighter tone. Of course the polish and gleam of modern day slashers also detract from the gritty, low budget feel of some of the earlier 80s slasher greats. The holiday itself doesn’t play a huge part in this one either which is a bit of a shame but once the action starts heating up then this is a minor inconvenience.

If you’ve been lucky to catch the 3-D version then you’re in for a right treat with blood and guts flying around the screen like confetti. If you think you’re going to survive without a pickaxe being aimed in the direction of the audience then think again. The gore is one of the film’s strongest points and great use is made of the pickaxe – in fact the killer hardly uses anything else. Despite this sounding repetitive, there are all manner of creative kills involving the pickaxe from decapitations to eye-gougings and impalements so you’re never going to see the same thing time and time again. It’s obvious that whoever came up with the kills was having a blast doing it and this enjoyment is reflected on the screen. You shouldn’t cheer when they happen but they’re so damned entertaining that it’s hard not to applaud. There is a solid body count too so once the killer miner gets doing what he does best, the pace of the film rarely lets up. The film may run for about ten minutes longer than it needs to but it’s never boring.

The cast isn’t particularly great but they’ve been cast for aesthetic reasons alone. The norm for this day and age is to cast hot young actors from teen-targeted TV series and this time they’ve recruited Jensen Ackles from Supernatural and Kerr Smith, formerly of Dawson’s Creek, into the fold. I guess the target demographic will be happy with that casting. Thankfully, though their appearances smack of cheap casting techniques to attract a certain audience, the characters that they portray are a bit older than usual: young adults as opposed to teenagers. They spend less time with the mushy making out and shows of teenage petulance that bog other slashers and instead focus on the different directions that their lives have taken. Hardly riveting stuff and you’ll want the miner to intervene in some of the dramatic scenes to silence the cringe-worthy dialogue but at least it’s different to the norm. Veteran Tom Atkins has a small role as the local sheriff and he’s one of the best things on show, firing off some witty lines and adding a touch of class. The role is meatier than I expected which at least shows that someone had an ounce of sensibility to cast a genre character actor in it.

Half of the enjoyment from My Bloody Valentine comes from the 3D so make you sure you can catch it in that format to get the full package. As it stands, My Bloody Valentine works far better than it has any right to do with some inventive kills, a nice pace and general sense of good nature surrounding it. It nails the traditional slasher elements down to a tee, provides a few twists and turns along the way and delivers way more than it promised. It will at least put a mean-spirited smile on your face on Valentine’s Day.