Horror films are pretty inbred. Someone finds something that works, and bang, you’ve got 98,326 variations on the theme. Just look at The Blair Witch Project. You can’t throw a stickman in Hollywood and NOT hit someone who’s either produced, directed or starred in a spoof, rip-off or sequel. My personal favorite at the moment is, of course, The Erotic Witch Project.
Fire-side lesbian tongue rasslin’ and a dude in an ape suit. That’s art. But the folks who made Bloody Murder (1999, 90 minutes) went a little further back for ideas to steal. They took Jason Voorhees’ hockey mask and penchant for butchering campers, added Leatherface’s chainsaw and Michael Myers’ coveralls to create Trevor Moorehouse. Oooooo! Come on, who’s gonna be afraid of a killer named TREVOR? The name just screams W-H-I-M-P! Now, all y’all Trevors out there don’t start firing off emails, unless you really DO think you’re capable of serial murder.
Anyway, the result is less a horror movie, but more an inane whodunit with the production values of an after-school special with a couple dirty words mixed in.
The movie: A gaggle of Gap-ad teens arrive at Camp Placid Pines to prepare for their season as camp counselors. Talk swirls among the group about the local bogeyman legend, Trevor Moorehouse, and how he stalks the woods looking for horny camper meat. Not much really goes on for quite awhile, until they all gather round the campfire and one of them decides to play a game called Bloody Murder (or, um, tag.) Off they wander into the woods and bodies start falling. Trevor’s not really a physically-imposing guy, and doesn’t seem to relish his kills with quite the same fervor of his legendary predecessors. He DOES like to hide his victims, like most good homicidal maniacs on film somehow have the wherewithal to do. The murders amount to nothing more to jump-cuts, really. Where’s the gore? After a handful of twists and non-twists the flick wraps like an episode of "Scooby Doo," but just short of the, "If it weren’t for you darn kids … !"
Notables: No breasts. Seven corpses. Gratuitous urination. Pot smoking. Voyeurism. Death by Lawn Dart. Multiple foot chases. Abbreviated shower scene.
Quotables: Drew waxes philosophic, "Misery comes in all different forms, but it’s all miserable." Tobe, the comic foil, has the best lines, "What is this? Six degrees of mutilation?" and "Oh great, I’m a dead man! The one guy I piss off this summer had to be a psychopathic killer named JASON no less."
Time codes: Copious explanation of how to play Bloody Murder (13:21). Scene from Corey Haim‘s Fever Lake (26:08). Freeze-frame perverts delight (58:28).
Final thought: Ghastly acting. Derivative story. These are not normally strikes against genre films, but puh-lease be entertaining. Yawn!