Memorial Valley Massacre (1989)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This late-eighties slasher is slow to realise what it's supposed to be doing but is served with a nice slice of melted eighties cheese to the point where you can't help but like it. A wee bit.Cameron Mitchell is opening up a new camping park but someone or something is seemingly planning to stop that happening by killing the staff and the campers alike. For the record, Cameron kind of turns up at the start of this one and disappears, and does do too much either.His son (in the film at least) is on the staff and along with the ranger try to find out who's killing dogs, killing fat kleptomaniac campers, and wrecking the place. But who is this mysterious killer who looks like a wayward member of Motley Crue? It ain't very bloody and it ain't very booby, but it's worth a watch anyway. I couldn't help but enjoy it, even though the first three times I tried to watch it I fell asleep (it takes a good while to get cooking, this one). Watch out for Big Bill Smith in yet another cameo.

Synopsis: David Sangster (Mark Mears) has just accepted a new job from his father (Cameron Mitchell) to oversee the opening of the brand new Memorial Valley campground. With the help of George (John Kerry. . . no, not that one), David must attempt to get around all of the problems the camp is facing (dead construction workers, tainted water supplies (with rotting animal corpses), inoperable bathrooms, etc.). To add to the heap of problems, a psychopathic murderer is wandering the camp unleashing his vengeance and attempting to cut short the campers' weekend.Review: Hoping for a lighthearted romp through the California wilderness, I picked up Memorial Valley Massacre on a whim, without actually looking up any reviews or ratings. I saw the plot, saw the availability, and that was enough for me. After I started watching, I decided to take a peek at the IMDb page just to see what I was getting into. Needless to say, the 2.6/10 user rating did not instill much confidence in me. But, I kept on with it and decided to give it a fair shot. Ratings have been wrong before (many, many times). Somehow, regardless of all the hate it received. . . I really enjoyed it. It's not a great film by any means and fans of the more grisly 80s slashers won't like it, but it's very watchable in some inexplicable way to the point where I actually had a lot of fun with it. Technically speaking, you could do a lot worse: The acting is passable, as is the writing. The direction was actually quite good and took advantage of the beautiful location they had, taking plenty of time to give the viewer a look at the wildlife around them. Obviously, there are plenty of negatives: The film is extremely unoriginal, taking no risks whatsoever and essentially only going for a watchably dumb film (which it achieves). The predictability doesn't help much and, even with the weirdo killer, it's extremely obvious to see where it's going. Also, the movie's very tame, showing little and not giving much of what a slasher fan would hope to find. In the end, if one is looking for the next great hidden slasher gem, they won't find it here. . . but, if a good time is all that's wanted and thinking can be put on hold for 90 minutes, I wouldn't totally disregard Memorial Valley Massacre.Obligatory Slasher Elements:Violence/Gore: There's a bit of violence, but the majority of it is very tame and the worst of it is offscreen. There isn't much blood, except for a few scenes with just a few drops.Sex/Nudity: Just a wet t-shirt, a girl in a towel, and some heavy making out. . . nothing to see here, folks.Cool Killer(s): If by 'cool,' it means 'hilarious.' The guy is, seriously, some kind of caveman, dressed in animal skins and fang necklace and all. Weird.Scares/Suspense: Very little. There are some attempts at jump scares, but you can see them coming from a mile away and really don't do much at all.Mystery: There's one 'mystery' of the film, but it's so obvious when it's introduced that it shouldn't even count.Awkward Dance Scene: Dancing in the rain in a thin shirt with no bra? Not awkward, just hot.- -Final verdict: 5/10. Simply for the watchability.-AP3-

I think the makers of "Memorial Valley Massacre" may have been trying to capture the heyday of the slasher film even as the genre was on its last legs. Squeaky-voiced fat kid? Check! Slutty Girl? Check! Cameron Mitchell? Check! I'm just still not sure if they meant it to be a comedy or not.Plotwise, we've got people at a campground and some murders. But there IS a discussion about torrential rain that won't let up, even when it's obviously bone dry. It also becomes Memorial Day at 5am too. That reminded me of Slaughter High, where April Fool's day ends at noon. MVM has a decent body count but no real gore (at least in the version I have). And it seems to go on forever, even with a mere 90-minute runtime. Absolutely awful.

***POTENTIAL SPOILERS*** (Not that they'll hurt this trite.) My Mom has a tendency to buy some generally crappy box sets of generally crappy old, forgotten-for-a-reason horror movies that even the most ardent horror fans look at with confusion at the sub-substandard films listed therein. That's where I found this little gem. In a box set I swiped from my Mom. There's a reason some of these movies end up stuffed into half-assed box sets. Let me enlighten you on the many reasons this claptrap ended up stuffed away in a bottom-feeding box set.First off, wow. Just, wow. The movie starts off right from the gate with crappiness as the opening title is painfully lame. It's a "rustic" ye olde west style font with bright yellow and orange colors and a faked 3-D look. It slides into view from the right of the screen akin to the first PowerPoint presentation of a high school student who just learned how to have a text box slide into view. The film revolves around a national park/campground which, despite being unfinished, is now open for business. Most of this "terrifying" film takes place in daylight, by the way, so picture that atmosphere. Well, there appear to be some omens afoot, all of which appear to look bad, none of which are ever investigated—like the deaths of two dogs, theft from the park manager's office, a window knocked out of a storage shed, stuff like that. All manner of clichéd guests arrive and stay at this campground which, mind you, doesn't even appear to have camping spots fleshed out so that we are met with a montage scene of people haphazardly setting up camp, backing over trees, chopping down other trees (one of which, mind you, falls over below the level at which it was being cut) and stupid stuff like this, all accompanied with dreadfully happy music. Turns out, there's hardly a massacre going on here at all (another one of those old horror films with blatantly misleading titles to draw in an audience), just some stupid mountain wild-man dressed in cliché caveman garb who terrorizes people. By the way, he's also the long-lost son of someone important in the film—a fact which is all-too-easily figured out--so don't try to call me out on that as a spoiler. This film has all the clichés: The old guy who dramatically tells of mysterious backgrounds, the badass biker gang, the slutty chick and obnoxious teenagers, the tough guy connected to the plot twist, and the lone sweet girl who predictably falls for the "handsome" hero guy.There are some occasionally nice death scenes, but some of them could've used some foreshadowing or additional thought. There's a big trap built by the wild-man just like the one in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto (which I've also just recently seen) but some foreshadowing would've been nice to tie to the beginning of the film to the end—just like Gibson did in his film. Here, no such luck. The trap comes out of nowhere and makes little sense compared to extremely simple nature of the wild-man. There is no depth at all and the acting is just plain bad. Boring, mundane, clichéd characters that have little to say that's even remotely interesting or for that matter--plot relevant. Zero atmosphere. Also, I don't think a series of killings done over a few days by a scared/crazy guy trying to (apparently) protect his territory necessarily count as a massacre. Stupid things like the wild-man supposedly starting a tractor and allowing it to run into a building happen that don't make any sense. Hell, several people are killed by simply not walking away from their respective threats! The old man storyteller is set on fire and everyone just watches him run past in flames. No one tries to help him! They just watch him slowly saunter past with "Gosh! Look at that! It's bad!" facial expressions. Aside from a scant few fairly interesting kills and some partial nudity (in a sex scene where you really see nothing), there is no reason at all to watch this film. The base concept behind the story isn't terrible, but since everything else was just done way wrong, there is no redeeming value. Not recommended for anyone.2/10