Camp Blood

Well, what can i say. Lame. A group of kids go to a camp to get away for the weekend, but along their journey they are warned by a strange man on the roadside of a 'mysterious' clown who lurks in the woods surrounding the camp. There are only six characters in the whole film, so we are really spoilt for choice as to who the killer is going to be. I love to watch movies like this, simply because of the comedy factor. The acting is terrible, the music is out of place with the scenes, and the blood is orange. Bloody brilliant.

I'm giving this a '8' rating because Camp Blood is hilarious, in an unintentional way of course. This film might suck for the 'serious' mainstream horror crowd, but if you're a fan of so-bad-so-'entertaining' movies Camp Blood surely delivers on most accounts. It starts off pretty good (in a bad way) as you get you're typical slasher clichéd set up served with an outdoors sex scene (including looped footage) followed by a cheesy double murder. After that we are introduced to the main players of this epic, and the film actually gears down a few notches ... However, it's still pretty amusing because one of the actors has a habit of spitting out bad language by the minute, plus you get Thatcher! Thatcher is a riot but I won't say more ... see and believe! The film picks up in the final 20-30 minutes with an onslaught of goofy (not intended of course) over-the-top slasher-action that made me laugh so hard I was still hurting the next day.

Camp Blood may not be as classy as Troll 2 or A Night To Dismember but still worthy tracking down if you're into that kind of stuff.

Apparently the writer and director of this direct-to-DVD slasher movie is a fan of Friday 13th and other summer camp slashers. This movie has everything - a group of teenagers who want to spend the weekend with fun, alcohol and sex in an abandoned summer camp called "Camp Blood", the old man who warns them not to go there; and of course the crazy killer with the machete who keeps on slashing and hacking at the teenagers without any reason at all... The whole thing could have worked if it had been shot on 35 mm film with acceptable Special Effects. But instead the Special Effects are poorly done. The killer walks around as if he's out on a Sunday afternoon stroll, and the only good things about this movie are the acting of the talented main actress and the sex scene at the beginning. Other than that - dull and forgettable. Jasper P. Morgan

Camp Blood (2000)

** (out of 4)

Four friends decide to take a trip to a camp site even though the locals warn them about the place. It appears several people have gone into the woods but never came out. The four are taken deep into the woods by their guide but before long they are attacked by a man wearing a clown mask.

Brad Sykes' CAMP BLOOD is a film that pays homage to several other slashers with the main one being quite obvious. I doubt anyone would have guessed in 2000 that this film would turn into such a long-running series but it was about time that I finally caught up with it. For the most part this was entertaining for what it was and I at least give the director credit for giving horror fans what they want when it comes to a slasher like this.

I often watch recent low-budget horror movies and it always shocks me that they don't feature nudity, violence or gore. I mean, aren't these important things for this type of slasher picture? Thankfully these items are delivered here and it was a joy getting to watch the practical effects. There's obviously nothing ground-breaking here but at the same time what blood and violence there is was entertaining and yes there's nudity as well.

The performances are pretty much what you'd expect for a film like this but they're actually a tad bit better than average. The special effects were nice and as I said I give the director a lot of credit for delivering something that fans would want to see. There's nothing "new" done with the material but at the same time it's a mildly entertaining film that will appeal to fans of the genre.

As far as cheap shot-on-video horror films go, CAMP BLOOD is very much of a muchness. It offers absolutely nothing that wasn't already done to death by other slasher films in the 1980s; the story of a killer wearing a clown mask stalking the woods and killing teenagers is completely predictable and everything that happens is long telegraphed in advance. Die-hard horror fans will be put off by the absence of any special effects and the cheesy, orange-looking blood, and cinema fans will be repulsed by the zero-level production values and less-than-impressive talents of the amateur dramatic student cast.

However…is it the worst film I've ever seen? No, far from it. Films like this, which rip-off literally dozens of other efforts that have come previously, occupy their own notch on the scale of cinematic badness, just above even-worse outings like the deliberately puerile dreck that is LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS. Yes, I'd still rather watch CAMP BLOOD again – with all its raw, inevitably lacking running-through-the-woods type antics – than more expensive, studio-made fare that has no excuse to get it so wrong.