The Greenskeeper

Release date is September 9, 2003.

1) If you enjoyed movies like "Don't go in the House," or "Don't go in the Basement," then you must like low budget horror films that are so campy they are funny. The Greenskeeper is one of those movies.

2) If you laughed during Final Destination 2 because people were killed off in a funny manner then you'll also laugh at the way adults (not teens) are killed off in The Greenskeeper.

3) If seeing a couple killed while they are having sex bothers you than this is not the movie for you. Although the way he kills them is so gross and so funny that you will be laughing and gaging at the same time.

The point of this movie is not to scare you but to make you laugh.

You laugh not because of any witty banter but because the banter is so bad that you groan.

You laugh because the budget for special effects was so low that the killings looked really fake but that's the beauty of seeing these types of films. In fact at the end of the movie when one of the special effects gets a little carried away the actors broke character and started laughing but the producers kept this shot anyway. The producers understood they were not making some great piece of art to scare you off of a golf course.

If you are a John Rocker fan and plan on buying this movie because he's in it let me warn you ahead of time you'll only get to see John's face for maybe a total of 2 minutes during the film. About half of his screen time is spent in make-up like a serious burn victim (The rest of the time he looks very cute). When the killer goes on his rampage he's in a beekeepers bonnet so you can't see his face. The producers said they had asked John (not his character) to help out by throwing tennis balls off camera onto the tennis court when the tennis ball machine broke down.

I do plan on buying this movie because I love horror movies that can make me laugh and gag at the same time.

What saves this film is that the tone is just right, funny and laidback and tongue in cheek. No cure for cancer, just a groovy goodtime.

The actors are all comfortable in front of the camera, especially the lead actor, who just strolls through his scenes with a been there done that attitude that is a refreshing change from the furrowed brow method that passes for acting these days.

The screenplay is funny and lean, bad dialogue is not a detriment here.

The SFX are of the pump blood from under the weapon variety, but some are very creative and funny. Their unrealistic quality adds to the film's charm.

All the bad points of this film work for it in the long run. The inane conclusion to the inane plot fits because the filmmakers knew that they were making a spoof.

The film did seem very static and some scenes meandered to pad the film out, but this is common in a low budget movie.

The trailer is misleading however. John Rocker fans will be disappointed when they find that he is only in the movie for five minutes. The filmmakers acknowledge this in the screenplay; it is part of the joke so I can call no foul on it.

Overall, a fine horror spoof of the slasher films I grew up with, with a refreshing choice for lead actor, interesting kills, and a laid back feel that makes it easy to like.

Golf is one of the worst of all possible sports, pointlessly wasteful of natural resources and harmful to the environment; country clubs, as a playground for the rich and powerful, deserve to be abolished outright. Slashers are one of the worst of all possible movie genres, not exactly being known for cleverness. For that matter the early 2000s weren't exactly a great time for cinema, as computer-generated imagery of the era was just advanced enough that everyone and their cousin wanted to make use of it, but not nearly good enough to have aged well thereafter; conceptions of music too often involved very tiresome, sterile pop and radio-friendly rock; and humor was defined by a lot of 'American pie'-like raunchiness and 'Dude, where's my car?' stoner bits, both of which are rather dull and have very limited appeal. Now put all these elements together into one supposed "horror-comedy,' and we have 2002's 'The greenskeeper.' I didn't have high expectations when I sat to watch, but for better and for worse I'll sit for almost anything. The opening scene seems kind of promising, and the film quickly gives us a large roster of awful, obnoxious, privileged white characters that we'll be glad to see sent off to the sand trap of eternity - but otherwise, in all earnestness, this swiftly grows tiresome.

Given that the whole bent here is far less than serious, I suppose it's only fair to wonder if it's not on purpose that everything is so over the top and kitschy, and so pointedly betrays the falseness of the presentation. Are filmmakers Kevin Greene, Adam Johnson, Tripp Norton, and Alex Wier making fun of all these tropes and ideas, or using them for lack of any other creativity, substance, or means? It's a fair question, I think, as our attention is caught in the wrong way by the dialogue, characters, scene writing, and narrative; the attempted humor, the tawdrily boorish and obnoxious sensibilities about sexuality and anatomy; the direction, too much of the acting, the rather bare-faced production values, and cinematography and editing that are only ever unremarkable or outrageous with no middle ground; plain art direction, overbearing music, and aspects of homophobia, racism, and classism. Then again, maybe it's not even a question that really matters, for whether all this is employed in jest or as a sincere expression of film-making, it's just not any fun. In one fashion or another some small moments come off better than others, but I definitely didn't laugh once in eighty-two minutes. I've seen the bottom of the barrel, and this isn't it, but there simply isn't any actual entertainment to be had here.

I guess the practical effects are well done, including blood and gore. The costume design, hair, and makeup are nice, such as they are. The root story in and of itself is decent, if truly nothing special. Despite the worst efforts of all involved, Melissa Ponzio turns in a performance that is fairly admirable. But is there anything else here that's baseline commendable? Is there anything about this that is meaningfully enjoyable? I don't think there is. If you're desperate for slasher fare, juvenile humor circa 2000, nudity, or "horror-comedy," then I guess you'll find what you're looking for. Yet what possible other reason would anyone have to watch this, especially since we could be watching literally anything else instead? What's really terrible is that the only reason I found this in the first place was because the 2018 'Ducktales' episode "The missing links of Moorshire!" was so outstanding that I found myself wondering about other horror or fantasy involving golf; finding this, in turn, feels like the classic notion of a genie granting a wish, but with awful, ironic consequences. There are much worse things one could watch, sure, but for as bland and pretty much outright boring as 'The greenskeeper' is, the distinction doesn't count for much. Check it out if you like, but I don't know why you would.

IMDb lists this as 90 minutes, but the version I saw on a British DVD (in a boxed set of individually unsellable horror films) barely got to 77 minutes. Was it cut? Since the boxed set had an 18 rating anyway (strictest in the UK apart from porn films) it's hard to know what the motivation for cutting it could be. Like censors anywhere, those in the UK can be a bit crotchety, but policies are pretty liberal nowadays and it's hard to believe that they could have found thirteen minutes' worth of cuts that needed to be made.

Well, cut or not, what was this like? The last few minutes – and especially a silly and gruesome joke about a lawn sprinkler – just start to hint at a comic inventiveness that is miserably lacking from the rest of the film. Other than that, the reviews of the various people here who "hated it" look pretty accurate to me, and they were probably seeing a longer film. British viewers, check out the box. If it says 77 minutes, I certainly can't recommend this.

After Dentist, Ice-Cream Man, plumber, repairman and so on, at last even a greenskeeper get the spotlight as slasher killer number 600 and so in this so bad and so stupid is fun variation on the slasher theme. It is worth a rental to get a few laughs for the really bad jokes and the bad special effects that are inside.