Danny Zigwitz is that kid. There was one at every summer camp. If you all went swimming, he’d get an ear infection and nobody could go swimming anymore. If you all went hiking, he’d get poison ivy and nobody could go hiking anymore. If you all went behind the outhouse to m********e he’d get stung by a bee on the penis and nobody could m********e there anymore. Danny’s such a buzzkill that even the camp counselor hates his guts, especially since the kid keeps interrupting the super awesome song about “Stumpy Sam (The one-armed ghost of Beaver Dam)” that he’s trying to sing.
Who is Stumpy Sam? Why, only the rock-and-rollingest, deformed maniac prowling the woods this side of Crystal Lake! Sure he’s missing an arm but he makes up for it by swinging around a machete with his good hand.
The Legend of Beaver Dam is what you’d get if you threw Meatloaf, Kiss, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Fangoria Magazine and Friday the 13th into a blender and hit puree. Its 12 minutes of gory musical mayhem wrapped around one helluva catchy tune that sounds like it ought to be a 1970’s classic metal anthem, even though it isn’t.
This isn’t so much a short film as an amazingly good long-form music video like they used to do in the eighties. You know, before they all devolved into blaxploitation soft core porn remakes of old “Fame” dance numbers.
I give this an A for Awesomeness. I mean, what more can be said? It’s fun. It’s silly. It’s well done. It never outstays its welcome, and you feel goofy happy to have watched it afterwards. I give it four stars simply because it would feel wrong to give it a perfect five stars score, but at the same time it almost feels wrong not to.
