Hollywood's New Blood (1988)

 

Director: James Shyman

Screenplay: James Shyman

Cast: Bobby Johnston as Bret Standish; Francine Lapensée as Liz; Joe Balogh as Mitch; Martie Allyne as Donna; Al Valletta as Vinnie; Lynne Pirtle as Joely

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

To pee or not to pee...

 

Immediately from the get-go, Emilio Kauderer deserves credit for their music being all fright stings and synt. Kauderer went on to be extremely prolific, so good for him, especially as, with something to praise, this obscure slasher really did not win me over, and actually became a chore to sit through.

In an abandoned manor, an acting group of a teacher and his students are there, absolutely blending into the late eighties period with some of the hairstyles on the men and the women in this small cast. Like any slasher, this place is cursed, here a film crew sixteen years before having set up a planned shoot of blowing up a house, only to have accidentally rigged up the explosions on the wrong house and blow up human beings. Thus Storm Lake, where this is set, is a no-go for film crews, and three disfigured people are shuffling around the woods with bad intentions.

This does not rest, getting to the first murder quickly the moment the film establishes itself, Hollywood's New Blood doing what is to be expected from the genre. It raises the thought on how many slasher films were made, just focused on the original eighties crest, not the prototypes before Friday the 13th (1980) became a hit or after the eighties. The eighties alone makes it seem you can fall over ones like this just searching the internet, and likewise there is the issue, especially as I have had an ambivalent relationship to them, in how to reinvent the wheel when you have, even into the late eighties, titles still being released. These characters do not really have more to be anything else by cannon fodder, and considering they think sunbathing in the woods in an effective way to get a tan, and believe pinecones are Mother Nature's way of telling you to wear shoes, the film does not help them grasp charisma let alone common sense. It is not a good sign, when one male member brings a human skull to show and tell that they do not think hard on the severity of finding this. Considering these are the bones of the three figures' mother, who are skulking the outside area, this stupidity will cost a great deal.

I write this in pure sympathy for those making the film but even sympathy for getting it off the ground, even for technical hiccups like the over the top bird call sounds in the audio mix. But this was insanely perfunctory for me, emphasising why slashers and I have an awkward relationship. Never was there a genre where you do not need to stop and elaborate on what is happening, as happens here, which is good if you are a slasher film lover, is not good as someone who likes my films with tangents, monologues and idiosyncrasies. Even on a cathartic level, if I just wanted to watch something with spectacle, there is the further problem that, especially as I am getting older, the aspects synonymous with the slasher genre like the kills, the scares, are becoming less important and far less I want to see, which is a huge disadvantage. Director-writer James Shyman clearly wanted to make this film, as he followed it up with Slash Dance (1989), his only other film and a low budget slasher combining a serial killer with aerobics and a musical production. Even for this genre though, Hollywood's New Blood is a film which rushes along with its goofy nature but also missing a more interesting film to get to the expected beats - the son of the father who accidentally rigged up the wrong house to explode is here among the cast, to exorcise the ghosts from that incident - in favour of getting to the climax and out quickly. And that is clear as this is only over an hour long. It finishes at sixty six minutes, with a recap for the last ten minutes here that does feel like pure padding. It was tedious to experience, an absolute dray to actually sit through to watch.