Rish's Reviews
Well folks, you know a movie has reached Classic status when it gets remade, right? Psycho, Village of the Damned, The Haunting, Cape Fear, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Cat People, The Thing, etc. Today we can add Friday the 13th to that list.
Now, they'll never admit to it, but anyone who didn't come out of a pod will catch on real quick. Nicely enough, I watched this one on a Friday the 13th.
In Bloody Murder, a group of (actually young-looking, but not teenagers) camp counselors comes to a child-less (they always are) summer camp (this one's called Placid Pines) with a bad history (this one involving both a legendary hockey-masked murderer AND a picked-on kid who went to a mental institution). There's an old coot that roams around scaring the main characters, then ranting about the danger, and he disappears from the second half of the movie, never being shown again, alive or dead. I think that since the old man survived the first Friday the 13th, they only thought it fair to do the same in this one. Uh oh, people start to wander off alone (presumably in suicidal frames of mind) and are gorelessly massacred. Who is the killer? Will our virginal heroine get to the bottom of it? Who will survive? Will someone please take their clothes off? These questions and more (such as, what idiots are responsible, and what were they thinking?) await you in the most recent Eighties summer camp slasher flick.
This was not a great movie, my friends. I wish I could give three Skulls in certain categories, as this certainly merited it on some of them (particularly Victim Running From Killer Inexplicably Falls which did it almost into the double digits). The whole falling-while-running thing has been done to death in other movies, but this one welded the coffin shut after pounding nails in it.
Bad fake scares, bad cliches, bad dialogue, bad set ups, it was as if there's a Bad Slasher Manual For Beginning Filmmakers out there somewhere and they followed it to the letter. Here's an excerpt:
Page 18: Have spooky old man wander around the premises and warn characters about the killer. Make sure no one believes him.
Page 73: Have completely unrealistic reasons for people to wander off on their own to be killed ("Six of our friends have gone missing, you say? Well, I'll see you."), then make sure the survivors conveniently ignore that they're gone.
Beyond the interesting textbook examples, this featured absolutely no scares, and even less logic. How did the cops get called if the phones were cut? A guy gets his throat neatly cut. . .with a dull garden claw. Even the lesbians don't lezz out! One character-walks-onto-an-archery-range scene Xeroxed right from F13's screenplay. Oh wait, there was another good observation: the killer has a big brown stain on the rear of his overalls. As a bonus, it included really poor dialogue! Three people have mysteriously disappeared, so the local sheriff comes down to investigate. A moment later he says, "I don't think there'll be any more trouble," and leaves. Who is he, Frank Drebin?
The actresses were pretty talentless, but not unattractive. The highpoint of the whole film was a shot where you could see the reflection of the killer in a victim's blood (just to show you I was paying attention*). Actually, there are the tiniest hints of potential here. I don't think that means that this movie had any potential, but that there may still be a couple of good summer camp horror movies to be made if someone wants to do it right. The game of Bloody Murder, while lamely executed, might have garnered a nice twist or two. Still could, I suppose.
Bloody Murder was really Eighties-esque, only without the Eighties music, gore, or nudity. I kept wondering, why make this movie fifteen years after the slasher era? The film was unbelievably non-creative with unbelievably unmotivated actions. I kept asking my viewing buddy, "Why can't I make horror films?" And seriously folks, lets ask that question for a moment. Why can't I . . . or you . . . or anyone who would at least TRY to be original, scary, and creative, get work making modern Horror?
Line To Remember: "Misery comes in lots of different forms. It's all miserable."
I'd Recommend It To: Nobody. I was really stretching when I found humour in this one. Don't even see it for laughs.
*The real question is why did I bother?
Posted: December 27, 2004

Total Skulls: 36

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film		Friday the 13th
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood hits camera
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?