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| Magna Pacific (Australia). Region 4, PAL. 4:3. English DD 2.0. 83 minutes |
| The Movie |
| Cover Art |
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| Credits |
Director: Ruggero
Deodato
Starring: Bruce Penhall,
Mimsy Farmer, David Hess, Charles Napier
Screenplay: Alessandro
Capone (also story), Luca D'Alisera, Sheila Goldberg,
Dardano Sacchetti (as David Parker Jr.)
Music: Claudio Simonetti
Country: Italy
Tagline: The woods are
alive with the sound of screaming
AKA: Camping del Terrore;
The Eleventh Commandment |
The woods are alive with the sound of screaming.
Apparently… and the audience is alive with
the sound of snoring. I remember seeing Body
Count back at the time of its release,
and quite enjoying it, thus I volunteered to review
it. Problem is, as one gets older, tastes change,
perhaps become more sophisticated… Ruggero
Deodato, Cannibal Holocaust. 'nuff
said, or so it should be – however, behind
that landmark picture, there's a much greater
oeuvre from this Italian helmer, a varied and mostly
inept cannon, and the more one sees, the more it
undermines his shot at being a legend of genre cinema.
Not that most of the unadulterated garbage he's
excreted before and after his career highlight will
ever see the light of a projector. By the late 80's,
the stalk 'n' slash 'n'
dash was already passé – the boom dying
on its feet as audiences tired of the same old formulaic
repetition, and whilst highlights of the form such
as Maniac, Friday the 13th delivered in spades, and sometimes gave the added
value of more than just special effects to consider,
most merely offered moronic teenagers killed in
unimaginative ways, often in the creepy woods. Which
brings us nicely to Camping del Terrore,
aka Body Count.
Story opens with a brat named Ben witnessing
the murder of a boy and his girlfriend in woods
near Colorado, close to the disused camp ground
where Ben and his parents live. Seems an old Indian
shaman is wandering aimlessly about the woods,
livening up his generally sour mood with the occasional
shish-kebabbing of unwary interlopers. Years later,
Benny returns as a grown up looking like Clark
Kent and behaving like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre's
hitch-hiker… subtle, eh? Anyhow, Benjamin
grabs a ride with the most ridiculous, pathetic
collection of 30-year-old teenagers I've
ever seen in a movie, and when they all roll up
home, genius seems surprised when mom and pop
(Ms. Farmer and Hess) don't seem very happy about
junior's new friends. Hell, I'm with
mom and pop on this one! Seems there are issues,
Benny's mom is having an affair with the
local Sheriff (Charles Napier) and pop's
about as much fun to be around as a Kodiak bear
with a hangover, and before you can say clichéd
plot the body count begins again. For what it's
worth, I was solidly behind the killer –
the best thing for this mob of annoying teenagers
is death. Is it the shaman? Is it hell? Anyone
with a brain will have figured it out inside 5-minutes.
Camping del terrore is dire,
there's cheesy, there's bad, there's
dismal… and then there's this. Watching
this mixed cast of American and Italian actors
and actresses go through their clichéd
paces is akin to having teeth pulled. Deodato's
painfully obvious attempt to make a commercial
movie aimed at the US market has all the subtlety
of a sledgehammer to the groin and all the skill
of a 3-year-old brain surgeon, in short, dreadful.
The dubbing is atrocious - often funny (one of
the few elements that lift the tedium), the script
is witless, the acting clueless, Deodato's direction
strictly by numbers and the whole thing looks
like it's been shot through an expresso
coffee. I've taken clearer pictures at the
bottom of the ocean than the cameraman manages
here, the not-so-special effects are distinctly
questionable, the score is soporific and the supposedly
Colorado setting looks like anything but. Pathetic. |
| Video |
| The disc from Magna Pacific is an atrocious affair.
Clearly taken from an old videocassette master,
the full screen is abysmal, shot through with grain,
plagued by speckling and shows some evidence of
print damage - the image is as far from being immaculate
as you could imagine, and is a disgrace to the DVD
format. |
| Audio |
| The audio presents the listener with a thin, somewhat
indistinct 2.0 mono aural track, and is eminently
forgettable. |
| Extra Features |
| Magna Pacific have really gone to town in the
supplementals department - they give us scene selection.
Wow. |
| The Verdict |
Verdict? Send the movie down for 3-5 for insulting
the viewer's intelligence and patience, and
send Magna Pacific to the electric chair for releasing
such a dire disc.
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