Hey there guys and dolls. I bet you thought we were done for the week of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Sequels and well you were wrong. I rooted through this cinema diaper pail of evil and pulled this festering ball of stink out just for you. Um was that too descriptive? Yeah that was vicious and I will tone it down. Anyway this particular masterpiece is the continuation of previous works...with lesser dialogue...a minuscule budget...possibly even a clown. Okay it is more Camp Blood. I know, I know. It's like the Godfather of horror films. You think you are finally done with it and then it pulls you back. This is Camp Blood 5.
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| All-night kegger, right? Oh, gonna kill a guy. k. |
Back in the hands of Dustin Ferguson
(Doll Killer, Die Sister, Die!, Gloved Murderess, Cheerleader
Camp: To the Death and Invitation to Die) we continue the
saga of Raven (Schuylar Craig of Blood Claws, Camp Blood 4,
Blood Model and The Amityville Legacy) as it appears to be
three months after the massacre of her friends, the cops have found
neither hide nor hair of them and are starting to wonder if these
folks were ever even real... nah I was kidding on that last part.
Raven with the help of her friends Jenn(Jennifer Mill of Camp
Blood 5) and Kerrie (Kerrie Waybright Smith of Shivers
Down Your Spine: A Christmas Horror Story, Remission, Invitation to
Die and Camp Blood 5) are attempting to piece the events
together and track down our dastardly clown and cram vengeance up his
noise hole.
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| So yeah margaritas sound great. Cya at 7. |
Now you get the vibe that these films 4 and 5 were shot
back to back and I would guess offhand there was a limited time and
budget to contend with but that being said, I have seen larger scaled
films with their "A" list drag butt for continuity or
re-shoot after re-shoot and while this is a smaller film, it isn't bad.
Yes the dialogue is not genius but find
me a slasher film that made people so realistic aside from Tobe
Hooper's original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. My only real
critique is exposure needs work and have some portable floodlights
for night shoots. Also cheapy focusing lamp lanterns are about $20
and you can hang them wherever you need to and keep them out of
frame. Boom.
No this is not Ferguson's showpiece
but I think he is getting his sea legs for horror and it is evolving.
He is on his way. Might want to consider story boards for gore
gags and possibly a co-writer to collaborate with but all in all, not
a bad start.
Okay the genius behind these flicks is
picking up from Blood Slaughter and not the original three so aside
from a clown mask and blades, nothing else including location. Shot
in Lincoln Nebraska primarily on a shoestring budget the effects for
both Camp Blood 4 and 5 was through Wetworks SFX in
Omaha rigging prosthetic latex, blood gore gags and splatter effects
as well as prop blades. So go local biz!!!
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| Guess where this is going, clown boy! |
Sadly no mention as to how amazing the Clown was.
ReplyDeleteFor me Doug, the clown was the glue that held the film together but yeah pathetically I was ogling the girls. ;)
ReplyDeleteFantastic. So was I... plus I married one of 'em.
DeleteCongrats sir. Your "secret identity" is safe with me. I am astounded. That folks even read this blog some days. Hope I gave the films some love. I may grumble but I did that with the originals as well.
DeleteHaha! Fun review. I appreciate it, good or bad. Strangely, neither film has many reviews out there yet so this is much appreciated. To shed some light on these films: Yes, it was a "shoestring" budget. Literally. Both films were made on $200 total, shot back-to-back over the course of 2 weeks in the middle of a freezing and blizzardy Winter. The Producer had a lot of restrictions, one being that we couldn't show ANY snow in the film, as it was to take place "in the Summer". Since there was snow on the ground for most of our shoot, I had to get creative with the shots and framing, so in some scenes you may notice you never see the ground. The lighting/brightness isn't really like that on the actual master file. The brightness is artificial and added in post to make it look old and washed it. And the "dark" scenes are a bit better on the original file as well. It was compressed for DVD and Streaming, so the dark scenes look darker. Despite the crazy production, it was a fun opportunity for me to be involved in a franchise so well known to modern b-horror fans. Whether I was given $100 or $100,000 to make it, I couldn't turn the opportunity down so I just tried to have fun with it and take it in my own direction. I wanted to make this the "Sleepaway Camp 2 and 3" of the series. I think I succeeded. I do get a chuckle when people mention the low budget of 4 and 5. Makes me wonder if they've ever seen the first 3 lol? I'd say 4 and 5 are the most "artistic" atleast in the franchise, so I'm not totally embarrassed by them ;) And I love older sequels that were "clips" movies. I think fans dig that stuff. I actually edited Sleepaway Camp 4, which was basically a clips movie, so my Camp Blood 5 was done in a similar way, but with a cool and shocking climax, that was originally intended (but altered last minute) to end the series. But special props to Schuylar for enduring the nightmarish shoot. She worked hard on these and dedicated a lot of time and effort, in the freezing cold ha.
ReplyDeleteGuessing Pamela Springsteen was completely unavailable to create a pseudo Angela via clown? I was baffled how exposure seemed to change and in all intense purposes it looks and sounds like it had a larger budget than what you had to work with. Good call going through Wetworks, they can do about any budget you have. If I wrote and directed, I would hope for Bob Clark's 1974 Black Christmas but would end up Christopher Lewis' 1985 Blood Cult. You took a chance and few do.
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