Directed by Drew Barnhardt. Starring Allen Andrews, Scott Christian, Kelly Devoto, Ryan Franks, Christine Haeberman. Genre Slasher, USA 2009, 75 mins ,Certificate 18

UK release date 4th April, RRP £9.99.

An amusing narration at the outset of this enjoyably off the wall slasher flick gives you immediate hope that it’s going to be a mite more oddball than usual. A Generic Voiceover Guy makes it sound like the intro to something like WIND IN THE WILLOWS despite the fact that he’s stating : “no doubt they would have [enjoyed themselves] had they all not been brutally murdered, one by one…”.

The “they” in question are a bunch of hot girls in tight shirts and / or hotpants and their respective beaus, who come to stay at a plush rental house in the country for some party time. As a delightful old-school score - heavily influenced by 70’s / 80’s Italian exploitation - sets the tone, these folks are stalked and killed by a calmly demented middle aged married bald guy : a nicely underplaying and disarmingly likable Allen Andrews. He wanders around bare-foot in his pyjamas, keeps weapons in his dressing gown pockets and hangs people on meat hooks a la TEXAS CHAINSAW so he can torture them with pocket drills.

This is yet another retro-80’s-style slasher movie, though this time, the homage-fixated approach reaps modest rewards. It delivers on a basic slasher movie level, with gaudy close ups of blades in flesh and yanked intestines, plus a scene in which a the obligatory hot blonde gets ’em out for a bout of pool-table sex a la Linnea Quigley in SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT. The fluid camerawork helps to generate some degree of suspense in the various stalk n slash sequences, displaying more directorial savvy than most.

Its most pleasing aspect, however, is Andrews’ idiosyncratic killer, a low key milquetoast postal worker-type who ambles around like a sad drunk and looks as harmless as PHANTASM’s Reggie Bannister. He proves just as likely to quietly clean up a messy kitchen as he is to rip out your spleen. This deliberately mundane dude, who at one point dons a party hat on his nose, tips it into bizarre territory, and produces one special moment in which, to a bound young woman, he notes in a typically muted fashion, “I have a sexual problem, and I’m gonna need your help…” before some wholly expected terrified screaming.

This droll, amusing low budgeter also throws a nice curveball in the final reels, as the killer returns home from a “boring convention” to a cheating, unsympathetic wife who laments “I took my vacation time to take care of your hernia!”. This abrupt switch to a domestic hell heightens the impact of the movie’s hyper-violent, idiosyncratic ending, with the final girl driven to the kind of gob-smacking extreme acts showcased by the heroines of vintage 80’s slashers like JUST BEFORE DAWN.

N.B. The movie sometimes plays on The Horror Channel under the off-putting, rubbish title “Murder Loves Killers Too” ; at least the generic “Blood Cabin” title for UK DVD doesn’t make you want to rip off your own face with a rusty hook.

Steven West.

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