Body Count

Director Ruggero Deodato's BODY COUNT opens with a reference to an old legend about a shaman and a house built on an "Indian burial ground", deep in the woods. Soon enough, someone or something is butchering young people in the area.

Fast forward 15 years, and several more, wildly annoying young people head straight for the same spot, while insanely terrible theme music warbles. Enter David Hess as Robert Ritchie, the world's most intense, stressed-out man. No, really, he seems as though he could blast off at any moment! He's busy setting traps for the shaman (aka: someone in a $2 rubber mask), and glaring a lot.

Shockingly, the new bunch of young people start screaming and dying horrible deaths faster than you can yell, "Shut her up!". This movie's biggest mystery is why on earth these young idiots keep wandering into the same deserted structure. Especially since it resembles a truck stop toilet in hell.

The plot is thinner than a communion wafer, simply setting up one murder after another for no apparent reason.

WE ALSO GET: An atmosphere of overall absurdity, fake southern accents, a woman whose humongous blonde hair is a character unto itself, and Sid (Andrew Lederer), a man so irritating as to incite viewers to leap at the screen, trying to get to him before the killer does!

On the up side, there's some obligatory female nudity.

WARNING: Sid gets naked as well, going the full Monty. No, there is no god!

Deodato has certainly seen better days, and co-stars Mimsy Farmer and Charles Napier have nearly nothing to do in their roles. After watching this, the only question is: Why was this made?

P.S.- No one, and I mean no one, gives the skunk eye better than David Hess!...

This a typical, formulaic, run-of-the-mill slasher movie from the mid-80s by a genre veteran ( Ruggero Deodato) who is known for his gross-out sensational jungle cannibals films ( CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST among others) of the late 70s. So I was expecting an over-the-top gory slasher with lots of body count but what I got is a routine slasher who has some decent moments but fails in delivering the goods in terms of bloodshed except for one or two enjoyable splatter sequences. There is nothing new here and it is rather dull but an interesting cast and the great soundtrack by Claudio Simonetti makes it a bearable ride if you don't expect too much.

Body Count is excellent late night slasher fun, if you have a couple of hours to "kill" and you have access to Body Count then play it on your VHS or DVD and enjoy. This isn't rocket science but slasher films about nutty guys, masks and large knives have a select audience, being teenagers and twenty somethings, so the audience and screen market will go on forever. Mixing legends, slasher killings, campers and the question 'who will get it next' isn't original, the formulas been done before, but that doesn't matter here. The real entertainment is in the setting and the low budget film making, sure the director never meant it that way. But this is late night fodder for popcorn and fizzy drinks. Switch off brain and watch. There's some clever camera work and though there are holes in the plot and in the way some characters behave, this only adds to the spectacle. The hybrid US-Italian production has created a half decent half naff film with a young, willing to do anything cast and some useful forest and mountain settings. The story is worth watching for, though I couldn't help feeling some of the bigger name cast members, just turned up to say the lines and then run. The twentysomethings playing teenagers do well as dim wit campers looking for fun and a camping road trip. The magic-myth-legend Native American shaman element is a great touch and though the plot dwells on the haunted burial site well-used story it does create some tension. Budget and professional standards do take a toll and some stylish stalk and slash scenes are wasted in dumb sketches and weak visuals. The film is worth a watch and I would recommend it for slasher lovers. The cast are like-able and it is shocking to witness their demise when it seems some are going to survive the ordeal. All in all, 7 out of 10 for effort and imagination. Italian style and American balls.

I'm a fan of backwoods slasher films such as The Forest and Don't Go In The Woods, so had to see this one. And since it was done by the same director as Cannibal Holocaust I was of course expecting something brutal and bloody. Well, it wasn't that bloody. But it was a fairly decent slasher. The focus is more on atmosphere than anything else, and there are some rather creepy moments especially in the old house in the woods. There are some good death scenes too, such as when one girl is looking in the mirror and suddenly a hand breaks through and kills her. There is quite a high body count (as the title would suggest) but sadly the deaths are just not gory or bloody enough. There's also the mystery of who the killer is...I never saw it coming.

Watch this if you're a fan of backwoods slashers or a general slasher fan, but don't expect anything special.

(**1/2 out of *****) For his first venture into straight slasher territory, Deodato (famous for the notorious gross-out classic "Cannibal Holocaust") pulls together an interesting, international cast of B-movie/genre film veterans, including David Hess ("Last House on the Left" and Deodato's "The House on the Edge of the Park"), Mimsy Farmer (Dario Argento's "Four Flies on Grey Velvet"), Ivan Rassimov (from Deodato's other cannibal `epic' "Jungle Holocaust"), John Steiner(Argento's "Tenebre" and Deodato's "Cut and Run") and Charles Napier (one of Hannibal's unfortunate guards in "Silence of the Lambs"). With Deodato directing and this unique cast (not to mention Claudio Simonetti of Italian group Goblin providing the soundtrack), I expected -- well, I don't exactly know what I expected, but what I got was a so-so thriller with some interesting ideas, a bit more plot than usual, and a few suspenseful chase and murder sequences here and there, but not a whole lot else. Hess and Farmer play a dysfunctional married couple who own a campground that was closed down after two kids were murdered by an `Indian shaman' killer. Well, it's fifteen years later, and the killings are starting all over again, and, coincidentally, an RV full of dumb teenagers (including the couple's traumatized son) just happens to show up for the onslaught. There's your typical horny stud who wants to screw all the girls, your typical prankster clown who you'd like to see get offed after about three minutes, your typical nympho babes who take showers every five or ten minutes, and the hit list goes on. Hess's character, while still decidedly mean and ugly, is at least not quite as despicable as the sadistic characters he played in the two afore-mentioned House movies. Deodato tries to make the identity of the killer a surprise, but it's still pretty much a no-brainer. Thanks to the "Friday the 13th" franchise, these killer-in-the-woods movies are the most prolific of the slasher genre.

HIGHLIGHT: Hess's and Farmer's son has a totally WHACKED-OUT dream with sexy severed legs, strangling tentacles, constricting nets -- it reminded me of some of the frat parties I went to in college.