Estela de sangre

A dumb, by the numbers slasher film in which a rock band called Easy Action and some models go to a mountain cabin where they film a music video. Unknown to this carefree and free-living group, a homicidal mother and her like-minded offspring are out to kill whoever happens to cross their path. Starring real life rockers including Shotgun Messiah's Zinny Zan, and Europe guitarist Kee Marcello, and featuring sex, nudity and gore. Blood Tracks is very cheesy, cheap and silly, and best watched under the influence of whatever your particular vice may be. It was directed by Mats Helge and Derek Ford from a screenplay co-written with Anna Wolf. The movie is set in Colorado but was filmed in Sweden. Co-director and British exploitation filmmaker Derek Ford (Corruption; Don't Open Till Christmas; Attack of the Killer Computer) has a brief cameo role.

OK, so this isn't SILENCE OF THE LAMBS or ALIEN. But what the heck is going on here with these viewer comments? I almost wonder if we all saw the same movie, which is indeed about a Swedish big hair heavy metal boy band (called Easy Action, in real life: their not half bad power ballad accompanies the closing credits) that travels into the frozen north to shoot part of a music video near a huge, creepy, evocative looking abandoned factory. A family of mutant hermits has taken refuge amidst the worn out machinery, broken down furnaces and endless catwalks. Various members of the video crew, band and their entourage of eye candy groupie babes wander into the abandoned factory where the hermits set upon them. Most are killed (though nobody gets eaten) and some of the women taken prisoner back to the hermit's hovel, presumably for mating purposes that are not explored on camera. Thank God.

When evaluating this actually quite watchable film over three or four screenings I noted that it's really two movies in one, and what I think is going on here with the other user comments is that folks are being distracted by the seeming awfulness of the first movie -- the big hair boy band shooting their video -- and ignoring the second -- the fight for survival inside of this immense abandoned factory. And they are letting their (understandable) disdain for the whole 80s arena metal big hair band thing cloud their judgment over the ENTIRE production, 2/3rds of which has little to do with the rock band. Their groupie girls still parade around half nude or better for the entire length of the show, some of the killings are rather ingenious (though sadly even the longer 85 minute print of the film I located seems cut for a few seconds of explicit gore) but there is a sort of ambiguous quality about the family of hermits that makes their fate somewhat bittersweet.

The family is apparently the same people shown in the very beginning of the film where an abused Swedish house mom kills her husband in a pique of self defense, then flees the scene with her four toddler kids. Who then presumably grow up to be the mutant, fur wearing hermits seen during the bulk of the film. The one problem I had with the movie's logic was how did they get so mutated but the mom remained more or less unscathed? The male hermits are all covered with festering sores, leprosy like skin diseases and scuttle about like creatures from a post apocalyptic wasteland thriller. The director, Swedish filmmaker Mats Helge, apparently had an affinity for the subject of a deformed hermit living in dehumanizing conditions who lashes out against it's invasion by technically advanced pop culturists as seen in his 1991 film FORGOTTEN WELLS, which seems to be a distillation of BLOOD TRACKS' more successful themes.

The comparison to THE HILLS HAVE EYES is indeed valid, but how did these cretins end up as we see them? Interestingly the story paints them as victims who have simply become territorial, staked out this abandoned factory and only start killing off the rock band entourage when their territory is violated by people who ignore a big KEEP OUT THIS STRUCTURE HAS BEEN CONDEMNED sign. If you ignore stuff like that you sort of deserve whatever fates await you, and the abandoned factory set is very cool looking, well selected as a real world location, and handled like a creepy woodland camp setting. A lot of the action in the film actually reminded me of ALIENS with it's carnage scenes set in labyrinths of industrial type structures of inter-crossing catwalks, yawning abysses, shafts of unnatural lighting and atmosphere of disused & decaying metal. There are certain segments like the one with a victim being lit on fire and falling off a catwalk that seem to have anticipated some of ALIENS' action sequences: Did Gale Anne Hurd manage to catch BLOOD TRACKS and find inspiration? It comes from the damndest places sometimes ...

I don't say this movie is actually "good", but it IS interesting, and for 1980s slasher type horror that isn't a common trait. I like how different the setting and style of film-making feels when compared to your usual Summer Camp Horror slasher. There is also a weird juxtaposition of these disfigured mutants stalking fashion oriented metal groupies around a cold, dank, dilapidated factory. And the concluding images actually contain an homage to the 1977 Yul Brynner vehicle THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR which again re-enforces the post apocalyptic thing. Maybe in it's original Swedish form this was meant to be a post industrial paranoia picture about how the materialistic youth culture of the 1980s had turned their back on the traditions of industry, then find themselves haunted by it's ghosts in the form of this family of mutants. The leader of which actually seems to make a gesture of religious atonement during the closing moments ... Or does he? See, the movie leaves some interesting questions unanswered in an interesting way, and each subsequent viewing reveals new elements you maybe missed the first time. Usually a slasher film is a cut & dried affair, what you see is what you get, but there seems to be something going on here in this movie that appears to exceed the sum of it's parts. And you can't blame the Swedish for liking their power ballad arena rock bands.

6/10: Worth seeking out for being somewhat different, which should always be considered a good thing.

Blood Tracks main crime was a complete lack of any interesting characters or lead character of interest. Supporting this the kills weren't really interesting and most of the horror was done in the dark which made it very hard to really care.

The acting wasn't much better with many of the actors sounding like they are reading their lines verbatim a lot of the time. So bad, this is true B territory. Then there is the script, jeepers. No explanation provided for anything, the whole script is pure trash. A women stabs her hubby to death because he was picking some coins up off the floor so they become mutants living in a factory then kill anyone that comes near them.

Other issues with the plot like why didn't the locals know anything about these killer hermits living practically right next to them. What we do actually get is a fair amount of blood, quite a few kills, some moody music and a very nice assortment of t&a. All of which went to waste because no interesting characters were available.

BLOOD TRACKS opens with a flashback to 1945 with a violent family confrontation resulting in death. Forty years later, a heavy metal band is in "town" -more like a wasteland- to film a music video. Grisly horror ensues.

Or, something like that.

Indeed, the people from 1945 are still around, looking pretty much the same. That is, except for bad makeup and mangy wigs.

Enter the supermodels, running around half dressed through the snow. Not even their towering hairdos can save them!

The filming of the music video is hilarious. It's reminiscent of those moldy old MTV vids of bands like QUIET RIOT or POISON. Will the video be finished before everyone is annihilated? A true gut-buster!

Unfortunately, when people aren't busy dying, the movie bogs down in tedious non-dialogue by the non-actors. Hell, even the avalanche is dull!...

Ah, the 1980s, when everyone with a camera and a barely coherent script was lensing slashers. With all this groundswell, it was only natural that this mania would extend to Europe, which is why we have this Swedish sausage product--I AM CURIOUS it ain't. As others have noted, it's pretty standard stuff: a group of folks (Swedish Hair Metal band and their groupies/video tramps, along with a retinue of stylists/makeup people/cameramen) descend on a location (a cabin in a snowy mountain region, adjacent to a condemned factory) ostensibly to film a music video. The trouble starts when the director wants to use the factory as a backdrop for said video. A fortuitous avalanche strands the group at the location. A feral, homicidal family resides in the factory. It isn't long before various members of the party wander into said factory at met their various, grisly demises.

BLOOD TRACKS is not the worst I've seen in slashers from this era (the second golden era--1984-just before SCREAM debuted), but it does have some flaws that lessen its impact. The nonsensical prologue in which we are given the origins of the murderous family doesn't make sense and could have been left off altogether. Clearly, this trope borrowed from THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE/THE HILLS HAVE EYES and should have followed those films leads of just presenting the family cold, with no explanations. Another problem with the film is that, once we get inside the factory, it's so bloody dark you can barely see what's happening. This could just be the way the film was shot, so there may not be any way of correcting, such as remastering, high def, etc. If this could be remedied, it should be. The cast seems to be either British or American, or the film makers may be resorting to the Italian trick of giving native actors prosaic American-sounding names. The acting is OK, but these are not characters given to thoughtful, analytic discourse, so it works. A real rock group, Easy Action, was hired to portray the band, but they appear in the film mostly as a pretext, and the members don't get much dialogue. No real reason is given for the family's feral state (the prologue doesn't shed any clues to this) so they just are the way they are. There are a few PG-13 sex scenes, but the nudity is minimal. The action, once it gets started, is self-propelled and doesn't let up, which makes the less than 90-minute runtime bearable.

If you've seen all the slashers from this era and are looking for a forgotten entry, this one will do the trick.