Voodoo Academy (2000)

Too much of everything

I'll tell you why so serious

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This is one of those movies that should have been way better than it turned out to be. I dread to think what the Blockbuster-approved edit must have looked like, because the director's cut on DVD was a bore of the epic proportions. Naturally, you don't expect it to be "The Godfather", but an acting class or two might have come in handy.Also, there were so many cute guys in this movie, but they were woefully under-exploited. I like watching a bevy of hotties writhe around in their BVDs as much as the next guy, but even I have a right to expect a little more. It wasn't a total loss, though; at least we got a peek a Drew Fuller's (covered) junk and truly upsetting haircut. And there's Huntley Ritter looking even cuter than he did in "Bring It On" (and acting about as well). There's always a silver lining, kids. You just have to look really hard for it. And occasionally, you have to make use of your pause button.

O.K.; all you fans of the weird; the first thing you have to do to enjoy this movie is see what is really going on. It's obvious that the guys in this College are Gay. After all, even the very whorish Mrs. Bouvier can't even seduce the boys and then knows that because of their being gay, virginal, and young, they've got to be Virgins, and remember that Virgin Sacrifices were common in ye days of Ole. Well, let's stop right there on the subject of these boys Virginity! Now, I liked this film. It's a hoot! Here's a Wanna-Be Ron Hubbard known as the Reverand Carmichael with a woman playing a little bit of Tammy Fay Baker in her characterization, and there's Drew Fuller not knowing that he'll be on Charmed in a couple years, but for now he's got to make the best of a bad decision, but when you come right down to it, I'm sure that when they all read the script they probably couldn't believe that they all had agreed to make such a turkey, so they've, it seems, decided to play it as a high school play with a bit of ham, tongue and cheek, nd shameless showing off while pulling out all the stops with the hoke! And no joke, it's works! You can tell that the guys are all gay when Billy, when first meeting Christopher, calls him Crisco, and Christopher tells him that his name is not Crisco, and Billy, looking at Christopher in a sexy way says that he was only trying to get under his skin! And then when they're all having dinner and the wine is poured, Billy says, "Soooo, we're gonna get trashed" is a gay type sound to his voice, and later when he reaches for Christophers wine and Mrs. B. slaps his hand, it's a campy slap and funny, but for some reason no one sees all of this. They don't even see Billy telling one of the other guys that he loves him in a gay, jokingly way! And listen to most of their voices, they're all playing it in a monotone way, and that' not easy to do! Now, everyone gets the wrong idea about these guys rubbing their bodies in bed at night. Yes, the scenes are sexual, but remember that this only happens when the guy goes up to the attic-voodoo-altar, and remember that they've been drinking that wine, and then the wine is poured on the guy who is tied down to the voodoo altar and then when the Reverand massages the wine all over the guys body, the other young men feel the same thing although their asleep.The Gal playing Mrs. Bouvier looks like three different women in the movie. The sophisticated owner of the school, the whorish vamp who tries to find out how virginal her young men are, and the incarnation of a female Devil, who when Christopher accuses her of killing her husband, she calls him a very Evil Boy! That whole scene is campy as hell! So, this movie was not meant to be a rival to Gone With The Wind, but if you can relax and stop making wild comments about how bad it is; you'll find out that it's quite good, and very entertaining, and isn't that what movies are all about? Entertaining?

Well what do you want, if you see the Full Moon on the back of the box, you know its late night cheese! All the films produced by Band under the EMPIRE label were great, Re-Animator, From Beyond, Troll, even Zone Troopers was fun. However when Empire Films folded, so did the quality of their films. So Full Moon is born, and they had themselves a pretty good little gravy train with Paramount distributing their flicks, but even they got tired of the same old vampire and Puppet Master junk, and subsequently pulled out. The pictures where pretty bad with big studio money, and without it they got worse.Case in point with Voodoo Academy. Like most other DeCoteau films, there are allot of pretty young men running around in their boxer briefs, and a whole lotta fake lightening. Throw in an uninspired story, about 6 million candles, and actors who look like their bored and you have what I consider one of the worst Full Moon pictures to date.I'm not going to beat this dead horse anymore by talking about everything that's wrong with this story, so I will talk about the only thing I consider good about this film, and that's the DVD Directors cut version. Now your probably wondering, if its so bad why would I want to see the director's cut? Two reasons; one, I wanted to see the footage that was so offensive that even Charles Band wanted it cut from the original release. It turned out to be 20 minutes of harmless male erotica (85 % of horror film rentals are by girls anyway) ho hum big freakin deal. The other reason I wanted this DVD is for the audio commentary.DeCoteau talks at length about the process of "by the numbers low budget cookie cutter filmmaking". This is invaluable for film students like myself. Sometimes you learn how to do things right when you see how they are done wrong. All criticisms aside, Band has a very well tuned filmmaking machine (features shot in 4 days, that 24 pages a day!), and the special features of this DVD gives rare insight into Full Moon, the makers of films so bad they're, well bad.

I have seen a lot of bad films. Most of the time I can enjoy a crappy horror film for what it is. But this really takes badness to new extremes.It is bland, the plot for what it is never really goes anywhere and takes its time over it. There are no shocks, no horror, no suspense, just a load of guys rubbing themselves for an hour and a half and then a quick finish.A blight on the crappy horror genre, avoid at all costs.