CANNIBAL CAMPOUT
Dvd Submitted by Camp Motion Pictures
Do you remember the "Video Nasties"? If your memory has a recollection of that period, you might remember a little film called "Cannibal campout"! If you don’t, it’s perfectly OK! Nothing to be ashamed about, cause I learned about this film much later then most, myself.Set in the woods, nearby a lake, 4 teenagers are harassed by a group of sick man eating maniacs. This movie was made at a time that the "Friday the 13th" franchise started to bloom and some years after the boom in cannibal films. "Cannibal campout" is the perfect mix of both genres. "Cannibal campout" is certainly inspired by the slasher genre movies like "Friday the 13th" and it uses the word cannibal in its title to take a share of the Italian cannibal films that were put out earlier in Europe and the US. Add to that a little bit of "The hills have eyes" and you know what you’re in for.
When four students decide to have a weekend in the mountains, they are out for the worst nightmare of their live that will ultimately end in their dead! What was meant to be a nice weekend for Chris, Amy, Jon and Rich changes in a nightmare when they inadvertently provoke two strangers on the road. The two guys are furious, ready for a fight, until they see the two girls in the van! While still bad mannered, they change their tone, with only one thing on their mind, pussy!!!
Luckily the four are able to escape and forget the incident within hours, once they arrive a their campout. Good fortune never comes easy and our four friends meet up with their pursuers later on in the film. As it turns out the two retards, have teamed up with their even more retarded brother, who has a pretty neat facial deformation (that is mostly hidden) and is dressed up as an aircraft pilot! The threesome made a pledge when their mother died, never to eat junk food anymore! Logically they turned to fresh human flesh either raw or on the BBQ.After a cat and mouse game they kill one of the students, the rest of the group is captured and only Amy is able to escape, but not for long!
The quality of "Cannibal campout" is not at the high end, since the original movie was shot on a shoestring budget with a common video camera! But the unintentional silliness, the rather clumsy acting and the overall amateurish look make this movie a very funny film. On the other hand, this movie has almost no nudity (except for one single scene), but lots of gore effects that despite the cheap look of the film are done in a nice and professional way! The combination of these two totally different facts, make "Cannibal campout" into the cult film it is!
Made by Jon Mcbride (Terror House, Black Mass), "Cannibal campout" is probably the first film he finished. It was done with a series of would- be actors and (un)lucky friends who all worked double jobs on this film! Cast and crew were pretty much the same people and never were heard of again .. in the movie business that is. Only Jon Mcbride made some more movies and Richard Marcus, went on to play in Tv-series "24" and on "Dune", he also was in "Enemy mine" in 1985. Since "Cannibal Campout" was done on a voluntary base, and took about two years to finish, the film hit the spot a little to late to take full advantage of the cannibal craze, but it was still honoured as a very gruesome & gory film.Taken today standards, "Cannibal Campout" is a lousy film that would never find any distribution at all, but then again so is "Ape", "Killer nun" and most of Jean Rollin’s work. Back in the states of 1988, "Cannibal Campout" was a bad but very gore film, that became a cult classic over the years.
---Pat---