Found this a little while ago, digging deep in the pay-per-view stuff. It only caught my eye because former
Rule 5 beauty
Kerri Taylor is in it. I'm thinking it might be a hoot, so I gave it a look.
Now this isn't a "bad" movie, but it is a straight to video release (I think), so I'm expecting some low budget stuff, plus copious gore and gratuitous nudity. I got two out of three, sadly not the one thing I was looking forward to :-(
Anyway, the film starts out -- lonely road, late at night, girl driving alone talking on her cell. Naturally her phone loses reception just as she arrives at a gas station where she hopes to get directions. She climbs out of the car wearing jeans shorts and a bikini top ('cause what else would a comely girl wear whilst driving late at night?). The station is all lit up, door's open, phone inside works (I'll come back to all that later). There's one of those old school cold cases chugging away in a separate room, the gal checks and it's full of ice. Hmmm . . .
She calls her friend on the station's phone and returns outside. When she tries to leave, her car won't move despite her gunning the engine. She gets out and finds a chain tying her to something. While looking under the car, she/we see feet running towards the car, someone jumps on top and when she looks up, hits her in the head with an axe. The killer carries her body inside, lifts the lid of the cold case and drops her on the ice. Ta Da!
I should point out here, that the killer looks to be just a really big guy, wearing overalls with the name Moe on them. He's got the de rigueure look of stringy wet hair, big maniacal eyes and insane grin . . . basically your typical WWE wrestler.
So anyway, we switch to generic college campus, thence into a dorm room where we meet virginal heroine girl. She's a soccer star at the school who receives letters from Division 1 schools like University of North Carol and the University of Lorida. Nope, not typos, they whited out the letters, I assume, to avoid problems with the schools. This is where, were I making this movie, I would apply P.T. Barnum's axiom about no such thing as bad publicity. Let them sue, think of all the extra eyes that would have driven to your little flick. Just sayin'
Our girl's roommate comes out modeling a bikini and asking if it makes her boobs look great. Answer = no. She's picked one out for heroine girl, since she's too shy to wear a bikini in public. It's from Ujena. I know that because Ujena gets name dropped about 5 times in the scene, so I'm assuming serious but unsubtle product placement here. Also, judging from the bikinis in this movie, I think Ujena must have dipped into their "this sh*t ain't sellin'" bin because with only a few exceptions, these are some pretty bland bikinis in this movie.
But the gals are having a car wash to fund the soccer team. Because college teams are always doing that, right? Yeah. We next meet cliche nerdy guy and his sort of hunky friend. Nerdy guy has the impossible crush on the team leader and hopes he'll get lucky by organizing the car wash and he needs hunky guy to drive the bus because he's the only guy on campus with a chauffeur's license. We meet the team leader, one of three mean girls type, one of which is my girl Kerri. We know they're bitchy because they are drinking martinis during school hours. Plus Kerri says "f*ck" so we know she's a bad girl.
Well, off we go to the car wash. Naturally the bus breaks down. You know where it's gonna break down. Virgin girl and her roommate get there via roommate boyfriend's car (crapped out Firebird, I guess no money for decent cars in the budget). Hunky guy is a mechanic, so he thinks he can fix the bus using all the parts in the gas station. They decide to have the car wash there . . . on this lonely road in the woods. ?!?! But they hook up the hoses and they're off and washing. Probably the most unsexy car wash I've ever seen in the movies. Cameron Diaz' over the top action in Bad Teacher was hotter than this and her movie was rated PG-13.
We also get some random couple who speak French walking up looking for gas and another cliche -- the town crazy old man who drives a truck he's named "Betsy" (of course, because all old crazy guys name their cars Betsy) who warns virgin girl and her roommate about the "abandoned" station and missing cars and so on.
But hold the phone . . . the station's abandoned? So why does the phone work? Why are the lights on at night? Why is the door unlocked? Why is there gas in a working gas pump outside? Why is the water still turned on? Inquiring minds want to know.
We also get the only nudity in the movie as Kerri takes some highly desirable young man around back for the full service *wink, wink* wash. We know he's hot because he's driving a hot car -- Chrysler PT Cruiser convertable! Aww yeah, baby! Total chick magnet, that sweet ride! The sex scene is sort of humorous, at least I'm pretty sure it was meant to be, but you at least get a glimpse or two of Kerri topless as she gives this guy an energetic f*cking he won't soon forget.
The killings start soon after. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to them, just a big guy clubbing or pounding or stabbing the gals to death. Lots of blood splatter, gore thrown at walls, nothing really too cringe worthy. And an endless supply of ice and cold cases to store the corpses in. And no explanation of that either.
The killer is the usual indestructible guy. He gets knee-capped with a tire iron, stabbed in the neck, ice pick in the eye and keeps on going like the energizer bunny. He has a collection of the blood splattered bikini tops off the girls he's killed in the movie hanging on a clothesline. A fetish? We'll never know.
The end sequences have so little logic to them, I'm assuming the guy who wrote the movie (Geoff Klein, who also directed it) had all the images/scenes in mind and no idea how to get them to run together logically so he just lined them up and figured movie goers wouldn't really care.
There's a few scenes in a house behind the station that crack me up. There's something about the scale of the house that looks wrong immediately from the outside. Once inside, you notice that the actors are ducking their heads to get through doorways. In the kitchen, hunky guy's head is almost level with the top of the cabinets. WTF?! You can hear when they walk, it sounds like they're on platforms or something. Can't imagine what that was about, but it sure is odd.
In the end, virginal heroine escapes, we think the killer is himself killed, but no, a final sequence shows he's still alive. After he's been shot twice. Uh huh. Whatever.
Ads for this flick talk about "A new slasher classic" and a brilliant mix of Friday the 13th and Urban Legend but in those films, you at least understood the motives or history of the monster so you could grasp why he was killing. We don't get that here. And the killings aren't inventive or shocking ala Final Destination or something, just brutal bludgeonings.
Look, here's my thing -- like I said earlier, this isn't a bad movie, it's just not an above average movie. It looks clean -- nice cinematography, there's some decent, imaginative framing to some of the shots, but so much of it just jumps the shark of logic and reason, it's just *sigh* worthy. And not nearly enough skin to make me forget about the film's faults. At least distract me a little, dude :-)
Plus, I should also mention that the girl on the poster above is virginal heroine girl. And believe me, she is nowhere near that cleavagey or nipular in the movie. Talk about false advertising :-(
But don't despair, here's some real truth in advertising for ya . . . enjoy this little gallery of Kerri Taylor hotness I've assembled below:
Did you find this review helpful? Check out my other reviews for my thoughts on the flicks and the occasional gallery of hotness that accompanies them:
