Review: Blood Lake (1987)

Directed by: Tim Boggs
Starring: Doug Barry, Angela Darter, Mike Kaufman
Written by: Doug Barry
Music by: Russell D. Allen
Country: United States
Available on: DVD (AGFA/Bleeding Skull!)
IMDb

There is lake but little blood in Tim Boggs’ ode to water skiing, glam metal, and slovenly murder-cowboys with petty real estate-based grudges. What we’ve got in this “classic” shot-on-video menagerie is 88 minutes of the purest Oklahoma horror. It’s quite unfortunate for everyone, however, that Oklahomans have a shitty concept of horror that primarily consists of sitting around various tables mumbling sex jokes that no one can hear through the single boom mike 17 miles yonder.

This is supposedly a slasher, but the first murder (outside of the abruptly chaotic one that opens this flick) doesn’t occur until the movie’s two-thirds over. Leading to that point, we’ve got some characters, who I’m fairly certain had names but which I couldn’t produce at gunpoint, ribbing each other about the potency of their penii while they recreate by the titular body of water. The mostly nonsensical and inaudible dialog mush is spearheaded by the youngest shit-talking pervert ever captured on film, Lil’ Tony. This horny lad of maaaaaybe 12 and his precocious pursuit of poontang almost keeps this flick from careening into banality, but not quite. For a reason that’s never divulged, these party people decided to drag along two pre-teens to their weekend getaway, and it’s strongly implied the two have sex at some point, a development that bothers exactly no one. Although to be fair, nothing really sets off these youngsters, who are all nonplussed at the brutal murder of their pal (when it eventually rolls around). Our heroes misidentify the killer — a ponderous man dressed in cowboy boots, ill-fitting jeans, and a silken Western shirt who is clearly in his 50s or 60s — as 40, which, as a 41-year-old, was absolutely harmful to my psyche.

Thankfully our man Boggs loves some fuckin’ Voyager, and allows a couple of their tunes to play in their entirety while our characters ski, ski, ski across the tepid waters of the Sooner State. The metallic sounds of Voyager, in tandem with some brooding 8-bit synths, are the highlight of this endless, merciless hangout. But again, this tease of entertainment is dampened by the expected lack of technical prowess that includes the aforementioned audio oatmeal and night scenes filmed by the light of a star that died 5,000,000 years ago. The last 10 minutes are kind of okay, and there’s an absolutely unrelated but nonetheless quite fascinating final shot of the lake, dried, abandoned, and ethereally morose — but also sort of a lo-fi facsimile of Fulci’s The Beyond.

Look, there’s not much here to recommend on the merits. Blood Lake is easily one of the most drearily mundane horror movies I’ve seen. It was made by one dude, mainly, and some friends or relatives or random suckers he roped into making it with him for nothing but the fun of it and maybe some free burritos. It’s not good. Despite the doldrums, there’s a hint of that SOV magic, that can-do-though-perhaps-shouldn’t-ever-do attitude that sustained the zaniest auteurs of the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Overall rating: 4.5 out of 10