Voodoo Academy

Well what do you want, if you see the Full Moon on the back of the box, you know its late night cheese! All the films produced by Band under the EMPIRE label were great, Re-Animator, From Beyond, Troll, even Zone Troopers was fun. However when Empire Films folded, so did the quality of their films. So Full Moon is born, and they had themselves a pretty good little gravy train with Paramount distributing their flicks, but even they got tired of the same old vampire and Puppet Master junk, and subsequently pulled out. The pictures where pretty bad with big studio money, and without it they got worse.

Case in point with Voodoo Academy. Like most other DeCoteau films, there are allot of pretty young men running around in their boxer briefs, and a whole lotta fake lightening. Throw in an uninspired story, about 6 million candles, and actors who look like their bored and you have what I consider one of the worst Full Moon pictures to date.

I'm not going to beat this dead horse anymore by talking about everything that's wrong with this story, so I will talk about the only thing I consider good about this film, and that's the DVD Directors cut version. Now your probably wondering, if its so bad why would I want to see the director's cut? Two reasons; one, I wanted to see the footage that was so offensive that even Charles Band wanted it cut from the original release. It turned out to be 20 minutes of harmless male erotica (85 % of horror film rentals are by girls anyway) ho hum big freakin deal. The other reason I wanted this DVD is for the audio commentary.

DeCoteau talks at length about the process of "by the numbers low budget cookie cutter filmmaking". This is invaluable for film students like myself. Sometimes you learn how to do things right when you see how they are done wrong. All criticisms aside, Band has a very well tuned filmmaking machine (features shot in 4 days, that 24 pages a day!), and the special features of this DVD gives rare insight into Full Moon, the makers of films so bad they're, well bad.

In reviews and user comments I've read online about these films,

the writers will say things like `It's almost as if it's gay.' and `It

seems sort of gay.' The equivocal reactions are understandable.

Allow me to be more bluntly clear: This is a horror film which,

unlike Hollywood films, is more intent on pleasing a gay male

audience than a straight one (though technically none of the

characters are gay.)

In `Voodoo Academy,' along with his film `The Brotherhood,'

director DeCoteau has created what might be called `the non-gay

gay film.' These are films which are clearly designed to appeal to

a gay audience, yet nevertheless stop short of being overtly gay.

On the surface, they seem intended for a straight audience. The

characters are not gay and they don't engage in any romantic

activities together. (And certainly the marketing makes no

indication of a gay angle.)

Yet at the same time, it's clear that something is going on here.

There are lots of gratuitous shots of young men in designer

underwear. There's no straight romantic subplots and hardly any

women. Unlike Hollywood films, which bend over backwards to

please a straight audience (and avoid any possible hint of gay

subtext), these films are clearly more interested in pleasing a gay

male audience than straight ones.

As for the film itself, it's not very good. A bland young man enrolls

in a small (6 students) college, where something strange is going

on. Long stretches of the film are given to providing expository

information which ultimately proves irrelevant. Scenes lack

tension. And the overall story is fairly dumb and ends abruptly.

The technical stuff is good, but the acting is wooden and the

scenes just drag.

Cheap and mind-blisteringly dull story and acting. Not a single good line, not even a line bad enough to be good, and no memorable delivery. Even the blooper reel included with the DVD showed how inept the actors were and how little fun any of them were having. The esoteric and occult basis was apathetically inauthentic, and the antagonists failed to be creepy or believable. The 'homoerotic' overtones were pointlessly tame and dissatisfying, and were limited to young boys caressing their chests while flaccid in their boxers. I'm not gay enough to appreciate it, but a little action might have at least kept me and my girlfriend awake.

And a few more "no"s on top of that. Voodoo Academy is, without a doubt, the least ambitious film of all time. What exactly is it trying to do? Tell a story? Obviously not; as has been pointed out, most of it's just barely-legal guys rubbing themselves. Could it, then, be an attempt at subversive homoeroticism? Well, maybe, if not for the fact it never ever ever goes beyond the most innocuous and nonthreatening forms of male contact. (Which is, to the delight of none, repeated about eighty thousand times.) Well, it is sort of a horror movie; is it trying to scare us? Not unless the director meant to do so through the utter tedium and vacuousness of his "work."

Never in my life have I enjoyed a movie less. This is the most boring and unnecessary thing I've ever seen. It's like Voodoo Academy takes the genres of horror, zombie, and gay movies, puts them in a grinder, then runs them through a coffee filter--only instead of it being the kind of coffee filter that filters out coffee beans, it's the kind that takes out everything vital, edgy, or in any way interesting. The result is 74 minutes of film every bit as exciting as a glass of warm water--only without the ability to rehydrate you after the 10-day gin binge that will inevitably befall you if you watch this abomination of human effort.

A high-concept, homoerotic, genre film that - for all its bare chest rubbing, hair gel and glossed-lipped poutiness - falls flat on its face. Even worse acting only tops a lousy script.

That said, if you're into barely 20-something boys in spanking white boxer shorts and white socks touching themselves incessantly all over while having a mutual wet dream, well this one's for you! Frankly, I find doing my grocery list more exciting. Surprisingly enough, the production quality is halfway decent, though.

Those of us, who like high-concept horror, will hate this one. There's barely an attempt at plausibility, and the level of horror tends to bend more towards cute than scary. Those of you who like homoerotic, this is about as erotic as a PBS film. Is it soooo bad that it's good? No. It's just silly and boring.