Bruce Cook
Never heard of this one? Well, that's probably
because the only VHS release appears to have been on the Canadian label Astral
Video. Another likely reason for this film's obscurity is that it's pretty much
a huge misfire and can never quite decide just what kind of movie it wants to be.
There are elements of survivalist film, teen comedy, redneck action, backwoods
horror and quirky black humor, but none of it quite gels either together or
apart. Terrible dialogue, long, boring stretches where nothing much happens and
mostly awful acting don't help matters any either. World-famous botanist and
professor Dr. Ian Cook Finch (Jerry Lee) organizes a trip into the California wilderness with
five students. Graduate assistant Ed ("Steve" / Stuart Quan) is a short,
nerdy Asian-American who knows karate, is used for annoying comic relief with his
obsession with animal droppings and goes by the nickname "Dorf." Jason (Bobby Sands) is an alpha jock with a
bleached mullet, April (Tracy Hatton) is a big-haired, big-breasted slut,
Jamie (Brenda Vance) is a cheerleader with a morbid sense of humor and
Freddie (Eric Bishop) isn't given much of a personality at all. The six
stop by a gas station, get into a fight with a couple of rednecks and finally
meet Sheriff John Hardash (Bob Walker), who pretty much tells them
they're not wanted there and that he doesn't want any of their "preversions" up
on his mountain.
The professor takes the students into the woods, where they walk around, collect
water, soil, plant and scat samples, camp out, wash up in a creek and do other
boring things while talking about nothing much in particular. This goes on for
the entire first half of the movie and it's all utterly useless and boring.
While all of that is going on, we get to see glimpses of deranged biochemist
Omar Capulet (Manuel Alvarado) in action. Omar lives in a secluded cabin in
the forest where he's attempting to create a new kind of cocaine and tends to
cocoa plants in a lab / greenhouse while listening to "Dance of the Sugar Plum
Fairy" and watching It's a Wonderful Life on TV. Omar doesn't like intruders, so he sends out his
huge, muscular idiot manservant Lummis (played by professional bodybuilder and
1980 Mr. America winner Gary Leonard) out to spy on the
campers. Being the bumbling moron he is, Lummis destroys their car with a wrench
and sledgehammer and attempts to shoot one of the ladies with a crossbow. She
freaks out, falls and hits her head on a rock. The group splits up, with some
going into town for help and the others setting out into the forest to find out
what's going on. Eventually everyone clashes together at Omar's house.
There's a long karate fight between Lummis and Dorf (Quan is a trained martial artist who also had
small roles in
Big Trouble in Little China, License to Kill and numerous other action films), death by crossbow bolt,
POV stalking camerawork, puking, the slutty girl in a wet t-shirt and a scene
where the sheriff crashes a live TV broadcast with a polka band and dancers. At
the very end, there's finally a tiny amount of blood when one of the
students is tortured by getting his finger cut off, face drilled and teeth
grinded down with a sander, and is shot in the head. Based on how light and
goofy the majority of the rest of the movie is, this scene seems completely out
of place, and therein lies another huge problem: This film is completely unable
to find the right tone. It was filmed in North Fork, Bass Lake and Fresno, California in
the Fall of 1987 and carries a 1988 copyright date, though the film wouldn't
make its VHS debut until 1991. I have no idea whether it was screened theatrically
or not but I seriously doubt it.
Though listed as different people on IMDb, I'm pretty sure this director is the same
Bruce R. Cook who directed the bizarre Nightwish (1989) since several of the
production people worked on both of those as well as Brian
Yuzna's SOCIETY (1989). Executive producer Randolph Cohlan went on the make
his own low budget genre movie: the
werewolf film NIGHT SHADOW (1989). It also wasn't very good either (though
better than this one), was barely released and also starred Vance and Quan.
★
