BLOODBATH: A TWELVE MOVIE COLLECTION OF HORROR - SO THEY SAY. GET YOUR SEATBELTS ON KIDDIES, THIS IS GOING TO BE A VERY BUMPY RIDE PART FOUR

Harvest Of Fear (2005)

All right young ones if you have any expectations about this movie, better squash them down right now. Made for a whopping $65,000 and filmed in Estacada, Oregon (which is a beautiful place - as pretty much all of Oregon is) you're gonna get 88 minutes of very low budget horror attempts. Basic plot: Twenty years ago somebody killed a bunch of people (no, they're not claiming it's based on 'Real Events' thank God) and now in Devil's Lake (Really? That's the best name they could come up with?) somebody is using the Harvest Festival to kill off kids in apparent copycat style. 



A new arrival in town, Billy, must solve the case. Why? Because, uh, oh hell, just because he's named first I guess. It's not a big stretch (or a big buzz kill) to peg Billy as the murderer before five minutes has passed because they only start dying after he gets there. Duh.

Trivia time: This project was filmed completely on location in Estacada, Oregon. Many of the crew stayed on the third floor of a Senior Center to avoid the icy roads and the 45 minute trip back and forth from Portland. The locals referred to the crew as "The Hollywoods". 

Wow, makes those poor people sound like the dumbest hicks in the world, right? I call BS - Estacada is NOT a backwater town. Oh well, they weren't making much money anyway - the 'locals' they refer to were probably the seniors that were put out when they took over the Center for the shots.

We start with two kids in the woods doing what kids do (in movies) when the guy goes off to take the 'piss of death'. After they die, we jump to an old guy who is the retired sheriff of the town. He's reading the newspaper. All righty. But when they show the closeup of the article of the murders, the 'Devil's Lake' paper is shown to cost only 25 cents. 

I worked for a very small newspaper before that and even THEN it was 50 cents. But it's probably discounted because there's no date on it and other than the title, no news either, just that Latin gobbledygook they have when they want to fill space. Sheesh.

Now we see Billy, who's disgusted by the small town and having to do his forensics internship here (screw you Billy). He goes in and the doctor shows him the first corpse - now I don't like to have nudity on this page (and she is), but I wish I could make GIFs so I could show you how much this 'corpse' breathes while she's on the slab. What, you couldn't hold your breath for the 20 seconds you were on screen? Tsk, tsk. Two errors in the space of five minutes. 



I could try to learn to make a GIF of this dead naked chick breathing (and somehow even though she put her shirt back on before she died she's naked again) but I don't want to put a lot of nudity on my blog (especially heaving breasts, sorry) so here's some gerbils. This movie ought to be fun. Well, not fun, more like trying not to yawn so much. The actors deliver their lines so woodenly you'd think they were reading that fake newspaper.

So Billy, whose already been threatened by a deputy not to talk to Stacy, the office manager where he's interning decides to ask her out for coffee anyway. The deputy sees them and threatens him again. Must have scared him into amnesia 'cause now he doesn't have coffee, he has a coke. Meh, caffeine is caffeine, right? Small oops, I forgot what I was supposed to do. Considering how the rest of the movie goes, this is really no problem.

So the idiots at the harvest festival (which was also obviously held in the Senior Center) still die in the same manner as the ones 20 years ago. Duh. Every freaking person in town handles the only evidence they find: a bloody knife (and I mean it's covered in blood) - so much for preserving evidence. And the Sheriff says the terrible line, "Look guys this isn't a movie - we're not chasing after Freddy or Jason." D-U-H

And the ones that die - are they really dying so they can attend a lame party at a senior center with no decorations save for some dead corn stalks? Really? That's the most fun they have? They better just die then, their lives obviously have no meaning.

Finally after everybody you didn't give a damn about dies and the "killer" is shot by the retired sheriff who thinks he's doing the town a favor, Bill (who I had tagged in the first five minutes, remember) tells dad that everything went according to plan and he's leaving town - but not before smugly smiling and breaking the fourth wall. Why? Ummm, just because? Don't blame Estacada - if this had been THEIR crime, Billy would have gotten his ass thrown in jail in the first ten minutes, like any smart person could have figured out.

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BASED ON A TRUE STORY - SOMEWHERE

THE TRUTH? YOU. CAN'T. HANDLE. THE. TRUTH. WHATEVER IT IS...

Silver Falls aka A Haunting At Silver Falls (2013)

And a haunting we will go.... the only reason I even bothered with this piece of... film is that it was made in Oregon and supposedly based on a true story. Well guess what - it was. Oregon is a real state, there is a town of Stayton and there is a Silver Falls State Park. We'll ignore that the film was actually done in Salem and Silverton. And there has to be an unsolved murder SOMEWHERE in the Country, right? Twins? Ghosts? Hey, it doesn't say the WHOLE movie is a true story. DUH. 

But I must admit I had to make some adjustments on my horror movie worksheet as it threw a couple of curves in what is the most unscary horror movie I have ever seen. Unscary's not a word? Well it's BASED on a true word, so there.

Now as I've been whining on my FB page my arms and hands are currently at about 30% capacity (long boring story - never mind) and people with fibro don't just bounce back so if I take a few shortcuts here I think you can forgive me.

Our young heroine's name is Jordan so I want her dead already. Actually the actress who played her (Alix Gitter - thank mom and dad for THAT moniker) did okay for someone with very little to work with and a whole lot of screen time. So her Twilight excuse for a facial expression is she's lost her mom then her dad and now has to move from L.A. to a podunk town in Oregon. I live in Oregon so I can call them podunk towns with affection. Hey, YOU can't use that expression - it's OUR word! (See how dumb that sounds folks?)

So now she's living with her aunt, who's her mother's twin sister, and her aunt's husband. Right from the start he gives off that creepy vibe so I'm filling in my worksheet with confidence. A lingering look, a touch that's not quite - right and you know something's up or going to be up with that guy. Being the typical teenager, Jordan attends a party at Silver Falls which in this movie is more of a hangout than a park. Of course they're raided and as they all flee through the forest Jordan finds a ring and automatically puts it on and forgets it. Bad, bad rubber piggy.

Now she's starting to be followed by a slimy girl with long hair (sigh) who wants that ring. Why? Why not? She's pursued and it isn't long before everyone she knows is against her, accusing her of being delusional since she has a 'checkered' past - plus the strain of losing her mom to drowning/suicide and her father to leukemia. And the ghost is dogging her and we're getting tired of it 'cause okay, she has a slimy friend but NOTHING IS HAPPENING. No deaths, no scares, no gore.... geez I'd even go for a cheap beheading at this point.

So she finds out that twin girls were murdered by their father, who was tried and convicted and sits on death row, about to be executed. In a brilliant move of parenting and psychology, everyone is convinced she has to talk to him to convince her that she doesn't see ghosts. They arrange for her to see him. On the night of his execution. As he's eating his final ice cream treat. Yeah that happens all the time nowhere in the world ever. 

Oh, and when he sees she's wearing his daughter's ring, she learns it was some signal of unity for all of them, a three piece ring they each wore one piece of. He gives her his... uh, wait. He's a convicted murderer about to be fried and he has personal jewelry on? The movie got stupider and stupider and my already waning interest was getting... wanier. Based on another true word.

Once she has the ring, things change. Now she has BOTH girls following her (Why only one at first? Dunno.) and with their help (Help?) she knows she needs to leave NOW. I would have figured that out myself when they locked her in the bathroom for the night - do that to me once and I'm gone. But... she's being carefully watched until with the power of the two rings (don't ask) makes her bedroom window opens and she sees a school bus with the twins in it. And her locked bedroom door opens. She leaves and gets on the bus. I wish I could have ridden a ghost school bus, it was brand spanking new. Duh.

But it made no sense and that's the main point of the movie - it's a bunch of events that put together make no cohesive story that you can follow. I mean at one point the ghost tries to drown Jordan but she needs her help? The ghost wants the ring back, even mangling Jordan's finger trying to get it but wants her to wear it as it keeps appearing back on her finger even  if she manages to get it off? 

You go through the movie not really going WTH... 'cause it's impossible to care that much. A What? suffices and you won't get answers so don't be disappointed.

So to wrap the movie up since I've already given it a whole lot more coverage than it deserved, Jordan feels she is going mad like her mother. But her mother wasn't mad or suicidal - her aunt killed her. Why? Apparently good ole' aunt and uncle are your ultimate S&M couple and she's the top. She enjoys it - a lot. 

He's into the pleasure, she's into the pain. So their basement is set up for their... games. All bodies (when they're finished with them) get dumped into the Falls. Okay that was... not expected. I thought the uncle would be the baddie - that was sexist of me, wasn't it? The aunt was even more bloodthirsty and psychotic than he was.

I don't really blame myself too much though - this was a formulaic ghost story with a bunch of nonsense events occurring for no particular reason in no particular order. A small twist just added to the confusion. So Jordan and her boyfriend, who refreshingly is a smart, glasses wearing kind of nerdy kid, overpower the two, knock them out, tie 'em up and put them in a in-floor type of box they'd constructed to keep their 'toys' in. Both dead girls are there, watching. 

As Jordan and her boyfriend prepared to leave he says (and I can't believe he could say it with a straight face and she acted like it was the most rational sentence on the planet), "New rule. Ghosts can hurt you - if you hurt them." They smile at each other and leave. The two dead girls wait until the tied up couple wakes up, then descends upon them, knocking the door over the pit closed and we hear screams. Ummm, what? What the hell does that mean and why does that end the story?

Oh well, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, 'cause here comes the credits.

OREGON TRAGEDY THAT NEVER HAPPENED - THIS TIME





15: An Exploration Of Human Violence aka 15: Inside The Mind Of A Serial Killer (2011)

There must be dozens of movies that delve into the minds of serial killers. Here's a brief rundown. They are sick, depraved psychopaths, usually intelligent, who care nothing about anyone but themselves. The end. But this story claimed to be in Oregon, specifically in Portland and Happy Valley. Portland is one of the largest cities on the upper west coast, Happy Valley is a small city in Clackamas County, which is southeast of Portland, more toward the city of Gresham.

Dayton Leroy Rogers

Now the Northwest has had its share of serial killers. Crime writer Ann Rule would be out of business if we didn't. So I looked up statistics just for Oregon since this is where this story claims to have taken place. This is our shameful contribution to the whackjob population:

• Randall "Randy" Woodfield aka The I-5 Bandit, who killed a suspected 18 people from 1979 to 1981
• Robert Silveria aka The Boxcar Serial Killer, who killed a suspected 34+ people in 1995
• Dayton Rogers aka Steve the gambler, who killed 6 people from 1983 to 1987
• Adolf Rode aka Cesar Barone, who killed 5 people from 1980 to 1993
• Gary Ridgeway, aka Green River Killer, who killed a suspected 60 people from 1982 to 1998
• Randy Kraft aka Score-Card Killer, who killed a suspected 51 people from 1971 to 1983
• Keith Jesperson aka Happy Face Killer who killed 8 people from 1990 to 1995

I noticed that these are all from 1970 forward so either they didn't have records before that, or no one had been caught before these examples. This also doesn't cover unsolved crimes, crimes after the 90's, and the fact that several of the above also killed people in other states. Sheesh.

So I mainly watched this uninspired offering just to recognize footage of iconic places around Oregon. This is the basic premise (and total fiction): On April 5th 2011 filmmakers Jack Hamill and Brenda Hill were hired to make a documentary about serial killer Edward Payne. Three weeks later Jack Hamil's partially decomposed remains were found in an abandoned field outside a small town in Oregon. An investigation into the crime led police to a farmhouse on the edge of town. 

Randall Brent Woodfield

What they found there would shake the tight knit community to the core. Nearly a dozen young women were found decomposing in the basement. Stacks of documentary tapes were left on the kitchen table. And the hunt for one of America's most notorious serial killer was set to begin. Witness the birth of a monster with this behind the scenes look into the mind of a killer. And apparently they weren't really proud of their own movie 'cause I couldn't find any pictures.



Whether they're trying to base this on one of the real criminals above, I really doubt it. Most dumped their victims, none kept them in their basements. And it takes the filmmaker an inexcusable 116 minutes to go through this movie that attempt to scare you by combining elements of a psychopath's mind with paranormal activity. Sort of. They try to make this as 'real' as possible and all it does is emphasize that if the crew had a peanut of a brain in between them they'd have run screaming after five minutes.

Cesar Barone

The cameraman, Jack, is only doing this because he's out of work. He answers an ad in Craigslist. Mistake number one. The reporter, Brenda also answered an ad. But Jack finds out that she's already been paid. He nervously brings this up and Edward promises to wire him money immediately. Jack keeps trying to call his wife to see if she got the money but she never answers the phone. Mistake number two. He should have scrambled out of there pronto. But no, we have to sit through while Brenda asks questions, and so does Jack. Edward keeps having hissy fits, going so far as to scream and cry while he tells them that they have to discover why he likes hurting people. Jack keeps trying. Mistake number three and they keep coming.

I'll spare you the loooong moments of supposedly spooky stuff and get to the gist of the thing. I knew right away this was not what it seemed when Brenda 'discovers' the bodies in the basement but doesn't get upset or even seem disturbed - she films everything. Duh.

This is because, of course, Brenda is NOT a reporter - she is Edward's girlfriend. Believe it or not, there are many cases of serial killers carrying out regular relationships, some even have families. When Jack finds this out it is way too late. He wakes to find himself bound to a chair and discovers why his wife never answered the phone. 

She is hung from the ceiling by her wrists as Edward tortures both her and Jack - he finally kills her. Jack screams he wants to die too since Edward took everything away from him. And apparently, according to tape #15 (thus the title) Edward is all too accommodating. Blah.

Great shots of Happy Valley and Portland - I wonder if Powell Books (a VERY familiar place for us Oregonians) appreciated being used as a backdrop for several shots in this movie...

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