It’s Friday…
Ahem…
I mean Frightday…
And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…
Okay…
This Frightday’s theme is…
Going Camping.
It’s that time of the year again…
A time when you won’t be hearing from me as much…
Because…
This is the time of year that I go camping…
A lot…
And that’s what the Carter family thought they were doing, too…
In Wes Craven’s 1977 cult classic, The Hills Have Eyes…
Going camping…
Dragging a Shasta travel trailer behind their station wagon…
From Ohio…
To not quite California…
Because when they reached that patch of hills in the Nevada desert…
Their camping trip was over…
And their bad acid trip had begun…
Because…
When you’re camping in a horror movie…
Sometimes the visitors you get at your campsite…
Are not your crab-walking, inebriated friends…
Looking for a late-night snack…
Instead…
They just might be…
Mutated, inbred cannibals…
And the late night snack they are looking for…
Lemme tell ya folks…
It ain’t fuckin’ s’mores.
So, let’s take a chronological look at my favorite, scariest, and possibly even unknown to you, Camping Horror Movies…In the years following The Hills Have Eyes.
Rituals (1977) – It was most likely because it was completely discounted by critics who collectively decided that this one was a rip-off of Deliverance…Because…This Canadian horror film flew completely under my radar…And that is a terrible thing indeed…But a few weeks ago, a friend posted about it in one of my horror groups…And let me tell you…This film should be required viewing for horror fans…It has a talented cast of believable actors…Led most notably, by Hal Holbrook (The Fog)…And the film tells the story of five doctors who go on a camping and fishing trip in the wilderness only to be stalked and picked off by unseen forces…I highly recommend this film…It is…No shit…The Grand-Pappy to modern horror films like Wrong Turn…And should definitely be seen…But maybe…Not while you’re camping.
The Burning (1981) – I don’t necessarily consider going to summer camp…Going camping…But when people hear that my camper has air conditioning, and surround sound…They don’t really consider what I do…Going camping, either…So I said fuck it…And decided to include my all-time favorite summer camp horror film…I know…I know…What?!? Not Sleepaway Camp? Or…Friday the 13th? Nope…For me it’s this film…All the way…From the fact that it is based on an actual urban legend that people used to tell around campfires…To the cool score from Rick Wakeman (He’s the keyboardist from Yes)…Or the cast full of nobodies about to be somebodies…Like, Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens, and Holly Hunter…Or maybe it was just the totally awesome effects work from the man himself, Tom Savini…By the way…It is in my opinion…Some of this madman’s best work…Whatever it was…It was the perfect combination to manage to squeeze this twisted little 80’s going to summer camp movie…Onto this list.
The Hills Have Eyes (2006) – Wait…What the hell? You started the list with the original…And you have the nerve to include the remake?!? Yep…I sure do…You see…This remake was not only something that Wes Craven wanted…But after seeing the amazing 2003 French horror film, Haute Tension…He knew he wanted director Alexandre Aja to helm this project, as well…This film does more than meet the bar…Hell…In a lot of ways…It raises it…The unhappy campers in this film go through a lot of the same torture as the original…But for me…The character of Doug, played by Aaron Stanford (TV’s 12 Monkeys)…Who started out a little more namby-pamby than the Doug from the original film…But as his character transformed before our eyes…He evolved into an even bigger bad-ass, as well…I loved this remake…And when I watched it again recently…It made me glad my camper is sitting in the same spot year after year…And not rolling down a dirt road through the redneck-cannibal littered hills of the American southwest.
Eden Lake (2008) – Right smack dab in the middle of the British obsession with hoodie horror films…This little gem burst onto the scene with a story that not only preys on people’s fear of urban youths…But also serves as delightfully dark social commentary about the state of youth entitlement in theirs, ours, and many other countries these days…In this film…Kelly Reilly and Michael Fassbender play an English couple on a romantic getaway…Planning to propose, Steve brings Jenny to a remote, lakeside campsite for the weekend…All of their plans go awry when a group of deplorable teenage butt-plugs decide to alleviate their perpetual boredom with the incessant torture and abuse of these two innocent strangers. These roles for both of the lead actors…Came early in their careers…And it is great to see them before they became household names…Hey look…Camping with little kids can be a ton of fun…But…I’ll be the first to admit that teenagers suck when you’re camping…Especially…When they are trying to torture you to death…Or…Even worse…When the teenagers…Are yours.
YellowBrickRoad (2010) – Now here’s one that when I heard what it was about…To say that I was intrigued…Would be one hell of an understatement…Ready for this? Okay…Here goes…It was 1940…And the entire town of Friar, New Hampshire abandoned their town and walked into the wilderness with only the clothes on their backs…After a viewing of The Wizard of Oz…And never returned…What the actual fuck?!?…Seriously?!? Yep…And that’s all it took for me, man…And considering that this was all I knew about the film…I admittedly had very low expectations…But because of a well-written script and well-acted performances…It did not disappoint…It also has that rural gothic feel that would normally spring from the pages of a Stephen King novel…The film documents a modern-day film crew that have obtained the newly declassified coordinates of the mysterious 1940 journey…And as they follow in the missing townspeople’s footsteps…Where the path leads them…May require those who watch it…Some much needed post-credit discussion…Because camping in rural New Hampshire…Is a lot like living in rural New Hampshire…Weird shit…Is the kind of shit that you can expect to happen.
Black Rock (2012) – I ran across this one recently…And was pleasantly surprised at what I found there…Three childhood friends are drawn together by Sarah, played by Kate Bosworth in an attempt to mend fences between Lou, played by Lake Bell, and Abby, played by Katie Aselton, who also directed the film…On a side note…In real life…She is married to the awesome, Mark Duplass (Creep)…Who wrote this screenplay…So anyway…When the three friends gather on a small, remote island off the coast of Maine, for the express purpose of not just mending the fences of friendship, but also to dig up a time capsule they buried there years ago…Everything is going as planned on their little camping trip…Until they cross paths with three hunters who reveal that they have been recently discharged from the military…And as their behavior turns darker, and more aggressive towards the three friends…We the viewer…Realize right along with the our trio of protagonists…That their discharge may not have been all that honorable.
Willow Creek (2013) – Now…I am a huge fan of Bobcat Goldthwait…The films that he has directed have been equal parts irreverent and nihilistic…From his debut, Shakes the Clown…In my opinion, the best alcoholic clown movie ev-…What’s that? Oh shit…It’s the only alcoholic clown movie? Oh well…To the sardonic film with some seriously sensitive subject matter, World’s Greatest Dad…Or the incredibly visceral, giant middle finger that he gave to everything stupid and fucked up in this country with 2011’s God Bless America…But…When he decided to give found footage horror a shot…Man…He knocked it right the hell out of the park…In this one…We follow Jim and Kelly, as they document their journey to legendary Willow Creek, California…The alleged home of Bigfoot…The tension that Goldthwait creates is almost as much the stuff of legends as Bigfoot himself…Especially the skin-crawling 20 minutes of our main characters being terrorized from an unseen creature on the outside of their tent…In those moments…Where the droplets of pee-pee are imminent…Be grateful that this awesome director chose to torture these campers with tension…Instead of some dude in a shitty-looking monkey suit.
Backcountry (2014) – This one, the directorial debut of Adam MacDonald (Pyewacket), has a similar premise as the last film on this list…Minus all the squatchiness…A young couple is heading into the wilderness…For some hiking…Some camping…And some violently aggressive harassment from a rather large creature…But that’s where this film takes a detour away from Willow Creek…The rather large creature is a bear, not a bigfoot…I have to say…In the course of this incredibly intense tale being told…Missy Peregrym’s performance elevated her character, Jenn, to the level of Ultimate Bad-Ass…I mean come on…She goes toe-to-toe with a freakin’ bear for fuck’s sake…And this bear is seriously pissed off…And wicked hungry…And from a bear’s perspective…There just ain’t no better snack…Than a camper.
Killing Ground (2016) – So this one was part of my Ten Reasons To Never Visit Australia list of recommendations…And as much as I don’t like to use the same movies over and over again…This one is the probably the perfect fit for this category…A couple has decided to spend their New Years holiday camping in one of the many remote parts of Australia…They set up their campsite not too far from another site…But after some time passes…They realize that those campers seemed to have completely abandoned their site…And that’s when this dark and twisted goes completely off the rails…With a smart and interesting method of storytelling…First time director, Damien Power plays around with the timeline in a really cool way…Interweaving the flashbacks into the current storyline in a way that is both seamless and yet, surprisingly not a heaping helping of unnecessary mindfuckery…As much as these films are making me not want to go camping anymore…I am definitely not going camping in Australia…Ever.
The Video Store Clerk 