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Camping del Terrore
Body Count
Camping della Morte / The Eleventh Commandment
Italy / USA 1987
produced by Alessandro Fracassi for Racing Pictures
directed by Ruggero Deodato
starring Bruce Penhall, Mimsy Farmer, David Hess, Luisa Maneri, Nicola Farron, Andrew J.Lederer, Stefano Madia, John Steiner, Nancy Brilli, Cynthia Thompson, Valentina Forte, Ivan Rassimov, Elena Pompei, Charles Napier, Sven Kruger, Lorenzo Grabau, Stefano Galantucci, Clelia Fradella, Fabio Vox
written by Alessandro Capone, Dardano Sacchetti, Luca D'Alisera, Sheila Goldberg, music by Joel Goldsmith, Claudio Simonetti
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
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Even though the campground of Robert (David Hess) and Julia (Mimsy
Farmer) Ritchie is closed to the public after a murder that happened
twelve years ago and Robert has since set up mantraps all around the
place, a group of teenagers (Bruce
Penhall, Luisa
Maneri, Andrew
J. Lederer, Stefano
Madia, Nancy
Brilli, Cynthia
Thompson, Elena
Pompei, Sven
Kruger) put up camp there, mainly because they made friends with
the Ritchies' son Ben (Nicola Farron). Of course, soon enough a maniac in
the mask of a shaman starts killing off the teens.
Oddly enough, our teenagers do not seem in the least concerned that
their numbers are rapidly decreasing and that noone ever comes back from the
bathhouse - where the shaman prefers to do his killings.
Meanwhile, Robert and Julia have a marital dispute, that ends with both
of them trying to kill each other, with Robert finally succeeding.
Then, with our group of teens shrunk down to four, they finally realize
that they're in danger ... what they don't know though is that one of them
is the killer, Ben, who has witnessed the killings 12 years ago and has
since gone mad, most probably because the killer was his father. But
before Ben can kill all our teenagers, he is shot dead by the Sheriff
(Charles Napier). Then the Sheriff wants to go after Robert, too ... but
Robert is killed by a real Shaman (!).
Genre faves John Steiner and Ivan Rassimov can be seen in this one as
local physician and deputy, respectively. Neither role has any impact on
the film's proceedings.
By and large, director Ruggero Deodato is known as a dilligent
craftsman with the occasional touch of greatness (mainly Cannibal
Holocaust), in Body Count though, his talents are sadly
wasted: Body Count is a mindless teen slasher that follows the formula of
countless other (American) teen slashers to the t and even emulates the
impersonal style of these films. It's got everything you would expect from
such a film: teenagers that do their best to stay one-dimensional,
atrocious 80's pop music, a masked killer who gives away his identity way
too soon to stay within the genre formula, a few explicit but not very
inventive murder scenes, and a silly shock ending. Ultimately there is
nothing in Body Count that one has not seen in hundreds of other
slashers that came before and after it and that were not the least bit
more interesting as it is.
In other words, a disappointment.
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