Summer Lake Massacre (2018)

Originally Massacre at Pine Lake

Director: Andre Madness

Screenplay: T.H. Robb

Cast: Alexis Ford, Andy San Dimas, Briana Blair, Mr. Pete, Ralph Long, Rocco Reed, D. Snoop, Steve Crest and Lee Stone

Archive Review

 

It is shameless, to be honest, to include a Letterboxd review, but with this not a film easy to find. I wish to nonetheless preserve this existence of this weird curiosity, effectively "porn without porn", a slasher porn film from Adam and Eve productions with all the hardcore sex cut out to leave a forty or so minute slasher film. The edited version was briefly on Amazon Prime in the United Kingdom, the review originating from February 15th 2019, but is long gone.

The porn version, part of Grindhouse XXX (2011), a neo-grindhouse porn double bill from when the Quentin Tarantino-Robert Rodriguez film Grindhouse (2007) led to a exploitation film pastiche movement, is available. It is a film that would be fascinating to return to, in the cut version or not, even if I honestly think it would not grow and improve in entertainment. I think the greater disappointment is not the lack of desire to track this down but that the review has a negative tone I jettisoned from my work, where the most negative I can get (for the most part) is when I have little to say. When you debate whether to track down and pay for titles you take a risk for, the risk needs to be for something idiosyncratic and weird, and I do not have high hopes from this review this was ever going to stand out even with the hardcore sex.

Grammar has been corrected, if need be, alongside anything to improve the quality of presentation and turn of phrase even if words were changed or removed. Nothing in the review's content has been altered and when need be, any additional notes would have been included as time has passed and thoughts came to me returning to this review. The Letterboxd review was originally written around a work covered from a user called Scumbalina, from her list "Neon Boogers", an ode to "candy colored quivering frontal lobe aberrations on humanity". That list provided a couple of films that, if I have not written about already, would wish to. Even for this negative older review, this is a positive for anyone reading this to look into.

 

[Some Plot Spoilers]

So yes, Summer Lake Massacre was originally a porn-slasher hybrid created by Adam & Eve Pictures called Massacre at Pine Lake. I was initially hesitant to review censored version of the film, only to find that the Summer Lake Massacre version does have its own IMDB page¹. As much as we view this as a pretty liberal era when it comes to hardcore porn, it's still a common occurrence that "softcore" versions edited from the initial origins of films are still a practice, a segregation from the mainstream where that's still a viable method of gaining a wider audience. This suggests that the desire to break through a perceived moral barrier as was desired by the seventies filmmakers, some of which thought they were making art, is still an issue and far from over.

The one only redeeming aspect, if in a perverse way, about Summer Lake Massacre is its aesthetic. The brightly coloured clothes are the kind equivalent to all the pastel colours and nineties neon from the basement of exaggerated, gaudy pop culture. And let us be honest, as many of you the readers have probably have seen one modern porn clip in your lives once, there is the strange detail of how modern porn, in need of a location to shoot in and usually shot on digital cameras, always have the brightly coloured and lightly decorated environments you might find in a furniture catalogue. One slight touch up in the lighting and you get a Greek New Weird film aesthetic, and if you are bored of the sex, some people might find some greater interest admiring all the various ornaments and pictures in the background.

As for Summer Lake Massacre as a film, it is too short in the censored versions to be painful, but the problem is that it is a half arsed production. [Writer's Note: A crass choice of words, and viewpoint I would never use in future writing]. Even with the pornographic aspect, there were only three scenes visibly excised and they looked the most generic sort from what was left in fragments, cutting to a random lizard in another time zone for the first, but sadly never continuing with this unintentionally hilarious choice with a "boing" sound in the transition. Worse, with the awful makeup on the actresses, which does not compliment the plastic aesthetic that I can find charming, the film clearly prescribed the dumbest stereotype of the erotic which is cheesy and frankly dull, an argument for the virtues of softcore erotic actually being mere erotic as it did not spend all its time on boring real sex.

It is a testament to how bad any work is, regardless of genre, if its actresses are lit or dressed in a way that is embarrassing. In fact, if there is any virtue to having watched Summer Lake Massacre, it is an excuse to go on a long and protracted tangent about a severe gender politic issues about mainstream porn, about how it has always been about the exaggeration of sex (in actresses' literal physical shapes, even plastic surgery enhancement, let alone what it depicts) but in such a childish and frankly dull way. [Writer's Note: Now I have a more sympathetic view of female actresses in adult filmmaking. The aesthetic is bland is going to be the argument if you ever need to actually debate this rather than view the material as it was sold for, it we are going to be blunt.]

The debate of misogynistic gaze is not the issue I am thinking of, the one argued by people by Andrea Dworkin and for another conversation, but just how tired and un-erotic something like this (even without the sex) is compared to even a film like from Walerian Borowczyk or Jean Rollin, films which have even gotten defence from women because of both their aesthetic sensuality, but even for their depictions of women as sexual beings. Even really cheesy softcore which has a sense of fun, like the sixties sexploitation films, have more interest regardless of possibly dated attitudes. It is not surprising that the influx of women who are making pornography for themselves, in any media, are more adapt to it than most males in making far more rewarding (and frankly sexier) work as they care about things like aesthetic and emotions that make the work more rewarding, even erotic fan fiction. The kind of things Borowczyk, Rollin and a male creator who cared for such things who gained cult and even a female fan base from when they passed.

In fact whilst we are on this subject as its pertinent, one of the aspects which has always looked off putting in mainstream pornography for me personally, and is here in spades and among one of these issues of mainstream erotica, is that in vast contrast to the idolisation of the female stars, they always cast very generic men as if they were mere props and to allow male viewers to be stand-ins for, not considering that even a heterosexual male could appreciate a really attractive man onscreen even if they have no sexual desire for the same sex. As much as his reputation off-screen has been tarnished by real life scandal, there was a reason James Deen (not to be confused with the Hollywood star), became a cult figure with a huge female fan base as he was attractive and oozed charisma.

[Writer's Notes: The scandals with Deen from 2015 onwards do not paint a pleasant picture in the slightest of the man. To sidestep this to a more light hearted but pertinent comment to make, yes the like of aesthetic care for men in erotica in general is a strange and off-putting aspect. How ironic, even in the worst and least defensible erotic work you can have a hope that a female figure can still stand out above the muck around her, because of the strange paradoxical gaze that is objectifying yet can be subverted to make her stand out, against how the maze gaze really makes the male look grotesque in comparison.]

Back to the film itself, the slasher contingent would be disappointed with Summer Lake Massacre too as, even as someone who has a conflicted and strange relationship with the horror sub genre, this is pathetic next to even some I have found overrated and dull. It could lead to another long tangent, but I will rein it in, that for all my gripes about it, and dismissing some sacred cows, I have enough respect for the slasher genre that I am seeing a film like this one completely squander the premise in such a lazy way. Even some of the most notoriously bad (yet beloved) examples in the genre could stand proudly above this as Summer Lake Massacre barely gets the point of the tropes, baring allowing one to admire a well built horse stable the film is partially shot in. In fact, there are probably slasher films shot in someone's backyard that have better gore effects than this whilst we are at it, slashers as much as mere titillation requiring some actual enthusiasm to be of any interest.

This is all in mind that, with openness to any idea, I have no biases against porn and anyone who works in it, and no concept is potentially bad. There is the obvious, and somewhat weird, notion here that it is meant to turn a person on with real sex only to star killing off individuals, which I do not want to try to explain even in its butchered form. We could do without the black stereotype character either, even if the actor might have been in on the performance and (unlike other films) he manages to get away scot free to safety.

Putting all these concerns together, yes let us have more of this kind of gaudy colourful erotic genre weirdness, but please make something with some actual motivation next time. The initial result here is tedious and would not have stood out even with the sex kept back in.

 

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1) It does not when this archive review was preserved.

Soulmate (2013)

 

Director: Axelle Carolyn

Screenplay: Axelle Carolyn

Cast: Anna Walton as Audrey; Tom Wisdom as Douglas; Tanya Myers as Theresa; Nick Brimble as Dr Zellaby; Emma Cleasby as Alex; Guy Armitage as Tristan

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #185-7

[Include bonus reviews of The Last Post (2011) and The Halloween Kid (2011) by Axelle Carolyn]

 

[Trigger Warning for Subject Matter Discussed about Suicide Themes]

It is best to look at Soulmate in comparison to two short films also by director and former actress Axelle Carolyn, making these effectively three reviews for the price of one. The Last Post (2011) is closer to a supernatural drama and is quite an effecting piece emotionally. An elderly woman (Jean Marsh) in her room in a care home has visions of a uniformed figure that no one can see, her female nurse presuming as anyone that this is the onset to dementia or another psychological issue. Far from this, this is connected to how she took part during one of the World War in writing to random male soldiers on the front as someone to help them through the scenario, falling in love with a figure she was never able to meet. It is a beautiful little short, a supernatural romantic drama rather than horror as death approaches but she has no fear of it.  This, as a set up for Soulmate, suggests a director-writer in Carolyn who is much more interesting the emotional drama of a scenario.

Also showing, however, her love for the genre, The Halloween Kid (2011) is a short for all the family as charmingly put together. It is a whimsical tale, narrative by Derek Jacobi of all people, it follows a young boy who can see monsters and ghosts but is not benefitted by it most of the year, as he gets into trouble at school for listening to the biology room skeleton tell jokes to him, and gets into trouble with his mother, played by the lead of Soulmate Anna Walton. Thankfully, in contrast to The Last Post's stark look with its colourful seasonal aesthetic, Halloween is the boy's favourite time of the year where he can escape from all this.

These shorts really give an idea that Carolyn was going to horror as a female director with a different tone to her style. Soulmate was the same, though sadly we cannot go further without the fact, realising this, that the film had an unfortunate run in with the British Board of Film Classification. It should not shadow the film's existence or its virtues, but as this is recounted for the review, the version covered for this review is the British release version which was affected by this. Soulmate's lead character Audrey (Anna Walton) is a traumatised musician who lost her boyfriend in a car crash, having had an attempt at committing suicide and afterwards leaving care without her family knowing to travel to Wales, renting a cottage in the countryside to exorcise her trauma. Tonally Soulmate tackles the subject very seriously, but it also involved a scene involving a very realistic suicide attempt by the slashing of the wrists that the BBFC felt even had to be censored, not just getting an 18 certificate, meaning only eighteen year olds could access the film for themselves, but 16 seconds of the images being censored entirely. The director-writer, feeling that the film would negate the importance of that sequence if censored, a two minute opening sequence of the suicide attempt, decided to remove the two minute or so scene entirely for the British release¹.

As a result this review of Soulmate has to begin with a literal phantom, as the version I saw unlike the International version, which is uncut, is left with the speculation on whether that sequence adds or detracts from the final result. Soulmate itself, regardless, is admirable as horror in terms of slow burn character drama. Baring some jolts, mostly from the use of the score once or twice, Soulmate never delves into anything in that direction. Instead the film progresses when, very early in, she encounters the ghost of the cottage's former owner Douglas (Tom Wisdom), who develop an attachment to each other because, having lost his former fiancée in a car crash and having killed himself with a pistol thirty years previous, they come together with an emotional bond of traumatised figures. Audrey however is a living person who is helped by this counsellor in her temporary home, whilst Douglas is a ghost stuck in the house unable to leave, whose inability to move on and having died with violent emotion will mean he is becoming obsessed with her.

The best way to describe Soulmate, which is also its best virtue, is that if the two short films by Axelle Carolyn are tiny little short pieces, like two or so page pieces if they were fiction, this is a short story adaptive into a feature length film. No fat and entirely focused with an intimate nature to the film, helped considerably by the location shooting in Wales; the rural countryside in British storytelling, especially horror and supernatural tales, has always been evocative and this is the same. Notably this is not the countryside as an ominous place however, but an isolated one with an isolated small town community where the drama comes from the ghosts of the past and emotions of the living. That most of the exterior shots are filmed in the day, and there are only a few locations used, the horror is less the wilderness but, as the plot begins, the locations adding atmosphere of a world completely cut off from the urban landscape and forcing contemplation from the characters.

Soulmate focuses entirely on its narrative, not a film which deviates in tangents. What cannot be denied is that Carolyn tackles the subject matter of grief and mental illness with nuisance, which makes the entire ghost of the BBFC controversy throw shade on the film classificatory being over cautious, a reminder that whilst they have become a beacon of free speech into the 2000s and 2010s, they still exhibit moments of deeply ill-advised choices, more nowadays a sense of an over-protectiveness that does not realise how a viewer for these type of controversial films are more self aware and  introspective about what they are watching than they presumed. There is a right mindedness to tackling depression and suicide to be found here. There is a lot more to this drama too which shows this. Early on, unlike some protagonists, Audrey actually goes to Dr Zellaby (Nick Brimble), one of the people who lets out the cottage alongside his wife, wondering if her anti-depressant medication causes hallucinations or not when she keeps seeing Douglas. When she accepts Douglas is real, bond and even learn that the longer they are together he can slowly start to be able to touch and move objects, the film even gets into the gendered biases of hysteria and how Zellaby plays the sceptical man who finds the female protagonist's beliefs in the supernatural absurd. This is furthered as the only other character who is his wife Theresa (Tanya Myers), who is aware of Douglas, knowledgeable on ghosts, but having a complicated past to Douglas romantically, meaning she has a bias in play too in her warnings to Audrey.

In fact the film can be argued to have a sad ending, with greater weight, that even if Audrey ends the story safe in a hospital with her family, said family still are going to patronise her and that, due to factors which break logic, she has only managed to escape a mental health clinic or prison due to them in the nasty aftermath. It is as much a tale of a woman being unable to be understood in her own life, trying to recover on her own two feet, through her music rather than pills. If the person who was helping her had not crossed the line into possessiveness and his own biases, even as a ghost, this could have easily been a drama with a happy conclusion. The irony that the BBFC felt one realistic scene of a wrist slashing was still inappropriate for a British audience in the early 2010s, not the old problematic era of censorship in the eighties and nineties, adds a perverse irony as they come off like anyone who do not understand Audrey's attempt to overcome her depression at all and are patronising.

It is, as a result, a very simple tale but provided with layers. Like those two short films, Soulmate can be appreciated for its leanings into more intimate drama. It is, with a shame, Axelle Carolyn has not really worked as much afterwards into the rest of the 2010s. It is inexplicable, be it an actual bias against female directors or not, that the only other project throughout the 2010s from Carolyn was a segment in the anthology film Tales of Halloween (2015). Hopefully this will change into the 2020s.

 

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1) HERE