Lumberjack Man

Lumberjack Man is relatively a simple slasher horror comedy with a premise in which had been done several times before. However this film, the villain is a creature who feasts on pancakes but is allergic to maple syrup. It is quite bizarre in that sense.

The characters of the camp students are the typical characters we would see in these type of films. No character really stands. Michael Madsen is possibly one of the highlights. The lead actress isn't bad but isn't exactly memorable.

There are gory kills but a lot which has been done before. One highlight includes the camp lead counsellor's death. Many typical head shot sword kills or head smashes.

The tone of this film is quite silly, more so than expected (there is an extended "food fight" scene. Also a music video type scene involving three characters dressing up fooling around).

Nothing is exactly scary. The lumberjack man's attire isn't menacing, and he doesn't speak or make sounds. When he appears, there isn't suspense. Most the film takes place in the bright day so it takes away any real scares.

Overall, the film is a decent watch but not memorable enough or really worthwhile. Had slightly higher expectations.

Clocking in at an hour and 45 minutes, Lumberjack Man is way too long for a slasher flick. I never thought I'd say this, but it's a case of "too much tits, not enough gore." The film's filler time is devoted to sexual content to the point of over-saturation. There's a scene where two campers watch a counselor strip, dance, and rub lotion on herself for what feels like ten minutes. It especially becomes evident towards the end, the final confrontation dragging on and on. It accentuated the character's stupidity with every pitiful attempt at comedy.

Every scene is extended to either prolong on-screen nudity or exaggerate comedic delivery. Speaking of which...

Despite being a horror comedy, the movie's humor is hit-or-miss. Most of the jokes are overly-long, sexual, and reliant on absurdity. It gets repetitive quickly. Most of my laughs came from the kills, of which some were quite funny and inventive, but they were few and far between. Which is a shame because the cast is larger than most camp slashers.

I also had a lot of problems with the characters. Bumbling, annoying and unlikable.

It's technically functional, sure, but that does nothing to fix how insipid this movie is. In short, Lumberjack Man is an unbalanced, lukewarm, boring film, inferior to other horror comedy films. I suggest skipping it and watching The Final Girls, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Behind the Mask, Severance, Stage Fright, or Club Dread.

I have nothing to spoil here because the story is bland, basic, and you've seen it before. What I will say is that this movie is one the strangest movies I've seen in many years. It's very anti-female, slicing and dicing young women relentlessly. It also features barely legal porn stars who think they can act, dancing and prancing with their breast swinging in the air. Several scenes with ugly males hooking up with hot females, all of them showing T and A before they get decapitated, impaled, or whatever. And the girls totally look underage, which is either enticing or bothersome. Acting is high school level. Violence is sometimes dramatically approached, not comedic, and protracted and overdone. It makes the whole experience very odd. Several homosexual references made to both sexes. It's just a horrible movie. BUT, it will stay on my DVR only because of the eye-candy. Call me a hypocrite. 4 stars for the gorgeous young ladies. 0 for the movie. itself.

"Lumberjack Man" is a weird, boring stab at a horror comedy that is unsuccessful.

Of course it's not funny in the least, but how many comedies are?

The fact is that the comedic moments, if that's what they are, are handled so badly that they merely become confusing.

It's not enough to throw in a joke here and there. There's also the matter of tone which allows a person to actually identify the joke and (maybe) laugh at it. "Lumberjack Man" has no tone. Nor does it really have a sense of place - the "summer camp" setting is a mainstay for both horror movies (Friday the 13th and its infinite number of rip-offs) and comedies (Meatballs, Happy Campers). But the filmmakers fail at establishing it as a believable place. It feels like most of the action takes place a few miles from the camp anyway. This vague sense of place doesn't help.

The movie is, of course, also not scary in the least; it doesn't even really try to be, which is not a problem because no one sees a slasher movie expecting scares. What is a problem is the villain. I don't know what they were going for, but it's one of the least memorable villains I've ever seen in a slasher. It's the typical massive stunt man (and being big does not equal scary) with a face like a block of wood.

The explanation for the killer's presence and how to do away with it is, I guess, where the humour comes in. Michael Madsen gives a monologue, complete with an animated sequence, to provide an explanation so moronically bizarre and out of step with everything else in the movie that I couldn't bare to pay attention. It has something to do with pancakes and syrup?

This is where the problem with the tone comes in: it's nowhere near ridiculous enough to absorb a sequence like this into the rest of the movie. It doesn't make you laugh at the ridiculousness: it makes you shake your head at the weirdness, and then, of course, you wonder what the filmmakers were thinking, or even if they were. You start trying to formulate explanations for how the movie went so wrong.

The ending, where this stupid origin story comes into play, is as badly done as you'd expect. I didn't know what was supposed to have happened, but I did know, with one hundred percent certainty, that it had no hope at all of ever being presented adequately by the people who made this movie.

The movie does have quite a bit of nudity (all breast shots). It does the typical thing of having multiple pretty, likable actresses, none of whom provide the above shots. And, weirdly, when the ladies do disrobe, the movie turns into a sexy music video with different music, lighting, dancing. Of course, this only distracts you.

As for the "kills", one is fairly memorable: the camp manager is cut in half at the waist, and watches his lower body run away from him.

A bunch of rather older-looking kids travel to a Christian camp out in the woods. There's a lot of painful silliness the bus. Once they arrive we meet their ridiculous leader, a pretty girl also in charge, and the cook(?). It's not long before they start taking their clothes off and the marijuana jokes begin. For some reason only one pair of girls seem to be Christian, the rest not so much. Meanwhile some stranger is traveling in the direction of the camp. He stops at the park ranger office to warn that everyone is going to die and they should evacuate immediately. As evidence he offers some old newspaper clippings.

But of course he's right. By now someone or something dragging some large-pancake cart has started killing kids. It takes a while before the guy who's some researcher arrives at the camp and warns them. At that point we learn who the killer is and why he kills. It's a rather ridiculous explanation that I won't give here. Soon enough the killer arrives in the middle of dining hall and the mayhem is on. At this point the movie decides who the lead characters are and those will have figure out a way to eliminate this killer for good.

I really like the spirit in which this movie was made. I'm all for 80's-style raunchy teen slasher flicks. But as often happens, they had to ruin it by making it a parody/comedy. One movie-making convention seems to be that if you combine teens and violence you have to mask it as a comedy. Unfortunately making comedy and even more so, parody, is far more challenging than straight-forward horror. There are couple of good lines though.

Lumberjack Man is 1:45 hours--at least 15 minutes too long, a strange decision when you don't have a lot of budget. Another convention of low-budget movie-making is that you've got to have at least one big name in your cast. In this case it's Michael Madsen who does a good job, not taking the role too seriously. The rest of the main cast does surprisingly well. All of them give committed performances. The problem is the silliness factor, not the acting. One weakness of this movie is that it really doesn't give us a lead character for which to care. Of course, it's the girl who doesn't take her clothes off who will end up being the lead, but for most of the movie, she isn't. For a movie like this, the cast isn't particularly attractive. Brina Palencia in some tertiary role is lovely though. Then there are some porn stars here for some reason.

I'm very conflicted about this movie. I enjoyed the gore, violence, and nudity but hated the goofiness. The movie-makers have some talent and enthusiasm but botched it.