Saturday Morning Massacre

I want to make some things clear to anyone considering watching this movie. Saturday Morning Mystery is not a parody, it's not very funny and generally isn't trying to be, and it has next to nothing to do with Scooby Doo.

This is just another low budget horror flick, very low budget, about a Ghost Hunters style scenario going bad when a crew of paranormal debunkers loaded down with video equipment stumble across an actual scary situation. This is a great premise that no one can seem to get right (the original Grave Encounters came closest) and Saturday Morning Mystery is certainly no exception.

Our crew of cash strapped debunkers are sent to a notorious house reputedly once owned by Satanist and now allegedly haunted by... something.

The dysfunctional group includes a druggie, an uptight rich guy, a smart girl that acts as leader, and her best friend. Oh, and a dog, which has nothing to do with the plot and never does anything significant (Scooby Doo he ain't). That dog, along with references in the beginning to criminals using ghost stories to hide their crimes, are the only references to Scooby Doo and there is almost no outright comedy, intentional or unintentional.

The first hour is plodding and dull and the movie stays alive, just barely, by the strength of the cast, which is above average for this type of movie. They're not playing well written characters though and the script seems so choppy and poorly structured that the film never flows well.

All hell breaks loose in the last 30 minutes but I wouldn't really say that it qualifies as a slow burn because the finale is so incongruous with the rest of the movie that it really feels like part of a different film.

An out of nowhere sex scene in the middle of the movie and a hilarious car fire filmed by people that clearly didn't have the money or resources to actually light a car on fire are pretty much the only memorable things about this POS. Just skip it.

Firstly I'd like to say that I really hate it when the posters and covevart to a film is misleading it in some cases features characters that aren't fen in the film ........like the chainsaw!?? Supposedly this is a comedy horror? But I can't remember anything remotely funny. Shame as the idea of a gory parody of Scooby Doo is a good one but was totally wasted on this very lazy script.

The acting isn't too bad but it just plods along at snail pace with usual cliches and the fun only really starts in the last 25mins, from then it's ok. Some ok gore and hint of tension. Ultimately it's a huge wasted opportunity due to the poor writing. Only watch if not much else on.

It's obvious what they were going for. A rated R, edgy horror Scooby Doo.

They basically just take everything (minus the dog) and ramp it up to 11 and that should be a blast and to be fair there are times where it is. The cheesey montages, the team coming together, the over the top cliches and some of the horror isn't even half bad.

But it's slow. It plods along, makes it painfully clear it's on a low budget and while the acting isn't bad, why'd they do that to Fred? Honestly it just isn't exciting. A great idea and one I hope gets another try in the future. This just didn't stick the landing.

A group of 4 paranormal investigators and a dog are hired to find out what is haunting a giant mansion. The timing is perfect because they are pretty much broke. Previously they caught some child endangerment ring, which was actually a police sting operation. On the trip to the mansion, they meet a friendly cop.

Once inside each of the 4 starts investigating the place on their own. Two of them drink water with LSD in it, because one of them, the dope head hid his LSD in a water container when the cop arrived. They start seeing things and go crazy. Now all of them are screaming at each other. When they find a car with a corpse in the trunk they finally see a child running around. Now they all go after it and some of them are killed.

Now we learn who is haunting the mansion and why and things at last get bloody. The cop also shows up and confronts the villains.

Saturday Morning Mystery features an ugly (with the exception of Josephine Decker) and uncharismatic cast acting like jerks most of the time. The lead is rather annoying and whiny. Of course the "mystery" doesn't happen in the morning but at night, so we get these morons running around rooms with flashlights chasing or being chased by shadows. The story is mildly interesting but as often happens with movies, they wait until the very end to start explaining things and cram most of the story in the last minutes.

If the movie by itself weren't dull enough, we have some marketing genius who thought that deceiving customers would be the way to go and they marketed this as a comedy. This movie is not fun, nor funny, not even all that entertaining. There was material for an alright horror thriller, but they needed a different cast, someone to enhance the script. The director does what he can but without material or a strong cast there's only so much he can do.

"Saturday Morning Mystery" (formerly known as Saturday Morning Massacre- and Massacre is still the film's true form.) is a bizarre little indie flick directed by Spencer Parsons. The film stars Ashley Rae Spillers, Johnny Mars, Josephine Decker, Adam Tate and Paul Gordon. The story follows a crack pot team of paranormal investigators, much like the Scooby gang, who get hired to dispel the rumors and fears of locals around the paranormal activity at an estate. The group soon learn that there are much more sinister things hidden behind the walls of the Kyser schoolhouse. The gang choose to stay and solve the creepy behind the going-ons at the property, which proves to be in grave error. The decision to solve this mystery becomes a real massacre.

"Saturday Morning Mystery", (or Massacre) as I prefer to consider the film, is truly one of those strange films that blows you away. I had expected some cheesy, retro-throttled, low-budget spectacle. At the start there is a real throwback feel to the film which clearly became inspired by the cartoon mystery gang- only with the characters and their back-story though. Beyond that the similarities become terrifyingly obsolete. This is a real fright-fest fanfare story, with a way more sinister series of events than any cartoon show could think of inspiring. It becomes a truly gripping and nail-biting grindhouse horror story. The kitschy beginning and groovy build-up in this film has a cleverly darker intent. That intent is to throw you off guard, and then drag you into the pits of hellish nightmares as your nails tear off, and blood stained cries shatter the dark chilling air! This film is one of those rides into horror land that you will be glad you took. Think –The Scooby gangs accidentally wonder into the path of Stag Night kinfolk in a rural setting.

The story in this film is pretty well written and flows beautifully. There are a couple of moments that go off between dialog and scene portrayal. Actually only two that I remember seeming off was the "tab of acid" line and the "I totally have a jimmy in this bag" (or something like that.) There was no tabs taken-the drug leeched into the water cooler, and the character that said the line about the jimmy didn't have a bag on her in the scene. At least I didn't see one. Anyway those two moments – that is all-those two were the only milliseconds that slowed my totally pleasurable horror ride into this window to Hell. Pretty much every aspect of the film from cinematography to directed to soundtrack and kill scenes rocked in "Saturday Morning Mystery" You don't expect the intense vicious turn this film takes toward the last act but man it drags you in and sets you on the edge of the slaughtering blade of horror. This is truly one of the best indie horror films I have seen and a must for horror movie collectors.