Madman

(1982) *1/2

This crappy little Friday the 13th knockoff was on IFC a few weeks ago, so I DVR'd it for just such a day as today (rainy, cold, Ian sleeping well, plenty of stuff to procrastinate from). It's in the same vein as The Burning, which I already reviewed, though this one was way less entertaining.

The flick starts off at a camp fire where one of the counselors, TP, is singing a really embarrassing song that is supposed to be scary. In case you forget his initials, he has an awesome belt buckle with them in big lettering, and it'll come in handy later in TP's death scene, the best in the movie for my money. Anyway, the camp director follows TP's "scary" song with a ghost story about a mad farmer who killed his family, was hung by townsfolk, but then disappeared. As fate would have it, the campfire is literally a stone's throw from the old farmhouse. We know this because one of the campers stands up and throws a stone through an old window, while taunting the mad farmer to come and get them. Good idea, Ritchie.



The rest of the movie takes place that night, as Madman Marz follows them back to camp and kills all the counselors.

This is definitely one that falls into the so-bad-it's-good range. The acting is truly horrible, and you can't expect much else given the cliche-filled wooden script. There's one hysterical scene: the obligatory naked hot tub scene (the nudity is minimal, though, alas) in which some cheesy folksy/slow jammy song plays in the background as the couple circle each other. And then they circle again. And again. Then they each throw in some spins while continuing to circle. Oh, and it's all in slow mo, and soft candle lighting. It's excruciatingly long, too. It's almost like some kind of metaphoric sex scene, with no sex. Weirdly prudish, actually.

There's a couple other unintentionally funny scenes like that (four of the counselors lying on the ground with their heads lined up next to each talking philosophically is a good one), and the director does use the woods to some atmospheric advantage at times, but overall this is cut and paste mimicry of better slasher flicks.

The one death I liked was TP, who gets hanged by Marz. But he is able to pull himself up and get his hands on the tree limb, so he's gonna be ok. But then he looks down and sees the killer below him, and we get a closeup of the huge "TP!" belt buckle as the guy reaches up and gives it a hard yank.