Review #284: Camp Blood (2000)

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #1 - Camp Blood (2000)

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Here we are, folks! Possibly the movie that started it all. When my wife Lisa and I first started dating, we began a weekly tradition of watching bad horror movies that persisted for several years. She and I disagree about which movie was our first- she says it was Camp Blood, I say it was Terror Toons. Out of respect for her (and because Terror Toons doesn't seem to be available online anymore and my physical copy hasn't arrived yet) I'm putting Camp Blood first.

Camp Blood follows a group of young adults who go on a camping trip out to some wilderness area, where a crazy local tells them an urban legend of a clown-masked killer. When they reach their destination (Camp Blackwood, but the sign has been painted over to say "Camp Blood"), they meet their guide, an outdoorswoman named Harris, who tells them the origin of this mysterious clown-masked killer: 20 years ago, some person caught their wife cheating and so they killed the wife and her new partner in the woods while wearing a mask for some reason. The next morning Harris has apparently been killed. The main characters then get killed off one by one until all that's left is protagonist Tricia, who manages to unmask the clown and reveal that it was Harris all along. Tricia then wakes up in (what we are told is) a hospital, where the staff (who resemble her dead friends) inform her that she is suspected of killing everyone. Then the clown shows up and we cut to credits.

There's no other way to put it: Camp Blood is a terrible movie. Absolutely terrible. It was incredibly cheaply made (shot on video, filmed in some local park I imagine, the only costumes are normal clothes plus a rubber mask from any Halloween store, and the "hospital" set is very clearly just a room in an office building), it does basically nothing original (the killer is clearly just a rehash of Michael Myers, and the plot and even the name are largely taken straight from Friday the 13th but with all of the charm and cleverness removed), and you can't go thirty seconds without noticing a revealing mistake or editing gaffe (like how the newspaper at the start of the film clearly has an article taped over the front page, or the terrible sound and video quality during the entire campfire scene). The movie was also clearly meant to be viewed in 3D (complete with several shots of characters inexplicably reaching or pointing directly at the camera, most notably twice during the opening sex scene) but nobody who watches this movie is going to be able to experience the 3D effect. The writing and acting throughout the entire film are just plain awful, with entire characters who exist only to be annoying and actors whose entire screen presence is overacted from beginning to end. The only good thing to be found in this movie's runtime is the creepy music that pops up once in a while. The rest of it is simply terrible, looking more like someone's Intro to Video class project than an actual movie intended for an audience. 

But at the same time, that's kind of its charm.

The first time Lisa and I watched this movie was with our friends Mike and James, in James' grandma's basement. I think Mike owned the DVD, and we were just goofing around and decided to put on a horror movie. It was an incredibly fun experience, with the four of us riffing on all of the many goofs and errors we saw- like how the movie starts with a pointless sex scene purely to entice the viewer into watching more, laughing at the ridiculous walk the crazy local man was doing when the main characters encounter him for the first time, pointing out how Harris immediately snaps back with "Where did you hear that name?!" when Tricia calls it "Camp Blood" (seemingly forgetting that they had to pass by a big sign with that name on it just to reach the park in the first place), and laughing at how low-budget and janky the final scene was (where they just threw a bedsheet on the floor in the corner of an empty office breakroom and called it a hospital). We had so much fun noticing all of the bad tropes and cliches, we actually spent the following several months talking about making our own horror movie (since clearly you didn't need skill or money to do so). We never got past the idea stage, of course, but it was fun to dream.

Another fun moment from that first watch: we got halfway through the movie when Lisa chimed in out of nowhere, "Hey guys, I think the killer is Harris." Mike, having seen the movie before but not wanting her to spoil the twist, nervously asked, "Uh, what makes you think that?" Lisa then flipped open the DVD case, where in the list of chapters, the final chapter is simply titled "It Was Harris". (If we had ever made our own horror movie, that was going to be the name- "It Was Harris". No, there was not going to be a character in it named Harris.)

So, simply put, this movie is very very bad. I really don't expect anyone else to enjoy or even watch it. But it's made an indelible impact in my life (by possibly starting my relationship with my wife on a path we still follow to this day) and I have many, many fond memories of it. (Also, it has spawned- I kid you not- THIRTEEN SEQUELS, including one that came out THIS YEAR. That number is simply absurd.) 

So while I would never recommend anyone watch this, I kind of recommend everyone watch this.

Overall Rating: 3/10 Fake Bird Calls

Nostalgic Rating: 7/10 Fight Scenes Over a River

Latin References: In the opening scene (before the two throwaway characters start getting naked), the female bird enthusiast mentions a specific bird she's looking for: the "Agrarius Anthropophagus". This is not a real bird as far as I can tell, but its name seems to be a clever joke: "Agrarius" references the land (or a creature or person living on land), and "Anthropophagus" essentially means "man-eating". So either she's looking for a murderous cannibal, or possibly referring to the fact that many people have gone into that park and never been seen again (as if the land itself swallowed them up). Or maybe the director had a Latin class right before his Intro to Video class and I'm reading a bit too far into this.