 |
"A trio of vacationers has their trip to a remote island ruined by a gang of
psycho campers. There's no escape and soon the three city dwellers have to face
off against the maniacs for survival." 1999, 81 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
I know there's a large percentage of you out there (dare I say all?) that go to
the local video store and linger over all the ratty horror movies they've had
since they opened in 1986. You think to yourself, that surely there must be
more to slasher life than renting that faded copy of Sleepaway Camp II. There has to be something new and fresh in the hack'em and rack'em film
genre. Well, luckily, just as we are tricking the Chinese into getting hooked
on cigarettes, we have also tricked them into making pointless stalk and kill
movies, featuring groups of young dolts that are exactly like their western
counterparts with the exception that instead of listening to their inane
prattling throughout the movie, you have to read it (strike one!). The best part is that this comes with embedded subtitles
that can't be turned off. Not really a problem except that you get both
English subtitles and Chinese subtitles one above the other. Oh well, at least
I know how to say, "run, before the leprous man kills you!" in a foreign
language. I'm actually
being quite charitable as many of the sentences you'll read, are a little, ah,
disjointed. It doesn't really detract from the story though, because I think
I'm smart enough to follow what's going on: um, there's an island with some
people camping on it and they get killed by a dude with a chainsaw. We have
six main characters here, three guys and three girls. They are all going on a
camping trip to a deserted island (except for the chainsaw wielding maniac,
his equally psycho wife and 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 far eastern
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 get to see this dude wrapped in
rags like he was Darkman, 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, so
what more is there to know about a person? Before the movie really gets into
the business of slashing folks, we have to get to know the characters and we do
that in a five or ten minute sequence where we learn that Soldier is trying to
save money up to marry BeBe (or was that Professor trying get money to marry
Linda?). We also learn that Ken will be (along with his girlfriend)
surviving the encounter, because he has this long brown hair with blonde
streaks and he is some type of track star. In a moment that just screams "plot
point!" in large glowing letters, his girlfriend gives him a pair of something
they call "nail shoes." I got a look at them and they were these shoes with
cleats in them. In the running biz, we call them "spikes." Now I've run in
spikes on cinder tracks and asphalt tracks. Sometimes conditions call for long
spikes, sometimes shorter spikes, but no matter what, these spikes were always
these little metal thingamabobs. These things that Ken is wearing looked to be
like
something closer to football cleats. Ken's pretty concerned with beating
Johnny in the championship race (What is this? Some type of Afterschool
Special?) so he 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, so
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, the audience that with those cleats on, that our 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.  As previously mentioned, this "deserted island" is teeming with potential
victims and we and our group of six pals meet up with another group later that
day. There's a guy named Boar, one named Pervert, one named Hwan or something,
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, but I didn't
know what they were talking about. Boar is holding a condom and says he's a
salesman or that they are all condom salesman or something and there is almost
a fight, but Ken, realizing that it probably makes as much sense to fight
condom salesman as it did for Billy Martin to fight that marshmallow salesman,
gets things under control and the rubber guys depart. Pervert and Skinny
Dude are then 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. She
seemed to readily agree to that. Well, 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 (see you at the rally!).
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 arse 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.
Nut's dad is the chainsaw guy and he is very angry that someone would treat the
dental-impaired like that. Apparently this guy is a leper, because he has
his head and arms all covered in grody 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. We also get to see him looking at
pictures of his family (wife and son) before he got leprosy, his kid went
retarded, got burnt up, and peed on, and who knows what happened to the little
woman. Dad fires up the chainsaw and goes hunting. First he nabs Pervert. He
ties him up and we see that Hwan (I'd forgotten all about that dude) has been
sliced completely in half. Dad arrives and takes a pick to Pervert's feet then
chainsaws him up something good. He pleads with Nuts to save him (uh, remember
the whole urine and fire thing? I'm pretty busy getting exfoliated here.
Sorry.). Later we see Boar trying to get jiggy with his girlfriend, but Dad
shows up and kidnaps both of them, bringing them back to his secret lair.
There he
has the woman tied up and is trying to use her to get Nuts laid, but I think
Nuts had performance anxiety or something (Come on Dad! Not so much pressure!)
so Boar, living down to his name, volunteers to help Nuts out. His girlfriend
is plainly irritated by this, but she's gagged so what are you going to do? He
tries to get Nuts excited (no you don't want to know, but at least things were
only suggested and not shown), but it still isn't happening. Girlfriend
breaks free and rejects Nuts again, so she gets chainsawed and eventually that
dog Boar gets it, too. Meanwhile back at camp, Skinny Dude shows up,
complaining that Pervert was hauled away by something and his boss (Boar)
doesn't believe it. Skinny Dude then leaves to go into the woods to retrieve
his phone that he dropped there and is killed by Dad. Later, Soldier's
girlfriend gets herself kidnapped and our group finally springs into action.
This is what they do: Ken gives Soldier his knife and tells him to go bring
her back. What follows is a protracted fight scene between Dad and Soldier.
Soldier's punches have no effect on Dad and Dad kicks him around like he was
Godzilla stomping Angurius. Soldier is killed. Soldier's girlfriend is
beheaded and now there are only four people left. At this point your question
is probably: "I've seen plenty of slasher movies. At some point do the
remaining four, even though they know there is a raving loon on the loose
nearby ever split up while they are in the dark woods?" I'm glad you asked
that because as a matter of fact Professor and his girlfriend manage to have a
domestic disturbance while they're walking through the woods looking for
Soldier and BeBe. She gets mouthy, he slaps her and she runs off with Winnie
in hot pursuit. Ken stays behind to scold Professor for abusing his woman
(see, this movie has a positive social message!). As you've probably surmised
from what's already gone on in this movie, Winnie and Linda get taken prisoner
by Dad who apparently thinks that Nuts might be more motivated in the bedroom
if there was a menage-a trois going down (so to speak). Ken and Professor go
off to rescue them.  Most of the movie was derivative, but I did give a little credit toward the end
when Ken and Professor stopped playing the dumb victim role and took a
proactive approach to getting their women back. In a move that turned the
tables on that chainsaw freak, Professor grabbed Nuts, put a knife to his
throat and threatened to kill Nuts unless the women were freed. Professor
takes Nuts out of the hut with him and as they back up, they trip one of those
mantraps with spikes that impale you like in all those temples Indian Jones
vandalizes. Nuts and Professor get spiked and Dad is understandably upset. He
checks on his kid as Linda, Winnie, and Ken make their get away. They get back
toward where the camp was and quickly devise a plan to capture Dad that's right
out of Scooby-Doo (it involves a big bag or rocks hanging from a rope that's
been slung over a tree). They also rig up their own mantrap and they slick the
ground near the cliff with a bunch of vegetable oil that BeBe brought on
accident (That crazy BeBe! What was she thinking?). They use a radio to lure
Dad to their location and he notices the bag of rocks and sidesteps them only
to get yanked up by the ankle by some rope that eventually slams him into a
tree with a bunch of spikes. Everyone thinks it's over but then Linda gets
chainsawed by someone and we see that Dad's wife is quite the grieving widow
and has shown up with her own chainsaw. This leads to a big race between track
star Ken and a small woman wielding a large chainsaw. Somehow she keeps up
with him (Johnny, you've got nothing to worry about in that championship
race!), but Ken is able to stop at the edge of the cliff because of his "nail
shoes" while Mom careens wildly off the cliff to her demise. Other than the
fact that this is a product of Hong Kong, this 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 (Boar, Soldier, Pervert, etc.) 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. Most of the violence takes place off camera, which isn't a wise
move when you're 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, cause you ain't ever going 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 (they peed on him
and set him on fire?) then have at it.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
|
|
