I ran through the Mothership's corridors, heart pounding, earlier this week. I'd been rudely awoken by the blaring of the ship's red alert klaxon and now made my way to the bridge as fast as I could. Finally, I erupted into the room, panting and wheezing, promising to spend more time in the ship's gym. Instead of the fires and intruders I expected, I found Gort holding a small, rectangular object.
"I thought this was supposed to be an emergency!?" I shouted at him. In response, he handed me the DVD case and hovered his finger over the clearly unintentional mistake in the blurb. "Ooooh, this is gonna be good. Put it on," I said, leaping onto the couch.
You know you're in for a good time when the film you're about to watch has a glaring grammatical error in the blurb. Confusion between 'there' and 'their' aside, Blood Reaper's packaging also manages to miscount the number of campers at the mercy of its Jason Voorhies-alike killer. Then again, we can't blame them too much for that, since the film manages to do so as well... but we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Random 90s-looking Dude offers to drive his friends out to a river for a fishing trip. He seems extremely moody about doing so, since the camp he's leaving them at is the reported killing ground of legendary serial murderer Juebel Fishman, "The Reaper". We know this because a bearded guy wanders through the supposedly deserted campsite, stopping only to sing a repetitive country song about the killer, titled "Juebel" (which is also the chorus) and warn our campers off, before walking back out of shot, never to be seen again... no, really.
Come morning, however, Don makes an offhand comment about catching up to Wesley, who has wandered off, and promptly walks into a dimensional rift and ceases to exist. Kristi and Wesley are quickly dispatched by a hulking, silent guy in a gas mask who is seemingly Myers-style unkillable. All this prompts the final chase scene between what we suppose is Juebel and a wounded Leann, which ends in the Final Girl's death... but wait!! They've forgotten to kill Katie and Jim! It's back to the drawing board as Juebel takes up the axe he is permanently carrying, despite only ever killing with a knife, and starts the chase again, this time with whiney Katie instead of feisty Leann. We still can't tell if this is deliberate post-modernism or pure inept plotting.
As we hit the final reel, we begin to think that maybe this is all going somewhere. Is the random minstrel camper secretly the killer? Does the pervy sheriff spying on our campers - failing at skinny dipping by keeping their underwear on - mean something by his veiled threats? Maybe Don didn't just slip the director's mind, maybe it was actually sleight of hand and he's Juebel? Could it have been 90s Dude all along?! Is Juebel immortal because he's some kind of ghost or demon posing as a human!?! Bugger knows - we never find out. Still, this is surely a classic of the horribly-shot, bleached-out to the point of looking black and white, ridiculously plotted nonsense we love, and worth every one of the hundred pennies we paid for it.
Blood Reaper is currently available through your local pound shop
"A guy wanders through the campsite, stopping only to sing a repetitive country song about the killer"
Still, 90s Dude somehow manages to get over his misgivings and abandons his supposed "friends" in the woods. The three couples shack up in three cabins and, despite soundtracking the evening scenes with the loud lovemaking of Wesley and Kristi - the only good-looking couple - we are treated to the most chaste sex scene in the history of cinema between Don and Final Girl Leann. We know Leann is the Final Girl as she is the only one with a back story, though it consists of a crudely shot, ten-second scene of her getting fired.
Come morning, however, Don makes an offhand comment about catching up to Wesley, who has wandered off, and promptly walks into a dimensional rift and ceases to exist. Kristi and Wesley are quickly dispatched by a hulking, silent guy in a gas mask who is seemingly Myers-style unkillable. All this prompts the final chase scene between what we suppose is Juebel and a wounded Leann, which ends in the Final Girl's death... but wait!! They've forgotten to kill Katie and Jim! It's back to the drawing board as Juebel takes up the axe he is permanently carrying, despite only ever killing with a knife, and starts the chase again, this time with whiney Katie instead of feisty Leann. We still can't tell if this is deliberate post-modernism or pure inept plotting.
As we hit the final reel, we begin to think that maybe this is all going somewhere. Is the random minstrel camper secretly the killer? Does the pervy sheriff spying on our campers - failing at skinny dipping by keeping their underwear on - mean something by his veiled threats? Maybe Don didn't just slip the director's mind, maybe it was actually sleight of hand and he's Juebel? Could it have been 90s Dude all along?! Is Juebel immortal because he's some kind of ghost or demon posing as a human!?! Bugger knows - we never find out. Still, this is surely a classic of the horribly-shot, bleached-out to the point of looking black and white, ridiculously plotted nonsense we love, and worth every one of the hundred pennies we paid for it.
Blood Reaper is currently available through your local pound shop