What can I say, everybody? This is bad. Not bad like Michael Jackson’s “Bad.” Not BAD A*S! No. This is bad like “Oh, lordy please come and smack me over the head with a steel, blunt object so I don’t have to endure this jackassery anymore.” Yes. That kinda bad.
S**t! I was revved to check this one out as the back of the screener case describes what is the formula for a perfect 80’s type slasher film. Basically, a deformed guy gets his a*s beaten and killed by a bunch of meanies in school. One of the big problems here is that the make-up effects department did a bit too good of a job making this guy look like a freak. Our victim doesn’t look like Rocky Dennis, but rather one of the creatures from TV Mikel’s “Astro Zombies!” Right from the get go, I was siding with these kids to put this beast out of its misery. And they do…
Shitty! So ten years later, the freak, once thought dead, is on the rampage, looking like a big fat bum with a potato sack on his head, hunting down his would-be killers and doing away with them. Well, a couple of them. The survivors get to spend the rest of the film engaging in a suspenseful (yeah right) whodunit. Actually, in this film you get more Scooby Doo detective bullshit than blatant, gory murders. Wow, these people were actually trying to make a really serious film here. I would be sympathetic, but I was the one who had to sit through the results.
S**t, S**t! Seriously, this has got to be one of the most boring slasher films ever made. And what’s even shittier is that the filmmakers had a clear shot at having an original basis for their creature. You see, the real creature got stoned and killed by a bunch of a*****e kids at film’s start. Okay, whatever. But ten years later, we’re shown one of the kids, now a voluptuous woman, making love to her boyfriend on a…stovetop. Okay, boys and girls…or rather…ladies and gentlemen, we all know that having sex on a stovetop is like wearing Bad Idea Jeans. But, seeing that this is a supposed horror film, wouldn’t it have been great if the creature had been born from one of these lovers being burnt to a near crisp due to some stovetop coitus? It’s no brilliance. I’m just trying to sift through the wreckage.
The only positive aspect that can be yanked free from this wreck is that it makes a perfect case for talent behind the cameras of other “good” slasher films. People may disregard slasher movies as a complete waste of film, made by anybody who can pick up a camera. But after seeing “The Bagman,” you’ll see films like “Sleepaway Camp,” “Slumber Party Massacre” and “The Burning” as pure works of genius.
