Directed by Kris McManus. Starring Dean Jagger, Shane Sweeney, Tom Geoffrey, Alex Edwards, Celia Muir, Charley Boorman. Horror/thriller, UK, 84 mins, cert 15.

Released in UK on DVD by High Fliers on the 28th February, £12.99.

IThe first rule of Caravan Club is: do not leave your caravan unattended. The second rule of Caravan Club is: seriously guys, do not leave your caravan unattended... because a bunch of hapless city slackers will trash it and spray paint it with offensive words like “pikey scum.” This is exactly what happens to the mobile abode of a group of Irish bare-knuckle boxing travellers. Four city lads – Chris (Shane Sweeney), Andy (Tom Geoffrey), Dan (Alex Marsden) and Jon (Ben Richards) – make a stop on their motor-biking adventure weekend in the bleakest English countryside and find themselves on the run from the travelling clan in the deepest, darkest woods. Three scarper, but Dan stays behind to reason with the obviously disgruntled travellers. Bad idea. Whilst the others are involved in a cat-and-mouse chase, he’s tied up in the caravan with what they all assumed was the dead body of a woman. Needless to say, the trip doesn’t pan out with quite as much holiday cheer as the foursome expected. Sadly, TRAVELLERS isn’t as much gruesome fun as its plot outline suggests – although it does have its moments of grimly inspired action.

Despite a rather clunky overall feel, there are some diverting sequences. A horribly tense moment occurs due to an unexpected and unwanted golden shower, as well it should, and ex-TA nutjob Andy does a 360-degree personality flip (admittedly not entirely unforeseeable due to actor Geoffrey’s psychotic glaring), which sees him leap from a lake in slow motion to cause an errant traveller some severe facial (southern) discomfort with a shotgun; he becomes RAMBO with an ASBO and doesn’t return to normality thereafter. There is, however, one of the messiest fight scenes in a mobile home since Uma Thurman and Daryl Hannah kicked seven shades out of each other whilst trying to KILL BILL and some suitably groan-worthy dialogue (“You’re as much use as a shit-flavoured tic-tac!”) to keep things ticking along mirthfully enough.

It’s obviously more Big Fat Gypsy Massacre than Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, and thank your lucky stars for that, but McManus’ script runs dry of decent ideas after the initial set-up and woodland chase. There’s a strong whiff of DELIVERANCE and a faint hint of the more recent forest-based terrors of PAINTBALL and WILDERNESS, though the anonymous blandness of the locations doesn’t help establish a solid enough mood to keep the interest peaked. But the moments of bloody combat will satisfy the seasoned gore hounds. There’s a knife to the neck here, an exploding head there: you know the drill. The effects are decent enough and well-deployed for such a slim budget (reportedly a mere £5000) and some individual shots stand out – a bleak and dreary Nowheretown, England is ably conjured up, although not fully cemented by the visuals.

We don’t get to know much about any of the characters - city lads and travellers alike remain rather blank – so when someone gets offed unexpectedly the capacity to care is diminished. But as events veer towards the film’s closing bare-knuckle shuffle (literally, one fighter has a severe limp so hobbles around the cow-shed-cum-makeshift-boxing-ring), that’s clearly intended as TRAVELLER’s pugilistic highlight, the similarities in human behaviour angle McManus has been striving for becomes clearer. But the message – that we’re all similar (and similarly violent?) at heart – gets a bit lost and muddy in the process.

Extras: a chat with traveller and former bare-knuckle fighter Joe Bowers and a behind the scenes clip with Charley Boorman (who makes a cameo).

Craig Bloomfield.

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