Ah, the slasher movie. Bastion of convention! Haven of gratuitous titty shots! Home of more clichés than the Republican National Committee! And finally, that venerable and ultimately tired subgenre gets a parody that they deserve (and didn’t, for once, come from a Wayans) in “Camp Blood: The Musical”.
So what we have here plotwise is six clichés at summer camp. A total nerd hellbent on bughunting. A jock too stupid to live. A rocker burnout with more drugs on his person than Keith Moon. A goth girl who lives her role to the hilt. A stuck-up slutty prep who’s been ridden more times than Secretariat. A good girl who’s entirely too virtuous for her own good. And they’re all spending the summer together as counselors at the unlikely, but as it turns out, perfectly reasonably named Camp Blood.
And most of them are probably going to be dead by the end of the summer.
But you can tell, the folks involved with “Camp Blood: The Musical” pretty much superglued their tongues in their cheeks for this one. Check out the frivolity a minute and thirteen seconds in as someone throws a ball of fur in from off camera, and the camp staffer involved (who can’t actually deliver this line with a straight face) says: “Jesus, Mr. Cuddles! You scared the crap out of me! F*****g cat.”
Before getting stabbed.
And that’s only the start. By the time the Camp Blood (named for staunch conservationist Sir Walter Blood)’s counselors start their first musical number, you know you’re in for a real doozy of a movie. It’s going to get a whole lot funnier than this.
For example, at five minutes and thirty seconds, where the crusty old van driver explains, lyrically, how the beat-up old van is currently running, but by tomorrow, somehow, it won’t start at ALL. This is a slasher movie convention as old as slasher movies, and I love that they managed to incorporate it into their song.
Although, in a comparative rarity for low-budget slasher movies, the death scenes are actually passable. By passable, I mean they don’t look low-budget, and are halfway convincing.
And my God, the skinny dipping number! It’s a laugh riot! Not only that, they’re so canny about it, describing lyrically why topless scenes show up in slasher flicks so often to begin with. The killer’s song is no less hysterical.
However, there are a couple fairly small missteps—for instance, the scene at nineteen minutes twenty eight seconds. Someone left the camera on in this scene just a little too long after the goth chick was “killed”—she’s shown, on camera, starting to get up after she dies. And the van’s windshield wipers sure seem to work at the twenty six minute fifty one second mark—odd for a van that won’t start. None of these small foibles will get in the way of enjoying the movie, but they are there.
There can be no doubt that the folks behind “Camp Blood: The Musical” are inveterate slasher movie fans on a mission to lampoon whatever they can get their hands on. And the result is a scream in more ways than one.
