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Why are there still summer camps? I mean, really. With the horrible examples presented in the Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp franchises, I can’t believe these places still exist. Everyone knows that if you go to or work at a summer camp, you’re going to get butchered. But here we are again, back at camp, where there are arts, crafts and death.
This time, we’re at Camp Blasted Pines, where the staff has three days to close down camp for the season. One of the counselors, Tracy (Katy Woodruff) has been having bad dreams about the disappearance of her brother, Jason (Tyler Sedustine), five years earlier. The dream ends with Jason getting rammed from behind with a chainsaw, but the best part about that is the chainsaw comes straight though his stomach, but the masked killer behind him is holding the chainsaw at a ninety degree angle. It must one of the special chainsaws that cuts around trees.
The remaining counselors gather around the campfire for a game of Bloody Murder, which is essentially hide-and-seek. They try to initiate the new guy, James (Lane Anderson) by scaring him with the legend of Trevor Moorehouse, the ‘local psycho’ who ‘roams these woods seeking revenge on these people and this place.’ He doesn’t buy it, of course, and gets all uppity and angry. On the way back to his cabin, James is attacked by a masked killer! Oh, snap! This guy actually hacks James’ legs off as he’s trying to escape, then smashes his head with a rock.
Let the wild rumpus begin!
One of the counselors, Ryan, gets paged to meet Rick (Arthur Benjamin), the camp director, out in the woods. Instead of finding the director, Ryan finds himself with an arrow through his neck. The masked man buries him alive while his pager goes off. Tracy, who has been out looking for a missing inner tube with her binoculars, spies the killer walking through the woods. She goes back and tells everyone she has seen Trevor Moorehouse.
Meanwhile, Angela (Tiffany Shepis) wonders where her boyfriend is and why he won’t answer his pager. Quick answer: he’s buried with an arrow through his neck. That night at dinner, Rick claims that Ryan paged him, quit his job and went home. This is a tremendous surprise to Angela, who goes outside to be alone. She runs into Mike, Tracy’s boyfriend. Tracy won’t put out, as she suffers from post-traumatic martyrdom frigidity syndrome. Angela is upset about being jilted by Ryan without even a good-bye. Time for these two to commiserate and relieve some tension. While the other counselors are looking for these two to ensure their safety, Mike and Angela are playing cowgirl up under a tree.
When all is said and done under the yum-yum tree, Angela hears Ryan’s pager go off. She tracks the sound and finds Ryan’s body, arrow and all. The police are called in and they consider everyone a suspect. Could the killer really be one of their own, or is Trevor Moorehouse a reality?
The remaining counselors launch their own little Scooby-Doo operation to figure out who the killer is. There’s a lot of sneaking around from cabin to cabin looking for clues and a couple of red herrings thrown in for good measure. All available information points to Tracy’s boyfriend, Mike, as being the killer. He has an alibi, though: Angela. Mike was inserting tab A into slot B during one of the murders. Could it be Rick, the camp director, who always seems to be going into town for supplies at the strangest times? Could it be Tracy herself, finally gone mad with the knowledge that her brother was murdered in the surrounding woods? Is it someone living out in the woods all by his lonesome?
I really enjoy the summer camp slasher genre. It’s such a perfect set-up. You’ve got an isolated area, showers, forests to hide in, showers, screaming nubiles and showers. The characters have names, but except for the killer, you don’t need to know them. The summer camp movies are the rice cakes of the horror genre; they’re loud and crunchy, but they’re light as air and there just isn’t much to them.
Bloody Murder 2 fits snugly into the warm bosom of this particular sub-genre. Some low budget movies tend to skimp on the make-up effects, settling for a splash of blood on the wall. Bloody Murder 2 has a nice sense of brutality to it. The opening murder, with the hacking off of legs, is more gruesome and effective than anything in the allegedly controversial Hostel. A couple other set-pieces reach an appropriate level of disgusting. If you’re after blood and guts, look no further.
What would a death camp movie be without copious amounts of nudity? Pretty boring, that’s what. The downside to Bloody Murder 2 is that only one person gets visibly, graphically naked. The upside is that the naked girl is Tiffany Shepis. She is hot beyond belief; the sex scene under the tree left small scorch marks on my monitor. It would be enough in a little B-movie like this for her just to be outstandingly beautiful, but damned if she can’t act, too. This is really apparent in exposition scenes with the other women in the movie. None of the other chicks can deliver a line of dialogue worth a flip. Shepis outshines them all by being believable and saying her lines like she means them. Could she be the perfect scream queen? It’s quite possible. I will say I will watch any movie she is in, even if she’s only in it for five minutes. Be still, my beating heart… and my throbbing groin.
The dialogue is wonky at times and there are couple of plot twists that are just ridiculous, but I expected that. The genre references, particularly having characters named Jason and Angela, only serves to beg comparison with those other, better films. The only real complaint I have with Bloody Murder 2 is that it wears its low budget on its sleeve. DV is a badge of honor, it seems, and the movie just doesn’t look that good. There are also a couple of computer effects that are so bad, they jerk you out of the movie.
But no one would bring home a movie called Bloody Murder 2 expecting high art. All your expectations will be met, but none will be exceeded. It’s a fairly routine affair, but there’s enough spark to it to make it an enjoyable way to spend a six-pack. Unless you count the time spent slowing down and zooming in on any scene with Tiffany Shepis naked. Then it’s a great way to spend a case.
