Cheerleader Camp

I'm baaaack!

Yeah, so I was in the hospital one week, had my laptop out of commission for 2-3 weeks, but I think we're ready to roll again. This week, I'm watching Cheerleader Camp, a wonderfully daffy movie about a cheerleading camp. Who knew? Oh yeah, and I nearly forgot...blah blah SPOILER WARNING, blah blah blah.

Okay, so first of all, you should probably watch the trailer on the DVD before watching the film. They give you a nice little cheat-sheet of each characters' name, which is helpful. The stars include Mrs. Jigsaw herself, Betsy Russell; Leif Garrett as her boyfriend; and Lucinda Dickey, whose name I remember from those silly breakdancing films in the '80's.

It begins in a locker room, where the main character, Alison, is trying to find her locker and change into her cheerleading outfit. Out in the stadium, a bored-sounding announcer is taunting her by announcing how late she is. She hurries out, waving her pom-poms as cheerfully as is humanly possible.

She needn't have bothered to rush...the stands and field are both deserted. This school's in dire need for some school spirit! To make matters worse, she trips and falls in some mud. I'm guessing that this is not going to be a cherished memory for her, when she looks back on her teen years.

Alison's family showed up, but they wave their hands in disgust at her performance, and just walk out. Ouch! She tries to resume her cheer, but her pom-poms actually slash her skin open! She tries to ignore the wound, but cheering again only injures her further. Then, as Alison begins to panic, a wall of pom-poms surrounds her...

Phew! It was only a nightmare. She's in the back of her boyfriend Brent's van, on the way to CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERLEADING CAAAAAAAMP!!!!!! Ooh, I think I just scared myself for a second there! Also along for the ride are Cory, the cute team mascot; Timmy, the obnoxious fat comic relief character; and Bonnie, Pam and Terry, the other generic cheerleaders who will most likely be the first to die.

Along the way, they discuss how going to this camp will be a great way to get into state finals. Really? So is it a camp, or is it a competition? Why not just call the film Cheerleading Competition? "Camp" makes it sound more like a fun morale-booster kind of thing. Or is that a real thing? Anyone know?

Well, while I was putting probably 150% more thought into this movie than the people who wrote it did, they arrived. Yay! They drive past a group of cheerleaders doing what looks a lot like the dance from "Achy Breaky Heart". Weird. Timmy, being the brain trust of the group decides to aim his epic ass cheeks out the car window at all of the other cheerleaders they pass. It figures that the first bare butt they show is his. Oh, and he's supposedly "stuck" in the window, despite the fact that you can see that he isn't.

One of the people running the camp, Miss Tipton, strides over to the van to check them in. She does a roll call, and even gets Timmy loose by swatting his ass with her clipboard. I hope she plans to burn it after that. I don't want to imply that his ass is huge, but I'm pretty sure I saw Timmy do a cameo in James and the Giant Peach....and he wasn't James.

Alison misses hearing her own name being called, because she was busy watching Brent flirt with the girls on another squad. Oh, and Cory gets all sad because her name wasn't called. Geez, doesn't she have some boogaloo to electrify or something? Anyway, Alison gets a brief scare when a hick gets behind her, and introduces himself. He calls himself Pop, but he looks like the guy who'll be filling the "Crazy Ralph" role in this one. (Ralph, for those of you who apparently don't read my other articles, is a character in the first couple of Friday the 13th films.)

Then we see a cook, some grungy-looking hobo with a loud cough. Yeesh. I'm glad I didn't eat during this one. Then the Jane Doe characters are seen unpacking their crap and saying bitchy comments about Alison.

We get treated to several more scenes of these idiots unpacking, then Timmy decides to watch some of the women sunbathe, while he tries to hide in the grass. Yeah, I'm sure a guy the size of John Candy's left ass-cheek won't have any trouble hiding.

But wait, it gets even dumber. As some of the women go topless, Timmy sneezes, drawing their attention. He stands up, revealing that he's in drag, in a pitiful attempt to "blend in" with the hot female group. He tries to pass himself off as a birdwatcher, but they tear off his "disguise". and surround him. In a frantic bid to escape, Timmy does a belly-flop into the lake, and swims away.

Then we catch up with another peeper, the sheriff. He's so busy staring at the best breasts early 1980's money can buy, he fails to see Pop sneak up on him. They mumble some vague insults back and forth, until Pop inexplicably vanishes.

Moving from one random scene to the next, Miss Tipton is berating a group of cheerleaders as they rehearse. The screen turns red, then Alison is seen back in her group's cabin, having another nightmare.

She dreams about stuff that happened 2 minutes ago, then decides to leave the cabin. She enters the cabin next to hers, and finds a blond cheerleader dead in a bed. Fred. The 2 hobo-guys take care of the body, while Miss Tipton tries to calm down the rest of the cheerleaders.

After she delivers a less-than-inspirational speech, the Jane Does all get together to discuss the mysterious death. None of them buy Tipton's explanation that it was a suicide, but none of them seem smart enough to take the idea any further than that.

Then we wind up with Timmy and Brent. Timmy has somehow managed to get a video of his earlier peepshow, so they start watching. Then Alison gets a pep talk from Cory, who leaves. Alison washes her face in the sink, then hallucinates that her face is covered in blood.

At a pep rally-type performance, we get treated to that rap song from the trailer again. Yay. Pop gets so excited by the show that he wets himself with a garden hose. As the rap goes on and on(and on and on and...), Pop nearly drowns himself with the damned hose. Boy, these '80's movies sure are hilarious. What's next, a pie fight?

Nope, something worse...a mascot party. When Cory refuses to keep the alligator head on while trying to eat, Miss Tipton yells at her. Just to recap: there has been only 1 murder so far, and it was offscreen. But we have had 2 scenes of Timmy partially nude, and now a scene with people dressed as animals trying to drink soda and eat potato chips through their gigantic heads. Is this movie for real?

Brent tries flirting with Alison, who wanders away toward the mess hall. Inside, she finds the cook chopping up meat in a threatening manner, so she enters the walk-in freezer to get something cold to drink. There, Alison finds the corpse from a few scenes ago, and she scurries away.

She uses the pay phone at the camp to call for help, and the sheriff arrives. He demands answers from the staff, but Miss Tipton tries to brand Alison as a troublemaker. Tipton uses her feminine wiles on the sheriff to keep the murder quiet.

Alas, then we get more Timmy. He gets to see Tipton and the sheriff roleplay a kinky cheerleader/quarterback scenario, which is even more terrible than it sounds.

Alison wanders into another empty cabin as the others practice their cheers. She spies on one of the hobos, and nearly gets caught. Seriously, someone had better die soon, and it better not be me, from sheer boredom.

Brent has his hands on some chick's ass, and is lifting her over his head. That's it, that's an actual scene in this movie. Nothing else happens. Seriously. Alison has another chat with Cory, which also goes nowhere.

Okay, let's start skipping ahead here. At another group meeting, Miss Tiptomn gets humiliated when her tryst with the sheriff is shown on a projection screen. Everyone walks out laughing, then Brent kisses Alison, then they have a spat. Blah, blah, blah.

The screen goes red yet again, and Alison enters a cabin that she hears shouting coming from. Inside, Brent is having sex with another girl, while the camp staff stand around the cot, doing a cheer. Then the mascots somehow get involved. Geez, I wish I was a drinker...this is one movie that deserves to be forgotten in a drunken blackout.

The next day, Alison falls during a rehearsal, and lashes out at the girl Brent was screwing in the nightmare. That somehow leads into a scene with Timmy swimming with 2 of the girls, while Brent makes out with his new main squeeze.

Brent abruptly leaves, and the brunette tries to follow him into the woods. She gets lost, and an unseen assailant shoves some pruning shears through the back of her head. Yay, something actually happened!

As Brent is briefly seen running through the woods, the screen goes red yet again. Alison is having another dream sequence. In this one, she finds Brent and Pam, the girl who was just killed, making love e against a tree, and so she decides to slice the girl up with her pom-poms.

Alison screams, and is woken up by Cory. When Alison tries to take a sedative to sleep, Cory stops her. Then we get more bullshit mascot dancing footage. It's supposed to be some stupid mascot dancing contest, I guess. The audience votes for Cory to win, but Miss Tipton pisses her off by handing the award to another mascot instead, just out of spite.

As the cheerleading teams get up to dance for the judges, Alison asks Brent if he's been sleeping with Pam. The team decides to perform without Pam, but Timmy nearly kills Pop when he stumbles into him during the routine. Timmy seems to think it's hysterical, but Pop is pretty angry at him.

Miss Tipton's pissed too, even after they explain that Pam is missing. As the next squad prepares to do their performance, one of the other Jane Does(who looks sort of like one of the girls Prince used to sleep with 20 years ago) tearfully leaves the room, too upset about Pam's vanishing to continue.

As Miss Tipton makes all of the various teams do a dorky little parade around the stage, she gets visibly annoyed by the popularity of Alison's team. Despite this, the award for the most popular(or whatever...I tuned out about 20 minutes ago) cheerleader goes to the country gal. I forgot her name, so let's call her Ellie May.

Anyway, Ellie May beams with pride as the tiara is placed on her head, and this somehow leads into another fight between Alison and Brent. He leaves to see if he can find the other girls, and Alison follows him after having a quick flashback to one of her 900 dreams.

Then there's a "let's see where each of our isolated characters is" montage: Brent is lost in the woods, calling out random names; the girl who was upset earlier(whose name,I think, is either Lisa or Kim) is stumbling around in the dark; Pop is drunkenly lurching around in one of the cabins; and Cory is also out looking for Lisa/Kim/Whoever she is.

Anyway, Whatsherface finds Pam's body, just as the killer shows up to try and run her over in a vehicle. Alison and Brent find each other in the woods, and then Pop and Cory also arrive. What the Hell? Weren't we about to see that other girl get run over? Why are we bothering with these idiots?

Then we get randomly transported back to the dance competition. Timmy meets a cute girl from another squad, and tries to fumble his way through a pick-up line. In what may be the film's only truly funny moment, he gives up, says, "Ah, what the fuck!", then grabs the girl and kisses her. Because it's a movie, she's into it. This one scene actually made me crack a smile.

Okay. Back to the dreary rest of the film.

Brent gathers the rest of the team together, and they panic when they realize that the others have vanished. As they try to come up with a plan, Miss Tipton staggers away into the forest, drunk as a skunk. She gets killed seconds later, from behind.

The sheriff gets a call on his radio, then our main group discovers one of the dead cheerleaders in the woods. At the same time, Alison sees Miss Tipton staggering toward her, and mistakenly thinks that she's drunk. Then she sees the blood on the woman's back, and screams.

Cory finds her, and they leave the body behind. At the same time, Brent and the others reach the dance, where they announce that a killer is on the loose. As expected, the other cheerleaders all go nuts, and leave in a frenzy.

With only Brent, Timmy, Pop, and the rest of the squad left, Brent stumbles across Miss Tipton's body. He finds Alison and Cory together, and brings them back to the main group, only to find that the van has been sabotaged.

The group stick together, and start hiking through the woods. They get frightened when Pop shows up with a shotgun, then Timmy is abandoned by Ellie May, because he's too busy fooling around with his camera to try to survive the night.

Brent finds the camera, but there's no sign of Timmy. They bring the camera back to their cabin, where they watch the last video that was recorded...a tape of Timmy being murdered, as it turns out. He was disemboweled in front of the camera, and it's probably the bloodiest death so far.

Brent sets a trap for the killer, but ends up killing the sheriff instead. Oops. He runs off into the woods, where he has a standoff with Pop, who ends up being killed by Cory. Does any of this make any damned sense? I know I was complaining about it being too slow before, but this isn't exactly an improvement.

Cory breaks down and tells Brent that she only shot Pop because she thought he was trying to kill Brent. Then Pop staggers to his feet, so she shoots him a second time. Maybe they decided to make a spoof of slasher films, and gave up on the horror angle?

Alone with a corpse, Alison starts to lose her grip on reality again. Brent arrives to calm her down, then he, Ellie May, Alison and Cory celebrate being alive. When they get some alone time, Brent tries to put the moves on Alison.

Cory interrupts, and announces that another member of the group is now missing. As soon as Brent leaves to go searching, Cory convinces Alison that they have to escape together. She gives Alison a gun, then scares her into thinking that Brent is the killer. Not thinking clearly, Alison shoots Brent.

The authorities arrive, and Cory makes it look like Alison went crazy when she shot Brent. Alison is loaded into an ambulance, where she suddenly realizes that Cory was the killer. As she figures it out, Cory is seen is a cheerleading uniform, acting all gonzo. THE END.


Man, this was horrible. The plot was terrible, the acting was poor, the kills were almost non-existent...this is like a case study in how not to make a slasher film. This gets 1 killer tree out of 5, just for wasting so much of my time.

And what did this crapfest teach me?

-Jigsaw's wife was one hot mama!

-Obese perverts get all the girls.

-You can make a movie about anything, even if it makes no sense.

Next up is a movie called Whisper, about a creepy little kid. Hopefully, it'll be a little bit more coherent than this last movie was. See you then!

Sleepaway Camp

This week's slasher is one of the more infamous ones in the genre, Sleepaway Camp. As always, I'm giving you my usual warning about SPOILERS...However, the ending is probably the most famous SPOILER in slasher history, so chances are that you won't need the warning this week.

Anyway, the film begins with a shot of the camp, and the most annoying theme music I can remember in ages. Oh hey, look, the nerdy guy from The Langoliers is in this. Other than him and Felissa Rose, I don't know any of the other actors in this.

The annoyingly, loud music continues. Clearly, the killer believes in deafening his victims before killing them. Small snippets of dialogue fade in and out, but so far, the campground seems pretty dang empty. The credits end on a closeup of a sign...it's a "for sale" sign for a property called Camp Arawak.

Then we see a family on a boat. 2 annoying children are yelling at each other, while their father looks like he wishes he had used 2 condoms at the right times. As he chats with them, we see a couple in a motorboat speeding along, as a frightened girl is water skiing and begging them to slow down. The guy at the wheel, Craig, tells his girlfriend, Mary Ann, that he can't let her have a turn at the wheel, even though she's begging for it. Craig's a lifeguard, and the boat's not his, so I can see his point.

The little kids see their dad standing on the edge of their boat, so they figure it would be fun to push him into the water. "Pushing" consists of standing there and sort of giving Dad an ass-grab, until all 3 just sort of throw themselves toward the water. Yes, it's as ridiculous as it sounds.

Craig gives in to his girlfriend, and lets her have the wheel. At the same time, Dad is told by another guy that he needs to meet some family members for a meeting soon, Aunt Martha and Ricky. The kids seem excited, until they learn that Ricky is spending the weekend with his father. Behind the kids, you can see the motorboat heading straight for them. Uh oh! Gosh, what do you think is going to happen?

The water skier tries to shout a warning to her friends, and the dolts both turn around to look at her. There should a version of the Darwin Awards for characters in slasher flicks. Dad tries to get the kids out of the way, as Craig and Mary Ann FINALLY watch where they're going.

Craig grabs the wheel and turns, but it's waaay too late for that. The boat uses Dad as a ramp, and goes ricocheting off of his body, as everyone is screaming at everyone else. Fun times for all!

The story picks up 8 years later. Angela is now living with Ricky and Aunt Martha. Where's the brother? Wait, was he the one who died? No, because then Angela wouldn't be an orphan. Hell, I dunno...maybe they BOTH died! I better re-watch that sequence again.

Aunt Martha hands Ricky a bag filled with "goodies", and she's yelling to beat the band. Seriously, was this a horror film intended for deaf folks? Anyway, the kooky aunt declares that she forgot something, then proudly displays a string she tied around her finger to remember it. Um, I don't think her elevator reaches the penthouse, if you know what I mean.

She comes back, holding some medical records for them to bring to summer camp. They leave for camp on a schoolbus, and find an army of screaming kids waiting. Two middle-aged guys are yelling instructions to all of the running maniacs, but they pretty much drown each other out. Behind them, some of the staff look on with expressions of abject misery on their faces.

One of the workers, Art, makes a comment about the female campers being too young to have pubic hair, and an elderly black man cracks a joke about his "interest" in young girls. Art doesn't say much else, but grins as more young girls run by. Geez, 10 minutes in, and I already feel dirty for watching this.

Angela and Ricky encounter a boy who knows Ricky from a past summer. Before he leaves them, the kid tells Ricky that the girl he had a crush on the previous summer has, uh, "developed" in the chest region. Angela just stands there like a statue, not saying a word. A very flat statue.

Ricky shows Angela around the camp, then encounters Judy. She's definitely developed, but she's also become a major ice queen. She and Ricky have a short, tense chat, then Judy enters the same cabin that Angela entered. There, we meet some of the counselors, Meg and Susie. Megb is just an older version of Judy, but Susie seems nice.

Angela watches Judy unpack, and her zombie-stare freaks the other girl out in a big way. Before tensions can escalate, The counselors we just met defuse the situation. Awww, I wanted a chick fight!

In the mess hall, Meg summons one of the head counselors, Ronny. Angela won't eat, she just keeps sitting like a lump and staring at everything. Ronny turns on the charm, and takes Angela to the kitchen to see if she can find another meal that she might like.

In the kitchen, Angela is introduced to Ben and Artie. Ronny leaves her with Artie, who takes her into the food storage area. Once they're alone, Artie almost rapes Angela, but cousin Ricky saves the day. After the cook threatens them not to tell anyone what he tried to do, they run away.

As the kitchen staff start to close up shop later that afternoon, Ben leaves Artie in the kitchen alone. Somebody unseen sneaks in, and they quickly hide when they hear Artie coming back into the kitchen.

Artie uses a small stepladder to peer into a large cooking pot, and stirs in some ingredients. The unseen killer sneaks behind the portly cook, and shoves him roughly towards the boiling pot of water. Artie manages to grab onto a shelf before getting too off-balance, and asks the unseen attacker to help him stand up. The killer responds by kicking the small step away, then just yanking it, causing the portly cook to pull the boiling container onto himself, and toppling to the floor. Artie, now horribly scarred by the boiling water, screams until Ben comes running in to see what happened.

An ambulance is called, and Artie is still screaming as they take him away. Ben gets promoted to head chef, as long as he and the other kitchen staff agree to stay silent about what they saw. Yay, a promotion! Ben, you have no soul.

The next scene shows some kids playing a prank on another boy, in the guise of a magic trick. It ends with his face in some other kid's ass. This somehow transitions into a baseball game with more betting than Atlantic City on any given weekend. Ricky manages to psyche out some of the players on the other team, most of whom look at least a decade older. Ricky and our protagonists win, but there are grumblings about "payback" overheard.

That night, there's a dance. How bad is it? Well, Angela is approached by a couple of the guys. When cousin Ricky overhears them mocking her shyness, a brawl ensues. The fight gets broken up, and a boy named Paul decides to try to befriend her. He tells her that he and Ricky are close friends, and he starts telling her wild stories about their past exploits. When a counselor tells Paul that it's time to go, Angela speaks her first bit of dialogue so far, wishing him a good night.

After the dance, a group of counselors go out for a late-night swim. 2 of them, Leslie and Kenny take a canoe out to a remote area. Kenny decides to prey on Leslie's fears, first by mentioning all of the creatures in the water that could bite her, then rocking the canoe from side to side. Clearly, Kenny knows the way to a woman's heart. The canoe tips over, dumping both of them into the lake, and Leslie swims back in the direction of the camp.

Swimming under the tipped boat, Kenny seems unaware that Leslie has left. Someone bobs up in front of him, and Kenny recognizes the person, but seems perplexed by their presence. The person grabs Kenny's head, and holds him under the water.

As the other male counselors mock both Leslie and Kenny from the shore, they leave as a group. One stays behind, and approaches the overturned canoe when Kenny stops responding to jeers and taunts. Then the scene just crashes to a halt, leaving us to wonder whether Kenny was discovered, the other lunkhead maybe died, or if perhaps the movie just ran out of steam. And what about Leslie?

Nope, no answers here. The next day, one of the counselors finds the dock trashed. As he's complaining about the lack of discipline Mel has over the counselors, he inadvertently uncovers Kenny's watery body. The authorities are called, but Mel tries to keep the incident as quiet as possible.

Angela watches the other girls play volleyball, and Paul strikes up another conversation with her. He asks her on a date, and Angela agrees to meet him later that night. The other girls(well, mostly Judy) get catty while watching them chat, of course, and one of them tells her off. Then Susie comes to her rescue.

That evening, after whatever festivity was held, Paul gallantly offers to walk Angela back to her bunk. Judy decides to follow them, even after Ricky attempts to talk her out of it. At the cabin, Paul gives Angela a quick kiss, then another, before she scurries inside. Judy stops Paul before he returns to his cabin, and teases him.

In the boys' cabin, a prank leads to a knife-fight, and it gets disrupted by a counselor named Gino. This somehow leads to a scene where Paul sneaks up behind Angela, after swimming, holds his clammy hands over her eyes, and makes her guess who it is. Geez kid, at least towel off! Judy tries to mock them, but Paul deflects her ridicule.

As soon as he leaves, Meg approaches Angela. Her method of "reaching" Angela involves insulting her, shaking her like a rag doll, then screaming in her face. Ronny comes to the rescue yet again.

Later, Angela is harassed even further by Judy. Susie and Judy have an altercation, then Angela leaves. She walks over to the boys' side of the camp to find Paul, and some of the boys hurl sponges at her from the roof. Ricky sees the incident, and the shouting match brings out Mel. He penalizes the boys on the roof, but also Ricky.

The sponge-flinger. Billy, goes back to his cabin, and announces that he needs to take a dump. Fascinating. He goes into a stall, and we see someone jam the door shut with a broom handle. As the camera slowly pans up, a hand holding a knife cuts through the window screen in the bathroom. As Billy gets annoyed by the distraction, the killer uses a branch to drop a nest of bees into the stall with Billy, who eventually keels over, horribly scarred and bleeding from his injuries.

His death leads Mel and Ronnie into a debate over whether or not to close the camp. Apparently, many parents have already pulled their children out, and Mel worries that these "accidents" will force them to close up forever.

Angela is wandering around late that evening, and Paul scares her when he comes up behind her. They run to the lake together, and begin making out. Angela makes him chase her for a bit, then they fall into the sand, and really start to go at it. This causes Angela to have a flashback.

In the flashback, Angela and her brother are giggling. Apparently, Dad was gay, and his "friend" in the first scene was his lover. Angela and her brother are then seen in bed together, with him pointing at her. When the flashback ends, Angela runs away from Paul.

The next day, the small group of campers left are divided into teams, to play Capture The Flag. Angela tries to cool things off with Paul, and he doesn't take it well. When she walks away, Judy steps in, hinting to Paul that she knows something about Angela that he doesn't.

Ricky catches up to Angela, and gets her involved in some kind of scheme to win the game. When he and his cousin split up, Ricky spies Judy kissing Paul, in an attempt to seduce him away from Angela. Angela also sees them, and runs away before Paul can explain the situation. Wait--is this Sleepaway Camp, or General Hospital?

Back at the lake, Paul tries to apologize to Angela, but she's back to clamming up. Judy also turns up yet again, and starts to hint at having a physical relationship with Paul. Angela seems like she's about to explode, but she manages to remain still until the Bitch Queen leaves.

Mel talks to Ricky about the way most of the campers have left early, and Judy and Meg return to taunt Angela together. Meg grabs Angela and hoists the screaming girl over her shoulder, the plan being to throw her into the lake. Geez, they should rename this place Camp Majorlottapsychos.

When cousin Ricky hears Angela, he tries to help her, but Mel grabs his arms and keeps him from interfering. Also, Mel accuses Ricky of committing the murders and attacks on people, since he was present every time that Angela was humiliated by the victims. Angela gets pushed into the water and begins swallowing water and flailing about, until a lifeguard helps her back onto the dock. As the other 2 girls laugh, the lifeguard calls Meg a peckerhead. Good call.

As usual, nothing else happens that day, so the next scene occurs that night. The counselors have an informal meeting, and Meg is given the night off, along with some guy named Jerry. Another counselor, Eddie, is assigned to be in charge of a large group of children who will be camping outside that evening. Meg, being herself, tries to proposition Mel, and they make a date for later that night.

Meg tries to take a quick shower, but there's a long line of girls before her. She picks up her outfit and towels, and announces that she's showering elsewhere. Angela watches her exit the cabin, and practically begins licking her chops.

The next time we see Meg, she's in a shower, lathering up. Yay! Someone else enters the empty cabin, and they appear to have a knife. Double yay! As Meg leans away from the water, the killer stabs her several times through the shower curtain, and Meg contorts and makes an "Ugh!" sound every time. Then the killer reaches into the shower, washes off the knife, and shuts off the water.

Eddie, stuck with a small group of brats, tells them to set up their sleeping bags and supplies while he searches for firewood. At that night's dance, Angela bumps into Paul outside, and they reconcile. After making up, they see Judy leaving with another boy, and Paul makes a snide remark after she leaves.

Eddie is woken up by a couple of boys who want to go back to their cabin. He gives in, and offers to drive them. Then someone enters the clearing, and fixates on the axe. Subtlety is definitely not this movie's strong spot.

Mel shows up at the dance, and starts asking about Meg. Mel tries to find her, but he ends up with Judy instead. She pretends to be reading a magazine until he leaves. Then her date, who was hiding under the bed, also leaves.

Mel goes to the empty washroom to find Meg, and her body falls out of the shower at his feet. Mel is convinced that Ricky murdered Meg, and runs off to find him. That doesn't stop the old perv from taking another long look at the naked body, though.

Judy is busy with a curling iron when the entrance to the cabin opens. The figure silhouetted in the doorway looks like either a little boy or girl, hard to tell. They approach Judy, knock her unconscious, then use the curling iron to do things to her nether regions that make even ME cross my legs.

Eddie gets back to the kids he left in their sleeping bags, and discovers that they were all slaughtered in their sleep. He pukes, then runs back to camp, screaming all the way. Back at the main camp, Ricky tries to enter the dance, but a counselor named Jeff stops him. After pleading that he's starving, Jeff shows pity and lets Ricky go in for some food.

Inside the mess hall, the lights go out, and Ricky comes out with 2 handfuls of candy bars and other junk food. On the way back to his cabin, a hand grabs him by the neck. Buh-bye, Ricky. It's Mel, and he's apparently lost his mind. He throws the boy to the ground, accuses him of murdering Meg, then starts slapping, punching and all-around flailing at poor Ricky.

A brief scene where Ron is looking for Mel is shown, then we go back to Mel murdering a child. Nice. When he calms down, he stumbles back to camp, and finds himself on the archery range. He sees the camp killer holding a bow, then Mel gets shot with an arrow to the throat.

The police come to the rescue, and Ron has every surviving counselor divide into pairs, to search for all of the missing folks. Paul meets up with Angela by the water, which is now deserted, and she suggests that they should go skinny dipping. Paul gets started taking off his clothes, moving like a Tasmanian Devil on PCP.

The cops find Ricky, who is still alive. A the same time, a female counselor finds Judy's body, and runs outside, sobbing and screaming. A cop who ran in to have a look, comes back out looking like he's been shell-shocked.

As Ronny and Susie look for more missing people, they find Angela sitting on the ground, naked as a jaybird. She's running her fingers through Paul's hair. As they call Angela's name, one last flashback starts up. Aunt Martha is welcoming "Angela" home, but it's not her, it's her brother. The Aunt dressed him as a girl, and brainwashed him into thinking that he was a she.

Then Ronny and Susie see Angela stand up, and as she makes this spooky face and a weird animal growly sound, we get a full shot of her penis. Okay, okay, we get it. She's a dude. THE END.

Wow, that was a mind-bender, huh? Some pretty good kills, though, and one of the best surprise endings in horror film history. 4 and-a-half killer trees out of 5 for Sleepaway camp.

And what did I learn from my time at camp?

-Guys only think about 2 things: Sex and committing murder.

-Never live with your aunt. She's kink-ay!

Summer camps only have enough time in the day for 1 morning activity, and 1 night activity. No more, no less...

Later this week, I have the original Prom Night coming in, the one before all of that "Mary Lou ghost" nonsense. Now, I never actually attended my own prom, so I'll be wearing a tuxedo as I watch this one. You should wear a prom dress! And send me the pics! Heh, see you later in the week!

Friday the 13th III

Y'know the quickest way to kill a horror franchise? Well, okay, you set it in space, yeah. But the second-quickest way to kill a franchise is to make it 3-D. Think about the number of GOOD horror film sequels you've seen in 3-D. See what I mean? And that brings us to Friday the 13th 3.

This movie should be a train wreck. It should be the worst in the franchise. And yet, it has a lot going for it, including likable characters and some pretty good suspense. And, continuing the tradition of the second film, it recaps the action of the previous movie. As always, it's SPOILER time!

The movie begins, as I said, with a recap of the ending of Part Two. Ginny is running through the woods, and finds her way to Jason's cabin. She finds the bodies of her friends(and the body of the first movie's heroine), as well as a shrine featuring the severed head of Jason's mother and her ratty old sweater. Desperate, Ginny puts on the sweater, just before Jason bursts into the shack.

Ginny speaks to Jason in calm, soothing tones. He sees the sweater and his confused mind sees Ginny as his mother. She's holding a machete behind her back, and as he lets her get closer, she plans to kill him. Unfortunately, Jason glances at the severed head behind Ginny, and the illusion is dispelled. He stabs her in the leg at the same time that she brings the machete up. Lucky for her, the male lead rescues her and together, they seem to kill Jason. Ginny's final act is to unmask him, then they leave his body in there and wait for the police.

We see Jason's hand grab his machete and he starts to crawl away. Then, as the camera slowly gives us a closeup of Mrs. Voorhees' severed head, the credits swoooop out in EYE-BULGING 3-D(or, in this case, EYE-INDIFFERENT 2-D.), to the cheesiest disco music in the history of everything. Why did they abandon the iconic theme music for DISCO??? Anyway, since this was originally 3-D, expect a shitload of scenes where objects are pushed toward the camera for no reason.

So the credits finally end(as does the crappy disco THANK GOD!!!!), and we meet the redneck proprietors of Crystal Lake's own general store, Harold and Edna. They seem remarkably similar to the redneck mother and son in the second film, as Edna's favorite pastime is screaming out orders at Harold while she watches game television. Harold himself prefers his various pets to his nagging wife, and is seen walking through their store eating various goods while petting a large rabbit.

Edna is busy getting freaked out. She's been hearing news reports about Jason's latest killing spree in the area(we see Ginny being lifted into an ambulance, so this one takes place IMMEDIATELY after the events in Part Two) and she's spotted Jason out in her backyard stealing Harold's laundry, and she just naturally assumed he was Harold. Yeah, because Harold looks JUST LIKE a hulking, bald man-child with severe facial deformities. Anyway, when she goes outside to check the laundry, she starts yelling about how he only took in his clothes and not hers. Jason lurks nearby, and stays just out of view whenever she notices his presence.

We know, of course, that it wasn't Harold. When Edna goes to the store to bitch him out, the poor guy looks completely baffled. Of course it's pretty difficult to defend yourself with a mouthful of chocolate doughnuts, so I guess silence was probably a good idea on his part. Harold brings his bunny out to the barn, and finds another pet mutilated. When he tries to get a closer look, a snake nearly gets its fangs into him!

Frightened, Harold jogs back to the house, and nearly gives his wife a heart attack as he lurches into the bathroom. Apparently he crapped himself when he saw the snake. Lovely. We get treated to the sight of Harold on the toilet, which is probably going to be the scariest scene in the movie. While drinking a bottle of liquor he had stashed nearby, Harold hears a sound. Across from the toilet are a series of oily, ragged curtains. One by one, Harold begins to yank them open...and finds nothing. Then, as he decides it was his imagination, he leaves the bathroom and gets an axe to the chest.

Edna sort of hears him fall to the ground, and decides to go looking for him. She does the same slow, ponderous exploration Harold just did, and comes face to face with a white mouse. Grossed out, Edna backs against the wall, and right into Jason's grasp. He covers her mouth with one hand, and uses the other to shove one of her knitting needles through the back of her neck. This kind death gets repeated later in the film, so I hope you enjoy deja vu.

As the scene fades to white, we say goodbye to poor Edna and Harold, we meet our next batch of victims: There's Andy, a jock with a sense of humor; Shelly, who is Andy's roommate, a big doofus with a fixation on gory practical jokes; Vera, who's been set-up as Shel's date; Chrissy, who's driving the van and was a camp counselor a few years earlier; Chuck and his main squeeze Chili, the pothead hippies of the film; and Debbie, who is Chrissy's best friend.

As everyone's getting to know each other, 2 cops show up behind the van, both with sirens and lights going. Everyone races to ingest all of Chili and Chuck's drugs, until the cops both go speeding past them. Turns out they were called in to investigate the murders from the previous night at the local general store. The van slows down to watch the body bags being loaded into an ambulance, then resume their trip.

Another body is soon found by the group, this time on the road. They get out of the van to get a closer look at the guy, who seems to be dressed like a homeless cowboy. They remove the cowboy hat from his face, and the old geezer wakes up. He thanks them for helping him, and returns the favor by trying to give them an eyeball he found. Hope he kept the receipt.

They all quickly pile back into the van, leaving Crazy Ralph II waving the eyeball at the camera in SEXY, MIGRAINE-INDUCING 2-D!! Back on the road, the group finally get to the site of the new camp, Higgins Haven. The van crosses a rickety bridge, and drives right into the middle of the new campsite, observed by an unknown figure in one of the cabins. The only thing we know about this observer is that they are wearing a plaid shirt. Maybe it's Kurt Cobain?

Nope. It's Rick, Chrissy's summer romantic partner from 2 years ago. As they start unpacking the van, Chris realizes that one of the doors on the van was previously open, and now it's closed. She cautiously opens it again, only to be scared by Shelly, who's hiding in the van. He tells her that the others went skinny-dipping, and he felt too self-conscious to join them.

Next, Chrissy shows Debbie where her bedroom is, because it was Chrissy's 2 years earlier. Instead of a bed, she has a hammock. And instead of a horror film, I have a sleeping aid. Oh, and as Chris looks out the window, we get to see an ominous-looking barn. Gee, I wonder if anyone's hiding out in there???

Speaking of the barn, the following scene features Rick and Chris, having an in-depth discussion about hay. As Rick is lifting the bales up to the loft, he notices they seem to be getting heavier. That's because Chrissy is riding the last one as he's pulling it up. It'll be her fault when he has to file for worker's comp...

Suddenly, there's a horrendous scream! Chrissy and the Rickmeister run back to the cabin, and he checks the ground level as she investigates upstairs. she hears a muffled thumping noise and approaches a wardrobe, giving me terrifying flashbacks of Morty from the 2 Fear movies I had just watched. Nope, it's actually Shelly, with an axe embedded in his forehead. Andy and the others run in, and Andy rushes over to check for a pulse.

Well, it's another prank. Shelly starts giggling, and gets up. When he sees that he upset Chris, he tries to apologize, but no one wants to hear it. Vera asks Rick for the car keys, so she can make a quick run to the store for some kitchen supplies and other things they need. Shel begs her to let him tag along, and she gives in.

Deb catches up with Chris in a field, where Chris reveals that she was the survivor of something traumatic. The memories still haunt her, and she's having serious difficulty deciding whether she should stay or go. Awwwww...

At the store, Vera doesn't have the money to cover the groceries, so Shel tosses her(and us) his wallet, in GLORIOUS, MAGNIFICENT 2-D!! A biker chick gets the wallet first, and she and her friends enjoy terrorizing the 2 teens...or the 2 20-somethings PLAYING teens. Anyway, Vera doesn't back down, so she gets the wallet back, pays for the food, and she and Shelly run to the car. Vera gives Shelly the keys, and he backs into the gang's motorcycles.

That doesn't go over too well with the bikers, and one smashes the car's windows and one side of the vehicle with a heavy chain. Well that just makes Shelly mad, and he drives over the pile of motorcycles on his way back to the road. Elated that he stood up to the biker, Shel is happier than a pig in mud.

The next bit of MESMERIZING, BONE-CHILLING 2-D!!! is a yo-yo being used by Andy. The group of counselors are sitting around doing jackshit when Shelly drives up in the wrecked VW. Even Jason emerges from the barn to check out the damage! Rick sees what happened to his car and blows his top. He plans to abandon the camp, until Chris convinces him to change his mind, but they still take off for a little while. They drive right past Jason and never notice him.

As the happy couple drive away, the bikers sneak onto the property for a little revenge. Ali, the one whose bike they ran over earlier, is siphoning the gas from the other camp vehicle with a sidekick named Snake. While they work on stranding the campers, Ali's girlfriend, Fox, decides to check out the barn.

Wanna guess what happens next? After Fox enters the barn, she acts like she arrived at Buckingham Palace. I've never seen anyone look so enraptured by dust 'n' rust. As expected, Jason reveals sneaks up behind her while she plays with saddles and cowbells and shit. At one point, she even senses his presence, but still sticks around to fondle saddles and canteens. She trips at one point, and nearly gets a pitchfork through her face, which would've been kind of funny: Imagine watching a Friday the 13th sequel where every death was accidental. At one point, Jason could even look at the camera, wave by-bye, shrug and go take a nap or something.

Anyway, after nearly frenching a pitchfork, Fox decides to climb up into the hayloft. As her feet hit the first rung of the ladder, a clump of loose hay comes at her in ELBOW-SCRATCHING EARTH-SHATTERING 2-D!!!! While Fox is making the slowest ladder-climb in history, Ali and Snake are finishing up the gas theft. Ali tells Snake To find Ali, and Snake runs off toward the barn, armed with a full canister of gas and a cigarette between his lips. Einstein.

It doesn't take Snake long to find Fox...she's swinging on a rope in the hayloft, hooting and hollering. Snake scolds her about keeping their presence unknown to the campers, but when he looks up at the hayloft again, she's gone. Snake enters the barn, demanding that she show herself and stop screwing around. When he gets no response, he decides to climb up into the hayloft to find her. Once there, he fails to see her corpse pinned to wall by the pitchfork, whose handle is pointing at the camera in UTTERLY KNEE-SKINNING 2-D!!! When he does turn around and finally spots her, Jason attacks Snake with a different pitchfork, sticking it through the bikers stomach in PANTS-WETTING, BRAIN-FREEZING 2-D!!!

Standing outside the barn holding 2 heavy-looking containers of gas, Ali kicks the barn door a few times before putting down the gas and simply opening the door the, you know, SMART way. Incidentally, wasn't the guy playing Ali also one of the nightclub bouncers in Fright Night? I KNOW I've seen him in some other movie before this one. Eh, whatever...Ali hears something up in the loft, and gets pissed. When he demands that they come down, Jason throws Snake's corpse at him. Ali grabs a nearby machete and runs after Jason, who has jumped down from the loft to fight the biker. It doesn't last long: Jason throws Ali across the room, then uses the machete Ali found to stab him several times before leaving.

The cameraman decides to wander off to see whatever happened to Chris and Rick. They wound up in some clearing next to a drainage pipe. Rick pointedly asks Chris why she decided to come back to the camp after surviving whatever the hell she survived, and she tells him that she felt she needed to prove something by returning. While they act out a scene out of "General Hospital", Shelly and Andy are having a juggling contest in STUPEFYING, ROCKET-LAUNCHING 2-D!!, and the 2 potheads are zoning out.

Andy loses the contest when his girlfriend tempts him away for sex, and that leaves Shelly with Vera. Vera gets up to poke at the logs in the fireplace, giving Shelly(and US) a great view of her ass. He tries to ask her out, but Vera doesn't even let him finish the sentence. She tells him that she needs some fresh air, and that they should talk after she gets back, then she quickly heads outside. Shelly watches her a bit from the window, then turns his attention back to the roaring fire--just as Jason strolls past the very same window.

Upstairs, we get an all-too-brief look at Deb's breasts, as she and Andy climb into the hammock for some swinging-rope sex. Kinky! I approve. Too bad the director didn't--we get pushed outside for more melodrama with Chris and Rick. She reveals to him that the last time they went out together, her mother threw her out of the house the same night. Chrissy eventually got lost walking in the woods, and fell asleep under a big tree. When she woke up, she heard what she thought was her father coming to look for her. It wasn't....instead, she came face-to-half-face with Jason. He had chased her around for a bit, before dragging her away.

She passed out, and when she came to, Jason was gone. She has no other memories of that night, so she decided to try to jog her memory by returning. At this point, Rick's car dies. They decide to walk back to camp, and Rick mumbles something about a shortcut.

At the cabin, Chuck wakes up from his drug binge. He goes outside to use the outhouse(what is it with outhouses in this franchise?), and gets spooked by something. The call of nature overcomes his survival instinct however, and Chuck decides to use the toilet anyway. So far, this outhouse is the scariest image in the film.

Chili wakes up alone, but apparently the movie could care less, because we return to Chuck on the toilet smoking a joint. The outhouse starts rocking, and the dimwit fails to notice at first. He pulls up his pants to go confront the guy, but instead bumps into Chili, who came outside to find him. They decide to check out the barn, because Chuck thought he saw Shelly go in, but WE know it was actually Jason.

Vera is seen next, sitting on the dock by Crystal Lake. A hand grabs her by the ankle, and it's attached to someone wearing a hockey mask and holding a spear gun. It turns out to be Shelly. He tries to apologize yet AGAIN for his dumb practical jokes, but Vera gets upset. Shelly calls himself a jerk and leaves Vera there feeling bad for him. He waddles onto the porch at the cabin and watches Vera from a distance before deciding to go out to the barn. Uh oh.

At the barn, Shel starts knocking on windows and calling out Chuck and Chili's names. When that doesn't get a response, he enters the barn and nearly wets himself when a dusty-looking cow-skull nearly hits him. At the same time, Vera finds and goes through Shelly's wallet. A noise startles her, and she drops the wallet into the lake. Vera removes her shoes and wades in to get the wallet, just as someone wearing the hockey mask and holding a spear gun approaches the lake. She explains to him that she dropped the wallet and managed to retrieve it, and she gets a spear shot into her right eye....in LOW-DEFINITION, LACTOSE INTOLERANT 2-D!!! Jason then sees the bedroom light on and goes after Andy and Deb.

The happy couple are just finishing up their snuggle in the hammock. While Deb takes a shower, Andy announces that he's going downstairs to grab a beer. Someone enters the bathroom while Deb is showering and creeps up on her. When Deb pulls back the curtain, it turns out to be Andy, walking on his hands. He asks her if she wants a beer too, then resumes his hand-walk out into the hallway. As he rounds a corner, Jason blocks his path and brings the machete down hard on the poor idiot's crotch. I think I speak for every guy in the world when I say, "OWWWWWWWW!!"

Deb climbs back into the hammock, oblivious to Andy's demise or the danger she's in. She picks up a copy of Fangoria magazine and starts thumbing through it. Blood drips onto the page she's reading, and Deb looks up to see Andy's corpse hanging like a pinata. Before she can do anything beyond a scream, Jason grabs Deb's forehead to pin her down, and plunges his blade into her back and up through her chest. (see what I meant earlier about the similarity???)

Chrissy and Rick get closer to the camp, but apparently the film crew couldn't care less because the movie switches back to Chuck, who has decided to make popcorn on a stove top in CHOLESTEROL-INDUCING, HEART-EXPLODING 2-D!!! Chuck, being the dumb ass that he is, lifts the lid over the popcorn, has it fly up at his(and ours) face, and actually tries to catch it in his mouth. Chili walks in just as the dingle berry puts the lid back. Good save, bro.

Chuck and Chili exchange some banter about orgasms, and the lights all go out. Chili asks Chuck to go out to the shack to check the fuses, and he does so after some grumbling. While he's out there stumbling around in the dark, Chili hears a sound at the door. She finds Shelly there, with his throat badly slashed, but assumes it's another practical joke. He basically dies in front of her, and she never realizes it.

Chuck, meanwhile, has been unwittingly walking barefoot in blood. He uncovers more weird dusty shit in the shack, like dead bats and rusty waffle irons, before getting the lights working again. Bad news for him: Jason is behind him when the lights come back on. Jason throws him at the generator, and poor chuck becomes a chuck roast.

As the lights begin flickering, Chili finally comprehends that something weird is happening. She approaches Shel's corpse to get him up, and discovers that the blood on him is real. Next, Chili goes upstairs to tell Deb and Andy that Shelly died, and Jason uses the distraction to grab a hot fireplace poker to kill her with. She finds the corpses upstairs, rushes to the front door, but the wind blows it open and she freaks out. Chili hurries the other way, and Jason thrusts the poker through her stomach and out of her back. He then picks her body up, Bride of Frankenstein-style, and decides to decorate the cabin for Rick and Chris.

Right on cue, Chris and Rick come back, and they both smell smoke. They try to get the front door open, but something is blocking it. A corpse? Nope, just a chair. The burning smell turns out to be the popcorn. As Chrissy cleans up the kitchen, Rick goes to explore the rest of the house. When he finds the place empty, he and Chris decide to go check out the barn.

Rick goes out first, and Jason grabs him. As they lurk around the corner, Chris exits the cabin, and calls Rick's name several times. When Chris decides to go back inside, Jason squeezes Rick's head until one of his eyeballs pops out in COTTON-PICKIN', FINGER-LICKIN' 2-D!!

We then get treated to the "final character discovers the bodies" segment. Chris heads upstairs, finds the bathroom flooded, and Snake's body nearly hits her while falling out of a tree. Chris runs back to the cabin and we get a funny scene where every door and window keeps flying open because of the windstorm outside. While she's scurrying around trying to close everything, Rick's body gets thrown through one of the windows. While Chris tries to examine Rick's wounds, Jason climbs in through the broken window to come after her.

Chris runs upstairs and topples a bookcase, sending a ton of books raining down on Jason. While he recovers from the awesome power of literature, Chris tries to find a good place to hide. She gets into a closet and finds a dead body to keep her company. Her scream alerts Jason, and he begins trying to break the door down, first with his fists and then with an axe.

Chris stops hyperventilating long enough to grab the knife out of the corpse at her feet. Jason creates a hole in the door large enough to fit his hand through, and Chris stabs it before he can reach the doorknob. That seems to give her more confidence, and she proceeds to go on the offensive, swinging the knife in wide arcs in front of her while Jason is forced to back up. Eventually, one of her slices lands a hit in his leg near the knee, and she uses the moment to try to escape. She breaks a window, but Jason grabs her coat before she can get all the way out, and she hits him with her hands until the coat rips. Jason has no choice... he lets her drop to the ground below.

Outside, Chris watches Jason descend the stairs and make his way to one of the doors to follow her. She runs around the side of the cabin, grabs a massive log, and waits for him to open the door.When he comes out, she delivers a hit with the firewood that sends Jason flying into the porch railing.

While Jason struggles to get up again, Chris jogs to the van. She gets it started, and nearly runs over Jason as he stands in the road trying to stop her. Unfortunately for her, the van runs out of gas on the rickety bridge. Thanks, bikers! Jason is seen limping rapidly toward the van, and it doesn't take long for the killer to catch up and grab Chrissy by the throat through her open window. She struggles to get free, and finally decides to roll up the window, effectively pinning his arms in place. It isn't much, but it gives her the time she needs to exit through the passenger door.

As Chrissy takes off towards the woods again, Jason gets his arms free by head-butting the window. She returns to the barn and uses a spade to keep the double-doors shut. That doesn't give her much time: Jason merely reaches through a crack in the doors and lifts the spade up enough to get the entrance open again. Once inside, he uses the wooden plank that serves as the real barricade to close her in the barn with him. Then he starts hunting her down.

Jason goes through piles of old debris, throwing objects everywhere. He then moves to the stables. When that still doesn't get him anywhere, the camera pans up to show us that Chris is hiding in the rafters, clinging desperately to a narrow beam above Jason's head. As he starts getting royally pissed and tearing the barn apart, Chris swings herself upside down on the beam, and drops down on top of him. Chris runs to the door, but can't lift the beam Jason used to close it quick enough. He grabs his machete and sprints after her. As he swings it, Chris ducks and the machete gets imbedded in the door.

She climbs up to the hayloft and uses a large bale of hay to block the narrow entryway and buy herself some time to come up with a plan. Said plan consists of weilding a shovel and hiding behind more bales of hay. As expected, Jason pushes his way up into the hayloft, and Chris whacks him in the noggin with the shovel. While Jason is unconscious, she wraps a length of rope around his neck and manages to push him out of the hayloft while he starts to wake up.

Poor Jason...His body swings down, and his neck appears to snap. Chris starts to leave the barn, and uses a metal wheel to dislodge the plank of wood enough to get the doors open again. She then comes face-to-hockey mask with Jason, who hoists himself up enough on the rope to give him some slack. Then he lifts the hockey mask to confirm to Chris that it was him that chased her that night she got lost in the woods.(The make-up of his face is never consistent in these things...in most of them, one eye is deformed, but in this one it's his teeth that are the most grotesque feature, along with a pig-like nose. Whatever.)

He jumps down to the ground and snatches up his machete. Prepared to finish killing Chris, Jason raises the weapon over his head, only to be foiled by a still-alive Ali! Jason turns and hacks off Ali's hand at the wrist, then bends over him to continue slashing away. Chris spots an axe nearby and plants it in Jason's forehead when he turns back to her.

Jason reacts to this new development by thrusting his arms out in TWISTED, GOOSE-BUMPING 2-D!! He staggers forward a few steps, before finally falling at her feet. Chris then does the dumbest thing ever(until I watch the next one, anyway), and gets into the cursed canoe that provided the jump-scare in the first movie. Chris kneels by the water to wash some of the blood and dirt off her face, then pushes the canoe into the lake.

The next scene shows her waking up in the canoe. The police have arrived, and Chris relaxes...until she sees Jason in an upstairs window of the house, preparing to come down. She desperately starts to row away, but the undead corpse of Mrs. Voorhees this time appears(head intact, no less...nice lack of continuity!!) and drags her into the water.

We then see a cop who looks kind of like B-movie actor Tim Thomerson arrive on the scene. It's revealed that the previous segment was a dream(DUH!), and the cop escorts her away from the house. The closer they get to his car, the crazier she gets, until his partner has to restrain her in the backseat. The camera creeps over the campsite until it shows Jason's body in the barn with the hatchet still intact. There is a brief shot of the lake, where we see a ripple in the water, then it fades to black. THE END.

Well, that was a pretty involved storyline for a sequel! I liked that it kept me guessing(at one point, I figured maybe Shelly was the killer, given his demented and awkward pranks), and the 3-D was funny as hell in 2-D. But the film kept up the tradition of having a cute female lead, the story added some new twists to Jason's story, and there were some honest-to-goodness surprises along the way. I'd give it 3.5 killer trees out of 5, only because the gimmicky 3-D and slow start prevented it from being rated higher in my view.

So, what did Friday the 13th III teach me?

-A heck of a lot of cute actresses made their way into this franchise!
-The gimmick of 3-D adds NOTHING to a movie (unless piranhas are involved...). Hollywood, take notes!
-Some hockey masks have the magical ability to transform the face of their wearer every time they put them on!

Next week: We bid a fond farewell to Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th IV: The Final Chapter. I'm positive that this movie ends the Jason franchise...I mean, Hollywood wouldn't lie to us, would they?

Friday the 13th Part 2

Well, after finding the original Friday the 13th actually pretty scary and fun, I decided to give the first sequel another go too. The good news is that it has scares and stands on its own as horror movie. The bad news? Well, it started a trend that has seen Jason, the movie's "anti-hero" fight a psychic, launch into outer space, and take side-trips to New York and into people's nightmares. If there's a gimmick to exploit, the Friday the 13th franchise has used it at some point.

Luckily for me, the potential for silly gimmicks hadn't yet been thought of by the second film's producers yet. The story itself is refreshingly simple: a few years after the events of the first film, a new group of idealistic young folks have decided to use the old Crystal Lake campsite property to launch a new camp. There are rowdy counselors in training, a skeptical cop...even ol' Crazy Ralph turns up!

But before we get too deep into it, we get a few scenes to resolve the previous film's loose ends...namely, the fate of Alice, the sole survivor of the first film. She's been sort of hiding out since the events of the first film, in a small, secluded house. At the very start, a child is playing in the rain, until the mother calls the kid inside. The second the kid goes, we see a stranger's shoes and pants.

If this really is Jason at the start, then I have a couple of problems with it. First, why are the clothes so clean-looking? I mean, yeah, in the first 3-4 movies he's not yet a zombie(or a slug, if you buy the premise of Jason Goes to Hell. Personally, I don't.), but where would he get clothes that seem relatively clean, and in the correct sizes? Second, how would he NOT attract attention by making this trip? His face is badly deformed, the kid seemed close enough for him to touch, yet there's no reaction of either one of them to indicate that either one saw the other. But that also got me thinking about the recent remake-sequel(requel?) that I enjoyed: why not do a few stand-alone sequels detailing the years from childhood to young adult? Show what Jason did to survive, how he developed his skills with a variety weapons, and so forth. Hey, at least it would be a new way to approach the franchise.

Anyway...the very first scene in the film serves as a very basic summary of how the previous one ended: we see Alice being met by Jason's mother, we see them discuss the drowning, we get most of the highlights of the chase, followed by the beheading, then the dream(?) of Jason getting her in the canoe, the stuff with the cop, etc etc etc...

These scenes are intercut with a scene showing that all of the flashbacks are actually a dream that Alice is having in the bedroom of her secluded little house. She wakes up abruptly, and has a few phone calls. She thinks maybe she's not alone in the house, and decides to check each and every room. The opening kills in Scream and Scream 3 both owe a LOT to this scene. After several false scares, Alice finds a severed head in her fridge, and gets either a knife or perhaps a screwdriver in her ear. Then Jason thoughtfully takes a kettle of boiling water off the stove. He's like Martha Stewart with a psychotic personality...no, wait, he's EXACTLY like her!

After the opening titles, we see a young couple in a pick-up. They stop at a gas station to get directions to the new campground, but have no idea if they're where they should be. All the boyfriend says is something to the effect of, "We're close." Uh huh. As they park and exit the pick-up, they attract the attention of ol' Crazy Ralph, still riding his Huffy 10-speed Holly Hobby bike, complete with the pink basket. Okay, not really, but it would've been great if it WAS that bike.

As our young schmucky couple run to a nearby phonebooth to call the camp, a towtruck pulls up in the background and latches onto their vehicle. Oh, and the directions to the camp are like something you'd hear in an average Scooby-Doo episode, stuff like, "...left onto the Old Spooky Side-road, straight until you see the Old Haunted Bridge..." THAT Shoulda been their first clue! Anyway, by this time Crazy Ralph has shown up to tell the couple that they're doomed, and that was when a weird thought occurred to me: Crazy Ralph is what Scott Bakula could look like in about 20-30 years.

So after Crazy Ralph leaves and the couple get directions to Spooky World Summer Camp("Jinkies!"), they finally notice their vehicle being towed away. Smart AND observant, these two. The guy yells at the tow driver, and they continue to chase the towtruck around the corner to the next street. As they catch up, the couple hear a lot of laughter, and see one of their friends waiting for them. He paid the tow guy to take their truck. Yeesh, what a dick. (Oh, and I'm doubtful that it's the same guy, but the nerdy prankster looks a LOT like the murderous bellhop in that one episode of "The X-Files", where Peter Boyle was a psychic salesman. If it's not the same guy, maybe he had a son?)

After a mostly pointless driving scene to the new camp(the nerdy guy, Ted, tells a joke that ends with the line "...so the bear wipes his ass with the rabbit!"), we've only really learned that the new camp owner is a serious guy. The ride comes to a halt because of a downed tree in the road. As the two guys do all the heavy lifting, the female offers up useful nuggets like "It's spooky out here." Fascinating, Agent Scully. She finds the discarded sign for Camp Crystal Lake as she wanders around aimlessly, and we see that someone in the forest is watching her. With the tree out of the way, the three get back on the road and resume their journey as Jason continues to watch from the trees.

In the following scene, we meet the new guy running the camp and our main group of victims. The group includes Paul Holt, the director of the new camp; Ginny, his cute assistant; Mark, an athletic guy in a wheelchair; Terry, whose incredible ass we see as she chases after her dog; Scott, who has a thing for Terry; and Vickie, Sandra and Jeff round out the majority of the victims...errr, I mean cast. The highlight of this scene is Paul telling the others that the main thing they have to be afraid of is bears. Um, Paul, what about the mass-murdering psycho population?

Anyway, while Paul is holding his "getting to know you" session, Ginny drives up in a car that is so comically beat-up, I thought for a sec that maybe I was watching Jason vs. Herbie Goes Bananas. As Paul continues to speak to the other counselors, Ginny tries to re-park her car, which won't do anything beyond making strange grinding noises. I have to admit, Ginny is one of my favorite Friday girls...cute as heck, and a lot of fun to watch.

Later that night, around a campfire, Paul tells the trainees the legend of Jason. According to his story, Jason grew up feral, stealing what he needed to survive. Oh, and stalking anyone who encroached upon "his" property. Paul also reveals that the opening scene in the movie occurred two months prior to the events of this film, though he only says that she vanished, not that she was killed. It's kind of funny--I mean, I was highly critical about the whole "survivalist" aspect of the 2009 remake, yet they obviously spelled out that very concept in this movie, so in a way, it was actually kind of appropriate. Now, if they can get on the whole "Jason Growing Up" idea I had earlier, all will be right with the world!

Anyway, re-telling the story of Jason and "Camp Blood"(what the locals called Camp Crystal Lake after the various murders and accidents there) was merely a set-up so that Ted can leap out of the darkness with a scary mask and a spear and give them a cheap thrill. Paul winds up the story session by saying that Jason is dead, and the rest is just local superstition. Okay pal, whatever you say...I'm sure it's a bear holding that machete.

As they all get comfortable in the cabin, Scott asks Terry to dance, which she flat-out refuses. Scott, not one to go home empty-handed, dances with her dog instead. Hey, he traded one bitch for another, sweet! While the bizarre bestiality mating ritual is going on, Paul and Ginny are embroiled in a thoroughly compelling chess match. Well, compelling to me, at any rate...but I like watching paint dry, so what the heck do I know? Oh, and Ted is engrossed in a handheld video game. This being the early '80's, my money is on either Frogger or a cheapo sports emulator.

Ginny gets tired of chess, and announces that she's calling it a night. As she leaves, Jeff and Sandra discuss the story Paul told about Camp Blood. Despite Jeff's objections, Sandra announces that she plans to try and find the older campsite the next day. Being a guy, Jeff gives in. Ladies, you control our every waking moment.

Back in her own cabin, Ginny starts undressing. YAY!!! We see Freddy Krueger's shadow pass by her cabin, but he keeps moving. I guess the camera crew were nice enough to show him where HIS movie set was located. Ginny hears a knock, but no one's there when she answers the door. As she turns to go back in, a hand covers her mouth. Relax, Ginny: it's only Paul, pulling all of the same hijinks he warned everyone else about. As they begin making out, a pair of feet are seen walking toward their cabin. It's Crazy Ralph, and he's looking a little "insane in the membrane", if you catch my drift. Anyway, as he's watching them get it on, Ralph hears a noise. He turns around quickly, and Jason uses the distraction to slip a cord around his throat and pin him against a tree, strangling Ralph to death.

The next morning, Ginny wakes up to discover that Paul has left to take the counselors on an early morning jog. He leaves her a helpful message, though: BEWARE OF BEARS. How thoughtful. As Paul leads the joggers through the woods, there are a few shown we haven't seen before, which is kind of weird. Where did all the new people pop out of? Do they even get names???

So the now-larger group ends up having a cookout. Terry GreatAss even brought her dog, Muffin, along for the fun. Too bad Jason doesn't like pets, because the dog disappears right after it encounters him. Oh, and in every scene, there are about 90 gazillion potential weapons shown. Chainsaws, spears, axes...you name it, these people brought it along with them camping stuff. Seriously, A SPEAR???? What's the theme of the camp, "Lord of the Flies"?

And in case you forgot, Sandra still insists on dragging Jeff with her to find "Camp Blood". Before they get to the old campsite, we get to see Ginny in a bikini. Da-amn. Okay, so now that I've drooled all over my laptop, where was I? Oh right: Jeff and Sandra. Despite barbed wire and a very clear "NO TRESPASSING" sign, these two decide to enter the abandoned camp anyway. Idiots. Jason follows them at a leisurely pace, confident that they won't be getting away any time in the near future.

They find the dead dog during their excursion, torn to pieces. His death must been RUFF! Okay, sorry. Couldn't resist. As Jeff and Sandy back away from the body, a hand grabs them from behind! Oh, it's just a local cop. Phew. Faster than you can say "red herring", he drives them back to their own campground to report their trespassing to Paul and Ginny. Paul goes easy on them, which pisses off the cop even more.

As he drives away, the cop sees Jason darting around at the edge of the forest. The cop chases him and is surprisingly agile, given his size and age. Still, he does have to stop a few times to catch his breath before resuming his pursuit. He eventually finds himself standing in front of some pretty weather-beaten shacks. Jason must have built himself these shelters. The cop enters one and finds it filled with junk: stuff like an old high chair, filthy rags, a toilet that's pretty grungy...this place wasn't constructed by Bob Vila, that's for sure.

The cop finds another room, and opens the door. Whatever's in there must be pretty nasty, because he is visibly shocked by what he sees. Before he ever gets a chance to call it in, though, Jason caves in the back of his skull with a hammer.

The next scene is back with the campers. Paul announces that he and Ginny would like to give them all a night on the town, because the next day the group will begin the strenuous work of starting to set up the camp. Everyone can go, with the exception of Jeff and Sandra, as punishment for the trespassing incident. In addition to Jeff and Sandra, the small group staying at the camp includes Mark, the guy in the wheelchair; Terry, who still insists on looking for her dog; and a cute brunette who seems to like Mark. As they all head inside, Jason walks around outside, waiting to strike.

Terry wanders around by the lake, sees that she's by herself, and makes the decision to go skinny-dipping. Thank you, Terry, from the bottom of my libido. This chick has an ass you could serve breakfast on. Man oh man. I wonder what she must look like now, 30 years after this movie was released. I swear, this movie had the cutest females of the franchise.

Back in the cabin, Mark and Jeff are arm-wrestling. Jeff cheats and wins. Before they can have a re-match, Sandra entices Jeff with her feminine wiles, and the cute brunette works her own cute charm on Mark. She challenges him to a video-game tournament, before basically throwing herself at him. Wow. Where were these cute, promiscuous women when I went to camp?

Terry finishes her dip in the lake, only to discover that her clothes are no longer where she left them. Oh, and soaking wet, she resembles Amanda Peet. One of the guys from the cabin, Scott, steps out from behind the lifeguard chair, and taunts her with the clothing. He runs off, occassionally dropping an item for her to follow his trail(and get dressed, which makes Scott's plan kinda dumb, in retrospect...)

Terry does catch up to him, and he gets what he deserves, when he accidentally steps into a trap left by Jason: a rope-snare that wraps around his ankles, then lifts him so that he is essentially upside-down. Terry gets her shirt back, and promises Scott that she'll get help. Yeah, sure she will. To her credit, though, Terry does try to help Scott out...but the cabin she goes into first is empty.

Left dangling, Scott hears someone approaching. "Someone" turns out to be Jason, who cuts Scott's throat with his machete like it's butter. Terry, unaware that she's talking to a corpse, returns to rescue him, and also to chastise him for his behavior. As she's speaking, she swings him around to face her, and sees the blood from his gaping throat-wound. Screaming, she runs right at the camera. Ouch!

Meanwhile, we catch up with Ginny, Paul and Ted watching the other counselors dance in a Country-Western bar. Ginny argues with Paul that Jason, if he is real, must have witnessed the first massacre at Camp Crystal Lake. As an adult with the mind of a child, she wonders how seeing his mother kill all of those people before being killed as well, must have disturbed him. True, Ginny. Now shut up and have another beer.

Okay, enough emo-psych 101 bullshit. We go back to the cabin, where Sandra and Jeff are upstairs getting hot 'n' heavy, while Mark and Vickie are planning the very same thing on the couch. I hope it's covered in plastic. Vickie leaves to go get herself ready for kinky chair-sex, and Mark decides to pass the time by going out on the porch and getting hit in the face with a machete. Good thing too, because that's what Jason had in mind as well. It gets better, though: the impact from the blow to the face sends the wheelchair backwards, and Mark's body goes flying off of the porch and down the front steps.

Jason then takes the spear from the cookout scene, and walks into the cabin. Upstairs, Sandra and Jeff are still screwing like proverbial rabbits. As she's about to "arrive", Sandy opens her eyes and sees Jason wearing a sack over his head and brandishing the spear. As she screams, Jason rams the spear down into both of them, impaling the couple and the mattress, which causes the blood to run under the bed. Vickie comes back and sees the couple stuck together, before Jason stabs her in both the leg and the chest.

As Jason is getting rid of bodies, Ginny and Paul return from the bar. No mention is made of Ted or any of the other "new" counselors who also went out to the bar. The couple wander around in the dark a bit, because Jason screwed with the phones and electricity. They wander upstairs and find the bloody bedsheets, just as Jason goes after Paul. Ginny runs like Speedy Gonzalez, and the body of Crazy Ralph makes one more surprise appearance.

Totally freaking out, Ginny leaps through a window to escape. She runs and runs and runs and runs some more, until she finally finds the same decrepit series of shack the cop found earlier. She also discovers the room the cop found right before he died, which contains a ton of corpses. All of the bodies(including Alice, who's seen better days) are arranged around a makeshift altar, which holds the severed head of Jason's mother.

Ginny puts on Mrs. Voorhees' sweater, just as Jason finds her. She pretends to be Pam Voorhees, and he seems to buy it, until he sees the severed head behind her. Angry at her for fooling him(how many times is this doofus going to fall for THAT trick??), Jason prepares to attack Ginny, Paul comes back to fight with him. As the 2 men grapple, Ginny uses the distraction to grab Jason's machete and hit him in the shoulder with it. Now that Jason is dead, Paul and Ginny stumble their way back to the camp. Terry's dog comes back, which is pretty damn bizarre, as it was mutilated earlier. Maybe the dog and Jason share the same regenerative DNA. As the trio prepare to live happily ever after, Jason crashes through a window. He drags Ginny out through the window, and then we discover that it was all a dream. We never get to find out whether or not Paul survived, but the final image is a close-up of Mrs. Voorhees' severed head. I've seen 2 versions of this scene over the years: one version is just a slow crawl to the severed head, and the movie ends. But on TV, I clearly remember an ending where the closeup ends with Mrs. Voorhies opening her eyes and smiling. Either way, it's THE END.

What have I learned from this particular slasher flick?
-Dogs, not cats, have 9 lives.
-Women in the early 1980's were super-hot!
-A Jason-Mama Voorhees team-up would have ROCKED!!!

The first 2 Fridays were a ton of fun. The effects were pretty amazing, the women were attractive, the suspense was pretty decent...this one gets 4 out of 5 killer tres from me. Next week, one of the The Fear movies, depending on how long it takes Netflix to send a replacement disc out.(I was going to do The Fear this weekend, but the DVD seemed faulty, as there was no volume after the menu screen and corporate logo crap. Anyway, we'll see what happens...see ya next week! Oh, and it may be awhile before I get to do Friday 3, as Netflix removed them from the Instant menu. Dagnabbit!