Six people are on a camping trip on a deserted island. Deserted except for the chainsaw wielding maniac, his equally psycho wife, their retarded son, and three or four condom salesmen!
The three guys are named Professor (he carries around a video camera), Soldier (he carries around a big knife), and Ken (all Asian movies are required to feature a character with some form of the name Ken – usually Kenny).
The three girls are named Linda (Professor’s girlfriend), BeBe (Soldier’s girlfriend) and Winnie (Ken’s girlfriend).
Now that you know the main characters, we can set about killing them off. But first Soldier takes everyone’s cell phones and hides them for some murky and ultimately stupid reason, thus assuring the killer free reign until the boat home arrives in the morning.
We know there’s going to be problems even before Soldier and his pals show up because at the very beginning of the movie we see a man wrapped in rags chasing a couple of kids down and chainsawing them into ground chuck. We never learn anything about the killer (including his name), but he loves his family and chainsaws anyone that he comes across. And really, what more is there to know about a person?
Ken’s a track star and he’s pretty concerned with beating Johnny in the championship race and in a moment that just screams “plot point!” in large glowing letters, Ken’s girlfriend gives him a pair of something they call “nail shoes” which look to be football cleats.
Ken knows his girlfriend loves him and pays her back by giving her a kiss and trying to get into her deserted island cutoffs. Being the good girl who goes off with her boyfriend to a deserted island, she says no.
Ken does what anyone would do and runs off in the direction of the cliff that is handily nearby. This rather melodramatic display of sexual frustration only serves to show us that with those cleats on, that Ken can stop on a dime, thus ensuring that at the end of the movie, he will again be stopping at the edge of the cliff and someone (probably with a chainsaw and an anger management problem and without cleats) will go pell-mell off the cliff.
Did I mention what type of shoes these were? Lotto. Been a long ass time since I heard anything out of those shoes. The only thing about Lottos I remember is that you could change the color of the logo on the shoe because they came with these Velcro patches. It was pretty much up there on the cool-o-meter with the Michael Jackson endorsed L.A. Gear shoe.
But what about our condom salesmen? There’s guys named Boar, Pervert, Hwan, Boar’s girlfriend, and a skinny dude with long hair that I never caught the handle for. I read somewhere that this movie had some sexual humor cut out in between its theatrical and home video release, so maybe all the interaction between Boar, Pervert, and Skinny Dude made sense when they filmed it.
Pervert and Skinny Dude are played for laughs (kind of the slasher equivalent of R2D2 and C3P0) and blather on about telling porno stories and Boar tells them that his girlfriend will tell them porno stories once he’s done screwing her.
Pervert and Skinny Dude have to take a leak so they go out and do that, while standing right next to each other (this leads to all the usual “size” jokes) and somehow or other this retarded guy shows up and tries to help them out, if you catch my meaning!
This leads first to the retard getting peed on (whoops!), then somehow he gets set on fire (uh-oh!). All the while this retarded guy (who really plays it up with an extreme close up of his rotted, crooked teeth!) is shouting “tattoo! tattoo!” presumably admiring the tattoo that Pervert has on his arm.
Now I guess you could say that Pervert and Skinny Dude were a couple of guys so hardened in their dislike for retards that they wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire, because they haul ass out of there, leaving the retard (and Pervert later called him, “Nuts” so that’s what we’ll call him from here on out) to smolder in the weeds.
Nuts goes back to his house and screams as his dad checks out his burned arm. Nuts’ dad is the chainsaw guy and he is really pissed. Apparently this guy is a leper, because he has his head and arms all covered in nasty rags and because the other characters refer to him as “leprous.”
He’s not much of a talker and just howls in rage when he sees what they’ve done to his boy. Dad fires up the chainsaw and goes hunting. He also tries to get Nuts laid! I wish he was my dad!
Other than the fact that this is a product of Hong Kong, The Deadly Camp is a fairly typical slasher movie, and while not the worst one you’ve ever seen, it’s nowhere near what you’d call “good.” There’s really no explanation for the why the killer is what he is and the fact that he has a weirdo retarded son and an equally psychotic wife seems a bit much. There’s not any kind of story except the old “people run around and get killed for no reason” plot we’ve come to expect from such efforts.
The characters are complete unknowns to us so their deaths don’t affect us in any discernible way. The fact that their names serve to define them is a clear indication of the lack of effort in developing anything remotely resembling interesting people.
You can’t even praise this for its gore. There isn’t much to speak off since most of the violence takes place off camera, which isn’t a wise move when the entire movie is being sold on its brutality. Still, it chugs along with an 80 minute running time and about ten or so kills.
I wouldn’t advise spending much money on this one since you aren’t ever likely to watch it again, but if you want a new slasher movie that goes through most of the motions and resembles a hundred other flicks of the same type, but with Asian actors, leper killers, and questionable treatment of retards then go ahead and strap on your Lottos and have at it!
© 2011 MonsterHunter
