Memorial Valley Massacre

Memorial Valley Massacre (1989) aka Valley of Death aka Son of Sleepaway Camp

Dir. Robert C. Hughes

Written by Robert C. Hughes, George Frances Skrow

Starring John Kerry (!), Mark Mears, John Caso, Lisa Lee

            MEMORIAL VALLEY MASSACRE is pretty much the best you could possibly hope for from a super-obscure, no-budget, 1989 slasher with the word MASSACRE in the title. Which is not to say it is in any way good. That would be much, much better than you could possibly hope for from a super-obscure, no-budget, 1989 slasher with the word MASSACRE in the title. The “best you could hope for” would be that it is incompetent and weird enough to be funny and eventful, which I’m happy to report MEMORIAL VALLEY MASSACRE handily manages. It’s full of enthusiastically terrible actors playing broad, silly characters, features a solid and off-beat slasher hook, and seems generally committed to using all of its non-existent resources to be as frequently entertaining as possible. Absolutely none of that was guaranteed, or even particularly likely (see: SATAN’S BLADE, BRAIN TWISTERS).

            Your first big clue that you can relax and that everything will be OK is that the title, MEMORIAL VALLEY MASSACRE, scrolls onto the screen from the right like a powerpoint slide. Just appearing on-screen isn’t good enough for the title of MEMORIAL VALLEY MASSACRE, it has a deep-seated desire to add zazzle that cannot be contained. It’s a restless, rambling title, it lives somewhere off-screen, ambles in to brighten your day, tips its hat, and then fades away, rides off into the sunset. This is approximately 20 seconds in, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time anxiously wondering it this is gonna be a good movie or not. It is.

            The next big clue that MEMORIAL VALLEY MASSACRE has your best interests at heart comes immediately after that, when a caravan of campers arrive at “Memorial Valley Campground,” only to find that their facilities are not quite ready for opening day. It seems that heartless 1980s Gordon-Gecko-style titan of campground construction Mr. Sangster (hey, is he named after beloved Hammer scribe Jimmy Sangster?) cut some corners on this project, and now his crew, headed by testy foreman George Webster (John Kerry [no, not that one, the one with 71 film and TV roles in everything from DOLEMITE to BLACK DYNAMITE to FROST/NIXON (as “man in disco”)]) wants to delay the big opening while they put the finishing touches on a few minor points, such as functioning toilets. Sangster is having none of it, even after most of the crew quits over all the mysterious incidents which have plagued the construction project, gives the standard “We’re not closing the beach from JAWS” speech, and storms off, leaving any problems to be solved by the surly Webster and Sangster’s fresh-faced, college-boy son David (Mark Mears, no other credits), who has volunteered to help. Problem number one would be, there’s a dead dog contaminating the water supply. Which in itself is not great (why this would make the toilet facilities unusable, I cannot fathom, but go with it), but it’s especially concerning because to get the dog in there, someone had to lift a fifty-pound concrete cover. And we already have a pretty good idea who this was, because we’ve seen that a prehistoric caveman dressed in animal furs has been squatting in the construction shed, and has been driven to violent madness by the barking of the dog.

            So right away you can see two reasons why this is gonna be awesome: first, they got Cameron Mitchell in there for two minutes at the beginning! Don’t worry, I had no idea who that was either until I looked him up a second ago, and discovered he has over 240 acting credits on IMDB (dating back to 1945!) of which I’ve seen at least a dozen, including THEY WERE EXPENDABLE, HELL AND HIGH WATER, Jim Brown’s SLAUGHTER, BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, THE SILENT SCREAM, WITHOUT WARNING, THE SWARM, FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM, and BLOOD LINK. He has two movies in his filmography with “MASSACRE” in the title, three with “SCREAM,” and seven with “KILL”. He did DESIREE with Marlon Brando and a movie called GORILLA AT LARGE in the same year (1954). He also played Jesus Christ (voice, uncredited) in THE ROBE (1953). That is some motherfucking range.

And while I was learning this, I noticed that he hadn’t appeared on-screen since 1995, but despite the handicap of having died in 1994, he has a new movie coming out this year of our Lord 2018. Now, there would have been a time in my life when I found this surprising; you see, kids --you may want to sit down, while ol’ grandpappy Mr. Subtlety tells you about the olden days-- there was a time when death would more or less definitively prevent you from appearing in more movies. We called this ‘The Cushing Rule’ I believe. Nowadays, of course, we all accept that you can just use computers running on money to resurrect the dead in defiance of the will of God, so I assumed that was what happened. But then I checked his new movie out, and -- great Scott!-- it’s Orson Welles’s THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND! Tis a rare thespian indeed who can boast to having worked with both Fred Olen Ray (on 1986’s THE TOMB*) and Orson Welles. What I think I’m saying here is this guy is god damned American hero, and there is almost certainly an alternate timeline where he became president instead of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and led mankind into a new utopian age. But then I guess we wouldn’t have gotten MEMORIAL VALLEY MASSACRE, so, you know, bullet dodged there.

            Anyway, Mr. Mitchell, clearly drawing on the accumulated wisdom and craft he acquired during his work with Mr. Welles, acts up a storm in the two minutes or so he appears, and then departs the movie forever. He will be missed, but lest you worry that a movie wherein Cameron Mitchell doesn’t appear in the final 87 minutes will be unwatchable, I direct you to one other promising factor: the movie is called MEMORIAL VALLEY MASSACRE, but they make sure to mention specifically that it’s taking place over Memorial Day weekend.

Wait, is this actually supposed to be called MEMORIAL DAY MASSACRE? That would sure make a lot more sense, especially from a marketing perspective -- hey, now you’ve got a holiday tradition on your hands, that the family has to haul out their worn and well-loved copy of the MEMORIAL DAY MASSACRE VHS every year, or it just wouldn’t be Memorial Day, dammit.** So at first it seems like some kind of wacky mix-up, like maybe the guy who did the titles was so overwhelmed with excitement by his bold side-scrolling title technique that he forgot to go back and proofread what he actually wrote. But then we see the sign for the camp, and sure enough, it’s “Memorial Valley!” So I guess they’re staying in “Memorial Valley” on Memorial Day? That seems like a weird coincidence, but no one in the movie comments on it. Nor does anyone ever seem to wonder what “Memorial Valley” even means. What is this valley memorializing, exactly? Except maybe the passing of the noble caveman?

            Oh right, yeah, the caveman. Yeah, I kinda glossed over that little detail in my haste to impart upon you the greatness of Cameron Mitchell. Yeah, so this is a slasher film where the gimmick is that the slasher is some kind of feral caveman wearing fright teeth and tattered animal skins and killing the interlopers to his territory using primitive spears, clubs, etc. Unfortunately it does not turn out he was unfrozen from a glacier or is the last survivor of a tribe of Bigfoots or something, and if you want to get unpleasantly technical I suppose he is actually not a caveman and instead is revealed to be (spoiler) an abandoned child who has gone feral after his mother’s death. But come on, look at this motherfucker:

Look, he looks like a caveman, acts like a caveman, has fright teeth and primitive weapons like a caveman, and you know what, we don’t have that many slashers about murderous cavemen, and we’re not gonna let a lot of technical bureaucratic bullshit get in the way of our good time. So yes, this is caveman slasher movie, possibly the Caveman Slasher Movie. Roll with it.

            Anyway, our ostensible hero here is David, the boss’s son, fulfilling the essential role of clean-cut 80’s white boy that was legally mandated for a movie like this back in 1989. Surprisingly, actor Mark Mears (a bit of a mystery man with no other roles listed on IMDB) is not the insufferable smarmy pipsqueak you would assume, but actually a rather likable, amiable hero with a good natured, low-key David Naughton-esque charm.*** It’s honestly one of the least intolerable performances I’ve ever seen for this particular trope, and he’s complemented nicely by Lesa Lee (“Girlfriend” in THE BOYS NEXT DOOR**** in her second-to-last role) who also comes across as almost miraculously canny and likable. Not that it matters in the slightest, of course; the important characters in an 80’s slasher are not the heroes, but the body count.

Also, I feel I should mention that several sites suggest this movie was also re-titled as a SLEEPAWAY CAMP sequel!

            Fortunately, MEMORIAL VALLEY MASSACRE is absolutely swimming in goofy, cartoonish body count characters, and clearly understands only too well the lightning it’s caught in a bottle, because the movie is about 80% composed of little comedy vignettes with these goofballs, with the slashing really only appearing as a kind of palate cleanser between the wacky hijinks. First and most promising, you’ve got Walter (David S. Perry, nothing) a whining, bloated manchild who runs back to his parents (Michael Spenard and B.B. Selco, also nothing) at the first sign that he won’t get his way, and is frankly just such a spectacularly unappealing character in every imaginable way that he belongs in the annals of slasher history right up there with Shelly from FRIDAY THE 13th PART III, Gordy from THE WILLIES, or, of course, their king, Allen from RETURN TO SLEEPAWAY CAMP. Unfortunately he bites it with undue haste, but never fear, because we’re still left with a trio of adult biker couples,***** a tough guy general (William Smith, RED DAWN, ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN) named “General Mintz” and his wife “Pepper Mintz” (Linda Honeyman, good God, her one other movie is THE AMERICAN SCREAM! What a career!), a ménage a trois of horny adolescent kids (Zig Roberts [only one other movie, 16 years later], Michael Inglese [nothing] and Erin O’Leary [assistant grip on THE PIANO?!]), who are trying to work out what combination of them is going to end up fucking, and a kindly exposition-prone fellow named Deke who seems to be an employee but whose exact job is unclear (Jimmy Justice, unfortunately as far as I can tell not the same James Justice who may or may not have written and/or directed WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK).

Between them all, they weave a rich, ridiculous tapestry of enthusiastic, colorful performances, none of them even remotely approaching “acting” in the traditional sense, but all pretty delightful and eager to entertain, if you’re in the mood for that special kind of bad acting which makes 80’s slashers so special. And lest you think this is just another lazy, low-effort slog through mumbled scenes of poorly mic’d dialogue, never fear, there’s some actual production value here too. There’s a real bear, a guy lit on fire, a huge fiery explosion, a couple low key dirtbike stunts, and other signs of general hustle, like some long tracking shots through the woods, which couldn’t have been easy to pull off. So we’ve got a bit of whammy in addition to the comfortable surfeit of wacky characters.

I mean, just look at this dipshit.

What MEMORIAL DAY MASSACRE does not have a surfeit of, unfortunately, is awesome kill scenes. It goes without saying that that a movie like this is not going to inspire white-knuckled edge-of-your-seat suspense, but even so, it’s a bit of a letdown that most of the kills take place during the day in the sun-dappled woods, and mostly (though not entirely) without much notable gimmickry. The body count is actually pretty high, but the caveman seems to be a disappointingly pragmatic serial killer, mostly sticking to efficient but not-very-colorful staples like stabbings and spearings. He does stay pretty faithfully to his theme of being a caveman, though, leading to a battle between the primitive and the modern which is half John Rambo, half Ewoks vs Stormtroopers. Highlights include a sequence in which, after dispatching a pesky dirtbike ride a la PUMPKINHEAD, he unsuccessfully attempts to bludgeon the bike to death, a brutal tiger pit sequence which offers us the movie’s best gore twice, and a final kill which is (spoiler for two movies) a dead ringer, both practically and narratively, for THE FINAL TERROR.

            Director Robert C. Hughes does not have a very extensive filmography,****** but he did another lost-in-the-woods slasher called HUNTER’S BLOOD a few years before this, and, more intriguingly, a feature from the same year called ZADAR! COW FROM HELL (not related to ZEDER, or Robert Z'Dar, as far as I can tell) which is a comedy about a crew trying to make a low-budget horror movie in their hometown, using the locals as extras. That one doesn’t exactly scream “great cinema” either, but it cements my impression of Hughes as a guy who gets it. A hustler, to be sure --you don’t make a movie with the word “Massacre” in the title without being a hustler -- but a hustler with some real affection for the hustle. The kind of guy who would end his killer caveman slasher with a completely unsupportable, but also completely earnest, moment of bittersweet reflection contrasting the savagery of nature with its rugged beauty. It’s dumb as rocks, of course, but that’s OK. I appreciate the effort. MEMORIAL VALLEY MASSACRE is a big dumb golden retriever of a movie, not very useful or even trained properly, but pretty difficult not to love.

* IMDB Plot keywords: “murder of a nude woman.” You may remember this title because we discussed it as one of the many horrible adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Jewel of the Seven Stars back during our lengthy investigation of Hammer’s BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY’S TOMB.

** Actually I looked it up and there was a real-life "Memorial Day Massacre" when Chicago cops opened fire on striking Steel workers in 1937. So my guess is that the makers of this film, like me, did not realize that was already a real thing and had to pivot on the title late in production when someone pointed it out. In fact, there's even a poster with the title "Memorial Day" that you can still find online.

*** If you don’t know who David Naughton is, you’re also probably not the sort of person who would read a review of a movie called MEMORIAL VALLEY MASSACRE, so we’re just going to assume we’re on the same page about that.

*** THE BOYS NEXT DOOR, incidentally, was directed by Penelope Spheeris and written by Glen Morgan and James Wong! And it features Blackie Dammett, Moon Unit Zappa, and apparently an actor named “Don Draper.”

***** Eddie D (whose IMDB filmography is pretty sparse, but whose IMDB biography page is pretty interesting) Charles Douglass (SHORT EYES, episodes of Star Trek:The Next Generation and TV’s Falcoln Crest) Dan S. Famou (nothing) Lyvingston Holmes (“black woman” in PROPHECY) Karen Russell (“topless woman” in HELLBENT) and Christina Sullivan (one other movie from 1997 that has no reviews and no images of any kind on IMBD)

****** Co-writer George Francis Skrow has even less credits, but his other movie is called BACK TO BACK and stars Bill Paxton and Apollonia, so that’s a pretty good career, right there.

I think you should personally buy this special edition of Memorial Day Massacre from this random website that totally, for sure has the rights, and produced this awesome box art.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2017 CHECKLIST!

The Discreet Charm of the Killing Spree

TAGLINE	Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back To The Tent
TITLE ACCURACY	I mean, technically correct in that there is a “Memorial Valley” in the movie, and a small massacre takes place there. But it seems like the most uncommunicative title possible for a movie about a killer caveman who appears on Memorial Day.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	No
SEQUEL?	None
REMAKE?	No
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	USA
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Slasher, Survival Thriller
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Beloved star of stage and screen Cameron Mitchell!
NUDITY?	There’s a sex scene where a shirt comes off, but it’s pretty tame and I don’t think you really see anything. The wet-T-shirt dance scene is somewhat more revealing, though not technically nudity
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	Yeah the caveman gets a little rapey with one victim; fortunately in his enthusiasm he breaks her spine before things get too serious
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	A bear terrifies some campers by sticking its head in their tent, but he seems pretty harmless. I guess a dog attacks the caveman and gets what’s coming to it.
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	No
POSSESSION?	None
CREEPY DOLLS?	None
EVIL CULT?	No
MADNESS?	Feral child?
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	None
VOYEURISM?	Nah
MORAL OF THE STORY	That movie THE CAVEMAN’S VALENTINE should have totally been a sequel set over Valentine’s Day Weekend.

I can't in good conscience go above 3 thumbs for something this crappy, but consider it a strong C+