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Released by: VCI Entertainment
Released on: September 11, 2012.
Director: Ken Meyer/Steven Tyler
Cast: Dale Buckmaster, Stacey Logan, Mike Wiles/Jan Jenson, Nancy Mayer, Joann Whitely, Steven Tyler
Year: 19896/1988
Purchase From Amazon
The Movies:
The second volume of VCI/Cinema Pop's Scream Theater double feature line brings to DVD obscure low budget eighties slashers…
TERROR AT TENKILLER:
Leslie has finally had enough of dealing with her abusive jerk of a boyfriend and so she and her good friend Lana head up to Lana's cabin on Tenkiller Lake for the summer to take it easy for a few months and unwind a bit. Once they get to know a few of the locals (most of whom are weird, dirty old men) the two get jobs working for a nice guy named Charlie at the local diner.
Soon though, a crazed killer beings working his way through some of the local yocals hanging around the girls' cabin. First to go is Preacher, the dirty old man who wants more than the girls are willing to give him. But after Preacher is stabbed, a few more bodies soon follow and the murders may be connected to a local legend involving an Indian maiden whose spirit resides at the bottom of the lake.
Essentially a low budget Friday The 13th knock off, Terror At Tenkiller doesn't get a whole lot right in the acting, cinematography or set design department but at least it does provide a couple of creative kills and a 'blink and you'll miss it' topless scene - staples of the slasher genre. The performances are pretty bland and the soundtrack sounds like it was composed by a tenth grade highschool student on a fifty dollar Casio keyboard but the biggest crime the film commits is in its pacing: this movie is slow. If it were just bad this could have been a reasonably entertaining low budget slasher but the fact that its bad and dull make it a chore to sit through the bits that lead up to the kill scenes (most of which take place in the dark and because of the poor transfer are almost rendered unwatchable on this DVD).
A few unintentionally funny moments do pop up from time to time and provide some much needed comic relief in spite of themselves, but these moments are just a little bit too far between to make this true 'so bad it's good' material.
THE LAST SLUMBER PARTY
Randy teens Tracy (Nancy Meyer), Chris (Jan Jensen), Tommy (Danny David), Scott (Paul Amend) and Billy (Lance Descourez) are all stoked because school has just gotten out for the year and summer is finally here. Linda decides that they should all celebrate with a slumber party at her house, because even though her mother is going to be home the entire time, they can drink and smoke weed all night long.
Sadly, our teens don't know about a mental patient who has just escaped from the local insane asylum and who is currently running around town in a doctor's outfit cutting people up with a scalpel. He intends to kill Linda's father, his psychiatrist and the man who had him locked up in the first place, on the very eve of our teens' slumber party!
Featuring a soundtrack by a band I've never heard of called Firstryke, The Last Slumber Party is pretty much an ultra low budget rip off of Slumber Party Massacre. The film is riddled with cliches that are so tired that they make even the later entry Friday The 13th films look insanely original by comparions. The acting (from a cast of complete unknowns most of whom haven't done anything else since) is awful, the cinematography is even worse and the plot is old, and very easily predicted by about twenty minutes in without even a good twist thrown in at the end to keep us wanting more (unless you count one odd moment towards the finale that really doesn't make much sense at all). The characters strive to reach new levels of 'stand-here-and-let-yourself-get-killed-by-the-bad-guy-ness' and even by slasher movie standards these kids are so mind numbingly unintelligent that you'll find yourself wanting the crazed scalpel wielding maniac to slice'em and dice'em as fast as he can just so you can take the DVD out of your player and throw it against the wall and scream really loud.
The movie does offer a lot of gore and a couple of inventive kill scenes, but the effects used to render these moments are so poorly done and the blood so fake looking that these few scenes are laughable - much like the rest of this frustratingly terrible film.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Both films are presented in 1.33.1 fullframe transfer that are murky, dark, and faded. There are times in both films during the night scenes where you literally cannot tell what is happening on screen. Some of this may be related to poor lighting and low budget filmmaking, but a lot of it has to do with the transfer and with the elements used, as they don't appear to have been in the best of shape as evidenced by the mild print damage present throughout on both movies, as well as the softness inherent in whatever elements were used for the transfers. Neither film looks good at all, which makes enjoying these films even more difficult.
The Dolby Digital Mono soundtracks don't fare much better than the video presentation on this release. Both films sound flat and don't have much range at all. There are a few moments here and there where the dialogue is a little bit muffled, though the majority of the time you can at least hear what's being said on screen, despite the presence of some hiss here and there.
The only extra feature on this release is a promo reel for other upcoming VCI DVD releases.
The Final Word:
Neither Terror At Tenkiller nor The Last Slumber Party are good or particularly entertaining movies. Though this double feature is priced right, there are no real extras and the audio and video quality isn't too hot at all. You're going to have to have a really high tolerance for bottom of the barrel eighties slashers to want to add the Scream Theater Volume 2 DVD to your collection.
