The Disappearing and Reappearing Sweatervest and Tie

Title: Motor Home Massacre

Actors/Director/Anything Worth Mentioning Right Away:  The main guy in this movie- Benji- looks a lot like WWE superstar Jack Swagger.   Otherwise, no, there isn’t anything worth noting in here.

Introduction:  This DVD was purchased on eBay for an undisclosed sum.  It was mainly purchased because it has the terms “motor home” and “massacre” in the title.

Location:  While this movie has several sub-locations (a gas station type place, campgrounds) the main setting for this movie is, well, inside a motor home.   Much like “Subterano” can allow you to say “Let’s rent a parking garage and make a movie”, this one shows you that pretty much just renting an RV can get you a decent movie.

Plot:   Instead of your normal cast of four, this movie has seven kids in the main cast- four guys and three girls.   Everyone is pretty much paired off except for the one guy who has the camper (it’s his dad’s) and looks like Jack Swagger.   The guy’s name is Benji and it should also be noted that while everyone else is wearing jeans and t-shirts, he’s got on a long sleeve dress shirt, tie and sweater-vest with some nice slacks and hush puppy shoes.  This immediately caught me as being a bit off, but it remains a running gag throughout the movie (At least to this viewer).   So these kids stop at a gas station and some redneck guy tells them about this story of a killing that happened in the campground they’re headed to for the night.  When the kids get to the campground one of the girls from the original story- Nicole- is there to greet them as a sad young thing that just broke up with her boyfriend.  This pretty much gives it away for me, but I think they still want you to have your second thoughts about Benji being the killer because he is kind of creepy.   So, one by one, you see a masked killer start killing everyone until her mask is finally knocked off and, surprise, it’s Nicole.   Without spoiling too much of the plot, let me just say that I did enjoy the ending (Unless they meant for me to take it seriously).

Acting:  This acting is pretty bad.  The girls just seem to be in this movie because they have big boobs and the guys seem to be in this movie because they didn’t get paid.  At one point, this guy who acts black but is white gets killed, and when Benji goes to check on him he says, “He’s dead!”  While I think Benji was supposed to be feeling something of shock/remorse/sadness and whatever other emotions come from seeing someone dead in front of you (and knowing that you could be next), he actually looks more like he’s laughing or at least smiling.   It’s hilarious.

Sex/Nudity:  There’s one scene in a tent, when the story is being told by the rednecks, when a girl takes off her top, but she dies quickly after that, as the tent gets all stabbed up.  They probably just wanted to have an effect where someone was half naked and covered in blood.  Otherwise, there wasn’t that much in this movie.

Special Effects:  Nicole, as the killer, carries around a machete as her weapon of choice.  However, when she starts killing Benji with it (an act that should look more like slashing), she appears to be simply beating him with it as if it were made out of foam.   Later on, the blonde girl starts hitting Nicole with a frying pan and the sound it makes resembles a gong, which would imply that Nicole herself is also made out of metal.   The blood is there, to an extent, but some kills just aren’t shown and others just aren’t, well, realistic.   At times it almost seems like a cartoon, but I guess the straight up humor in it is what makes it acceptable for me.

Overall Verdict:  At one point in this movie, the blonde girl starts trying to make sense of Nicole’s actions, you know, getting into the mind of the killer.  Nicole says something to her like, “I don’t have to make sense, I have a machete”, which I think is just an awesome line.  I wanted to make a movie where an axe murderer said he was killing everyone simply because he had an axe, and I feel like this kind of did that for me.   Also, it should be noted that Benji is my new favorite character.   First, he goes from being inside to outside of the RV and his tie and sweater-vest magically are either on him or not on him.   (Psssh, you think they had a continuity checker?  I think the guy who directed this is a fan of Ed Wood).   Then after Benji gets “slashed” maybe fifty times by Nicole (which is a hilarious image still in my mind), he comes back in the RV at the end, covered in blood, to declare that he’s just scratched up and when he gets to a hospital he’ll be fine.   What happened to the tearing of the flesh?  Who is this guy, Wolverine?   So for those two reasons alone, this movie is funny in all the right places and otherwise just fun to watch.  You should see this, you really should.