Okay. So I bought this tape as one of five for $20 from a local store. $4; still got ripped off. However. I can’t complain too much because I knew EXACTLY what I was getting into. How could I not? Sometimes my trash movie love is a sickness, I freely admit, and it makes me do things I wouldn’t normally, like…
…buy a gay horror movie.
Now. Let me quickly clarify that statement. I genuinely did not KNOW this was going to be a gay horror movie. I was just alerted to the fact when, after the first ten minutes of the movie was over and every prettyboy male character had had the camera lovingly caress every inch of their nearly naked, oiled bodies (under the guise that this is a flickershow about a swim team, y’see, so OF COURSE they would always be unclothed, or showering), I put two and two together and my straight eye for the queer guy alarm went off. After the ‘movie’ (in the loosest sense of the word) finished I did a brief bit of net research and found that, yes indeed, David DeCoteau (whom, oddly, I actually met at a party in LA around 16 years ago, and who never tried to come onto me – no taste in hetero Celtic roundeye, m’man!) is of the homo persuasion. No skin off my nose – I’m not homophobic, it’s just that he couldn’t persuade me he could ever make a good film if he tried. And as I watched this hogwash, the long-buried memory of watching another celluloid car crash he made, “The Imp” (also known by the far classier, much more Troma-like title “Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama”), started to howl horribly at me from an unquiet grave, and I wept openly at the state that modern humanity has come to when it will make shite like this. But, yes, I only have myself to blame.
What about the film’s ‘plot’, I hear you ask? Do you truly care? Oh well, if you insist…
Okay. So. What was one of the fundamental ground rules that your parents laid down for you in life to make sure you got through it relatively unscathed? I know one of mine was ‘never let leeches feed on steroid-bloated blood or they will become large killer invertebrates and feed on beefcake male models-cum-‘actors’’. You know what I mean? Of course you do. Just nod and smile and try not to make any sudden movements as you head for that exit. Apparently, however, the characters in this movie never learned this important aphorism. Then again, if they did, there wouldn’t have been a movie to watch, so…
…anyway. Lakecrest College, home of catalog models of both sexes, is having a swim meet and is anxious to win. To this end some of the jocks pump themselves full of steroids and find their aquatic speedo performances vastly enhanced. Unfortunately, there is a side-effect to their drug abuse, and one that anybody could have foreseen: leeches in a nearby watering hole they swim in suck on their bronzed-body blood (always hanging from their backs for some reason) and, metabolisms mutated by the drug, go on a killing spree. They grow to poor-hand-puppet size and attack various oiled-and-shirtless jocks, with FX ranging from bad to pitiful; hell, these gays – sorry, guys – couldn’t even get FX that look any better than the ones that Joe Blasco was doing in “Shivers” in 1975. Or, s**t, even the ones in JP Simon’s 1988 shitty slimeathon “Slugs”. Every ‘horrifying’ attack is overlaid with a nails-on-slate sub-Ministry, sub-Megadeth, sub-normal metal soundtrack. You too will find yourself air-guitaring along to ‘Leech Apocalypse Now Boogie’ every time, bet yer a*s!
One extremely (un)entertaining aspect of the film is the endless eye grinder slomo shots of, well, everything from guys being attacked (and the schlurping sloppy slapping sounds you hear on the soundtrack aren’t killer leeches – they’re the director pulling his pud to the male bimbos he’s fetishizing onscreen) to shots of snailtrails for 30 seconds. Grate stuff indeed; was this to pad out the anorexic running time? There is NO female nudity WHATSOEVER, and in one scene, where a male model is tied to a bed clad only in shorts, I half-expected to see his blonde beard ‘girlfriend’ replaced by the director in a blonde wig and a depraved smile as (s)he fondled his bed-bound form. One scene was extremely Freudian-telling in the old homo stakes: a swimmer was going to have sex with his girlfriend and she started laughing at him, telling him he had no c**k, cos the steroids had shrunk it, and he started screaming in terror before waking up bathed in sweat. Hmmm. Obvious overt pop psychology interpretation, if you ask me…
Okay, so I’m giving the film more thought than the director or three writers gave it. That wouldn’t be difficult. The thing limps along, gathering yawns and leeches that just get larger and larger (including one that sets itself up as a terrifying boneless black hammock in a boiler room, shedding skin and bursting out in yellow balloons as it does so – the filmmaker seemingly forgets it’s even there and its metamorphosis is never seen – maybe it woulda cost too much to stage full-scale), and laughs involving a crazed, super-wooden-acting coach who kills people because he doesn’t want his precious athletes drug-tested. After an underwater leech-wrestling scene to rival the slug-versus-hamster spectacle in the aforementioned “Slugs”, the hapless mutated sock puppets are fried in a pool. Only to have their return guaranteed for a nonexistent sequel by the college ‘geek’ (another male model wearing glasses to differentiate him from the rest of the twinks) who is going to take over the earth using some of their slime and a Nietzsche-like will to power(less).
Yeefuckinghar.
Having written way more than this film deserves, I realize something about myself: I have a mean streak in me. Ripping this thing apart is like kicking a cripple or mocking the afflicted or making Parasite Hilton try spelling a polysyllabic word; it’s a cheap, easy shot. But it’s an entertaining enough way to while away a few minutes. Which is more than can be said for this worthless pish. DeCoteau, thank you for another 80-odd minutes of my life I will never get back. But I deserve it; I did it to myself, so I can’t complain too much.
I need f*****g therapy.
