Midnight Madness: Camp Blood 3-5

Going to end this week of sexy slashers with something much less sexy in my first Midnight Madness post. These are for movies that are kind of off topic for the blog, but still have that Up All Night, found it at the video store bargin bin feel. So, I give you Camp Blood 3-5. These movies are all over free streaming sites, and new films get released regularly still, so I thought I would give them a look. The general gist of all these movies is that people camp out at Camp Blood and a someone in a mask kills them. There is some backstory, but I am going to be honest, it made no sense to me. Nor does it have to.

Starting with part 3, Camp Blood: First Slaughter we are introduced to Camp Blackwood, which is really just a small wooded trail. People keep deciding to camp out there, and they keep getting murdered. A group of college students attempt to figure out if the legends are real. They do this even after seeing video footage of people being killed there. 

This is probably the best of the three that I watched. It isn't great. This is prime shot on video material, and feels super cheap. They tried, though. What gore they could manage looks okay, and the pacing isn't terrible. It still feels like a movie that someoen put some time into. I have to give it credit for that. I have seen better shot on video movies, but this one is okay enough where I decided to keep watching. 

Movies 4 and 5 on the other hand are essentially unwatchable. Plot is that a bunch of 20-somethings going to a concert spend the night in the woods. Someone stabs them. That footage is then flashed back to us in the next movie when the survivor goes to therapy. 

These things are padded to the extreme. The 4th film actually includes essentially the last fifteen minutes of the third film, and the rest is dialogeless shots of the killer walking around doing nothing, or people putting on make up. When the story does kick in, it is shot at night and impossible to see. The 5th movie is even worse, featuring almost all of the 4th movie, but also 20 minutes worth of footage from two other films just kind of cut in as our main character watches a movie with her mom. There is maybe fifteen minutes of new footage in this one. Maybe. It feels like it took its lead from Silent Night, Deadly Night 2. Just show them the last movie again with a few new bells and whistles. 

As painful as 4 and 5 were to watch, I did still have some weird form of nostalgic fun with these. These movies are rough around the edges, and have the flavor of a homemade production. There is something special to that. Even if the final products aren't very good. These people are making a movie because they want to make a movie. They went out and did it. That is more than most want to be film makers can say. There is something charming about that, and that is part of the reason I keep getting drawn back to ultra-low budget films. There is a charm to them.

Having said that, these movies committed my cardinal sin. They were boring. Even First Slaughter was pretty snoozy. I'm going to give these movies a lot of grace, though, because I'm pretty sure the budgets on these were like... $800 bucks. I mean, they are on Tubi so watching them is pretty low risk. I did read that part 6 is better. So I am probably not done with this series yet. What can I say. I'm a glutten for punishment.

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