Primarily known for their loopy fetish films, W. A. V. E. Productions played it (mostly) straight a couple times early in their career, attempting to produce a few more traditional horror flicks that eschewed the damsels-in-distress trope that would become their brand. One such early production is DEAD NORTH, a gruelingly overlong whodunnit that doesn't skimp on the tedium even if it does pare down on the minutes-long strangulations.
I won't even attempt to articulate the set-up, a punishing, hour-long litany of who's-balling-whom that features more affairs than PEYTON PLACE. Suffice to say, the film seems to think it's setting up a Hitchcockian web of intrigue when really, it's just a bunch of interchangeable, doughy northeasterners meeting in various bedrooms and peeling down to their skivvies before the camera discretely (and none-too-quickly) fades out. In between, they meet to have discussions about when they might meet to have discussions about planning a camping trip.
After (I kid you not) an hour of this nonsense, they finally head to the woods (someone's backyard), and we get to watch them perform the mundane tasks of camping for a half-hour. To say this trip is cursed from the start is an understatement: one woman's beau has already tried to strangle her (he's a traumatized 'Nam vet), while everyone else is constantly at each other's throats. Finally, after 90 agonizing minutes, someone starts hacking and slashing their way through the cast, mostly strangling people but occasionally pinning someone's hand to a log with an axe.
To say you won't care who the culprit is is an understatement. Indeed, the only thing I liked about this film was when it ended. W. A. V. E. Flicks are certainly an acquired taste: featuring the absolute pits of acting, direction, scripting, and production design, the main moments they come alive (for anyone other than their target audience) are instants where the deficiencies somehow start working in a weird harmony to produce a slap-happy, otherworldly insanity. Flicks like the bizarre shrinking/vore short EATEN ALIVE, for example, are such baffling curios they can't help but fascinate as artifacts of tacky chic - at least when viewed by people not specifically interested in watching a giant woman gobble people whole. Absent these bizarro fixations to lend interest to the proceedings, however, a movie like DEAD NORTH is simply dead on arrival.
