Mindful of my duty to bring you BAD movies, I've located something called Zombie Lake. "In a small village, somewhere in France, German soldiers, killed and thrown into the lake by the Resistance during WWII, come back." SO. MANY. COMMAS.We have elevator music and full frontal nudity. Um. I'm always afraid I'll accidentally select a porno for one of these things. We've had a solid minute of nudity but please believe me that it feels like several hours. We are now going into 3 solid minutes of nudity and it's. Uh. Explicit. So there's that, if you like nude girls. If you don't, sorry about this.
There's nothing really keeping the zombies from leaving the lake? There's just a "no swimming / undead" sign. In addition to the nudity, a man is demonstrating that green-skin makeup and water don't mix well. He didn't even bite her! He just sort of drowned her, which feels like anyone could do. Back in town, they're alarmed that the girl disappeared but left her clothes behind.
The zombie stumbles out of the lake and shuffles onto another, clothed woman. She crumples like crepe paper. He's biting her neck vampire-style, which is very different from zombie-style. I think this one is confused. The people carry her in a group to the church, Jesus-off-the-cross style. No coffin or nothing. They all seem super chill about this.
Good grief, Bob, don't lay her down with her dress hiked up over her panties!! That's fucking insensitive. SHE'S HIS DAUGHTER OMG THAT MAKES IT SO MUCH WORSE.
We've now had almost a solid minute watching a guy's expressionless face while he reads a book. Gripping. A blonde reporter has come to town. She feels protagonisty. She's.....She's asking her interview subject, the Mayor, to read a two-inch thick book she brought about the supernatural, and then they can talk. Given that he already doesn't want to talk to her, this seems like a bad interviewing technique. (That's like 47 centimeters, since we're in France.)
She wants to know about the "recent" naming of the lake to Lake of the Damned; it was "only" named two centuries ago. That's like twenty years in American units.
We're in flashback mode and I'm worried about where this is going. Ten years ago, during the war, a soldier saved a woman and more nudity occurred. If this is a "star-crossed lovers and one of them is a Nazi" backstory, I'm bailing.
Oh, thank god, ok, he's not a Nazi. There was all this tension but apparently it wasn't "we're on opposing sides" tension but rather "I already have a glaring guy who might be a husband or boyfriend or stalker" tension. Look, there's not a lot of talking in this film, I'm doing my best.
She's...dying and there's a baby? That was FAST. Actually maybe she's just tired from making a baby in five minutes. She's fine. Probably. This is the longest flashback. Is the Mayor telling the Reporter all this??? Including the detailed five minute sex scene? He....was shot in perfectly ordinary combat? I'm...really confused how this ties into the lake? And....his girlfriend died too?
WAIT, HE WAS A NAZI AFTER ALL? NOPE, FUCK THAT, I'M DONE, FUCK YOU, MOVIE.
I'm extremely confused about EVERYTHING going on in this film, but I draw a hard line at star-crossed Nazis. Here's the Wikipedia summary I checked in order to figure out what side he was on.
I'm angry. Fuck this movie for making me watch a Nazi sex scene. Fuck this movie.
I don't feel well. I'm gonna try another movie. Deep breaths. This one is called SPIRIT CAMP. "When a street smart goth girl is forced to attend cheer camp as part of rehabilitation from a juvenile correction facility, she clashes with the popular girls. But when members of the spirit squad start turning up dead, the girls must put aside their differences as they struggle to survive the murderous rage of a killer lurking among them." As usual, I have questions.
Questions like "Goth kids are 'street smart'?" and "Juvie sends you to cheer camp now?" That's probably an option they only give pretty white cis girls, I'm guessing. I now irrationally hate Good Omens because of how many adverts Amazon has forced me to sit through.
Well, that didn't waste any time. Two cheerleaders are axe-murdered at camp and then we get a "2 YEARS LATER" card. We're meeting all the cheerleader girls who we'll be rooting for not-dying. So far we have Innocent, Sassy, and Bossy. Impressive that they managed to fit two sex scenes into the first ten minutes. That's economy of storytelling, I guess. My tummy still hurts.
So far my favorite character is the sarcastic little sister. OH AND THERE'S A PLUS SIZE CHEERLEADER. I was promised a goth girl. I was given a blond girl in a cheer outfit and she has black socks and a smattering of eye shadow.
At the camp, one of the cheer instructors is terrified by an axe wielding groundskeeper. He's either definitely not the murderer (misdirection) or secretly the murderer as a subversion of the usual genre misdirection.
YES A FLAT TIRE. That means we won't lose the sarcastic little sister yet. An elderly gas station attendant warns then that they're All Going To Die and I'm getting CABIN IN THE WOODS flashbacks. A younger, handsome gas station attendant gives them directions. I'm just going to guess that he's the serial killer. Put a pin here. Oh no, he's bonding with the "Goth" girl. Definitely either villain or victim. He won't survive the movie.
A twist emerges: The killer from two years ago was supposedly caught and put in the local prison. We may have seen as escapee from there earlier, as the cause of the flat-tire swerve. Alas, the sarcastic little sister has quietly exited the film. We are now into cheer boot camp. There is a shouty instructor girl who is making my teeth hurt.
So far for students we have:
- Innocent
- Sassy
- Bossy
- Happy
- Gothy
and a new arrival we'll call Red.
The camera is following Sexy Dave back to his truck (he gave Gothy a ride after the other girls ditched her at the gas station) so I'm not feeling too good about his life expectancy. Oh, it's just so he can pass Red on her way in. *readjusts my odds on him being the killer* Welp, Red has been murdered. Hope you weren't too attached to her! A small town sheriff has arrived at the crime scene. Why??????? I don't know!!
[TW: Rape] Rhh, I should warn that there's a gross and unnecessary post-murder rape M.O. that this serial killer has, should anyone be tempted to watch this.
Oh, the sheriff is here to warn the camp owner that the Serial Killer escaped from prison. Happy the fat girl, who has not been characterized AT ALL, is going off alone. That's a bad sign-- oh, that noise was a bad noise. Gothy has some kind of trauma around heights. Are girls in horror movies allowed to NOT have a plot-relevant trigger? No one has noticed that Red hasn't shown up and Happy is gone.
Bossy has a boyfriend she's wild about and I wouldn't normally mention that in a summary but he's a fat actor and a cheerleader is in love with him and literally no one has acted like that's bad/odd, or commented on his weight. ...there's also a scene in which she insists on the importance of condoms and he respects her agency, and I'm not sure I've ever seen that in a movie. It's wild, like, the movie is TERRIBLE but the scenes with the fat boyfriend are scenes I like? I want these scenes in a better movie.
The longer Sexy Dave doesn't show back up, the less good his Not Being A Serial Killer chances are.
Aw, the boyfriend I like has died. And his girlfriend is down for the count. That leaves students Gothy, Innocent, and Sassy, plus the two counselors Bitch and Camp Gay.
[TW: Rape] Bitch is drunk and forcing kisses on the gay guy counselor and he tells her to fuck off and I really REALLY hope he survives. She storms off, so presumably she dies next. Nothing of value will be lost.
Um.
Well.
She...did die. During a vibrating dildo scene that was really unexpected to me. That... happened. God, I feel really bad that my "I watch bad movies" live tweets keep turning pornographic. Not intentional!!!!
Has anyone ever done a slasher movie set in, like, an escape room situation.
My god, Gothy has noticed that people are missing!!! Boyfriend is still alive!!!! He's wounded. Gothy wants to drive him to a hospital, but the car has had all its Important Wires cut. They've captured the Escaped Serial Killer, so he's definitely not guilty. I put odds on Sexy Dave Of The Gas Station at about 100%.
An ill timed power outage has allowed the Convict to escape. The girls want to swim to the boys' camp but Sassy can't swim. Innocent goes to get help, being on the swim team in addition to cheer (WITH WHAT FREE TIME?). There is, however, a bloody body in a boat (I'm afraid it's the gay counselor, and that makes me sad) and a crocodile which I feel you really can't blame on the axe murderer.
Innocent is down. Sassy and Gothy are all we have left.
Oh my god, Gothy's backstory is grim and yet utterly bonkers. Um. Um.
[TW: Rape] She was gang-raped and the police wouldn't do anything, so her boyfriend murdered the guys and got life in prison. She took up shoplifting in order to get caught so she could be in prison with him, not realizing prisons are gender segregated. How. What. Even a single episode of Law & Order would clear that misconception up, I'm agog.
They found dynamite, a blow torch, and the villain lair. And the Serial Killer is dead. Oh, and Sassy! Boy, we're really dropping like flies. Uh oh. Gothy has found the sheriff, but she informed him that Serial Killer wasn't the serial killer. Sheriff doesn't like that one bit. NO. This fucker won't take her back to town because then "the crime scene will be cold". This Sheriff cannot die fast enough for me.
And there it is. Goodbye, Sheriff. Our only remaining suspects are the Terrifying Handyman and the Nice Sexy Gas Station Attendant we haven't seen for 60 minutes. Get your bets in on whether we're going to subvert expectations (Sexy Attendant) or REALLY subvert expectations by subverting the subversion (Terrifying Handyman).
And.....it's Sexy Dave! Collect your winnings at the door.
And I'll be going back to Fantasy Dragon movies for a while after this, because [TW: Rape] that was a very graphic rape scene that really did not need to be in this movie, Jesus H Christ. Anyway, if you're following the plot: she stabbed him while he was raping her.
Gothy blows up the villain lair and Terrifying Handyman saves her and gets her to the hospital. She then has to explain that the Handyman isn't guilty. No one is listening to her. And Sexy Dave is alive on the gurney next to her. Terrific. Oh and we're smash cutting to credits, FABULOUS.
GOING BACK TO DRAGON MOVIES NOW. Although even then we can't really get away from rape threats, can we. Sigh.
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