The Greenskeeper

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.

When someone starts using the business end of a pair of hedge clippers on the more snobbish patrons of a posh country club, rumors fly the slice-n'-dice handiwork is the signature of The Greenskeeper, a serial killer long thought dead from an explosion years ago. Allen, whose mother owns the country club, begins having nightmare visions where he is haunted by The Greenskeeper. Allen begins to suspect he may have a connection to The Greenskeeper he never dared imagine. Meanwhile, the beautiful jet setters of the club decide to sneak in after hours for some skinny-dipping, partying, and sex-on-the-green. Unfortunately for the teens, The Greenskeeper decides to crash the party, and armed with golf equipment and landscaping tools, begins picking off Izods one by one. Joining forces with his new love interest Elena, Allen races to the club to try to save his friends. He and Elena must play a deadly game of cat and mouse to survive, because when you have a tee time with The Greenskeeper, it's par for the corpse!

Gore should be the main attraction in a low budget slasher film. Of course, it isn't. There was way too much focus on a lame plot than the potentially cool killings. They did manage to have a slit throat, a couple be-headings, an anal insertion golf cleaner, and a hedger through the stomach. The gore was pretty dry and incredibly lazily done. With every potential murder weapon on a golf course they could have done a lot better.

The acting actually wasn't too bad to begin with. It was supposed to be super cheesy, but went overboard towards the end with the lazy/awful lines. Some of the comedy was actually pretty funny and delivered how it was meant to be delivered. Allelon Ruggiero really wasn't too bad as the loser guy. The yuppies were all played obnoxiously well and made me laugh a few times. This truthfully wasn't the bad part of the movie.

It had the b-movie feel, but there really weren't too many mistakes. There were a few bad shots here and there, but nothing that ruined the movie. The lighting and audio was always properly done(sort of.) The fake lightning was completely terrible and happened every time the killer was on the courses. That was totally idiotic. The other bad technical aspect was the music...They felt it was necessary to constantly have cheesy mystery or pop music playing throughout the movie. It really didn't have to be this bad!

Final Thoughts: This totally could have been a really fun movie with the exact same cast and crew members and script even. Cheesy music, bad (and dry)gore, lame effects, and too much plot did this movie in. I really wanted to enjoy it, but it just didn't deliver the goods. Too bad the horror movie they were watching on TV (the milkman) looked more like the movie this should have been.