The press kit to Caesar & Otto’s Summer Camp Massacre says in part that this film “Succeeds where Return to Sleepaway Camp failed.” Whereas the original Sleepaway Camp was even more disturbing than summer camp slashers such as The Burning, Return… was a dismal and pointless waste of time and resources. So to compare a film favorably to a failure doesn’t exactly set the bar very high. Still, Caesar & Otto… does boast a pair of female horror icons (Sleepaway Camp’s Felissa Rose and scream queen Brinke Stevens), and according to the packaging is “Now with Hot Chicks!” So we’ll see how this splatter/comedy stacks up.
Caesar (Dave Campfield) and Otto Denovio (Paul Chomicki) are brothers who have an Odd Couple thing going on: Caesar’s the young prissy one who works as a cab driver-slash-actor, while Otto is the perpetually unemployed bloated guy with gray and greasy old man hair. When Caesar loses his job after a “road rage incident” in which the “mentally challenged” brother of the police chief gets smacked around, the search is on for the “armed and dangerous, and very flamboyant” suspect.
Which means that Caesar and Otto have a new life to search for. Going on the run the brothers hit the road, and after a brief interview with Sheen family lamprey Joe Estevez, Caesar scores them gigs as camp counselors. And it’s off to Camp Sunsmile in the California mountains for some easy livin’. They hope…
For a week the brothers and the other winning camp counselors are to endure a training period under the dandy eye of head counselor Jerry Griffin (Ken MacFarlane). Besides Caesar and Otto you’ve got aspiring actresses Monique (Jen Nikolaus) and Sylvia (Dawn Burdue), Dick the dick (Deron Miller), sad sack Giselle (AD and multi-tasker Summer Ferguson), Chip the ‘professional swimmer’ (Trai Byers), Larry the bum, another aspiring actor (Derek Crabbe), inspirational softie Drew (Avi K. Garg), and loner Carrie (Felissa Rose). Not to mention the foreign Nurse Helen (Robin Ritter). In short the pickin’s are ripe, so to speak.
There’s a cursory getting-to-know-you period, and before you know it counselors are getting hacked up left and right. One is decapitated with a hatchet as he tries to get intimate with one of the young ladies, who in turn wisely runs to the toolshed and picks up a chainsaw for defense. But that goes horribly wrong. Another guy gets the hatchet treatment, and another girl is killed before she even has the opportunity to get properly topless.
Caesar and Otto’s father Frank (Scott Aguilar) has shown up at the campsite and has been mooching around for days, ripping off the other counselors and generally being a pain in the ass. At the same time the perpetually unlucky in love Otto, whose ex Sashi (Brinke Stevens) still calls him up to bail her out of jail, begins a romance with Nurse Helen. With all of that going on, along with the crew wondering what the hell the deal is with Carrie, there’s really not much concern over the missing counselors until the skin of one of them falls out of a tree. Caesar runs around freaking out, while another counselor is chopped up with a shovel and yet another is horribly scarred by a vat of Charlton Heston’s biohazardous waste.
Caesar and Otto prepare to run away, but Caesar just has to go through Carrie’s tent first. After all she has become the resident oddball of the group, and inside her tent Caesar finds that she keeps a collection of photographs and newspaper clippings of camp massacres.
When Frank disappears his boys go looking for him, only to find him trussed up in a makeshift operating theater, about to be dissected. It becomes clear that the camp isn’t at all what it seems, harboring a dark and deranged secret that…can’t be disclosed without spoiling the ‘surprise’ ending. The effectiveness of which is debatable, but, here’s a hint, look for the feet.
The film succeeds in making a joke out of the horror genre, but it isn’t a very funny one; neither the gore nor the gags really establish themselves strongly enough to make the picture stand out. Smart-assedness abounds, more so than the action, with character quirks and brief sight gags eating into the running time without really furthering suspense or plot development. The forced slapstick (a kick in the ass, a punch to the bread basket, an arm pulled off) doesn’t always work, and some of the jokes are a little forced (rock soup?). And hey man, where’s the breasts? You really need a few of those, bucketloads more blood and guts, and some truly filthy jokes to successfully pull off the “horror-comedy crossover.” You can mention your fondness for Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein as often as you like, but it’s a hungry 21st Century market out there.
Despite resembling a young David Duchovny, Campfield has an unfortunately spastic Andy Dick thing working against him which is kind of hard to watch for 75 minutes at a time. In fact, the filmmakers’ efforts might be better directed towards a series of shorter cable TV episodes than a feature film; and as Campfield promises to have many more Caesar and Otto stories to tell, that might indeed be the best venue for them.
Loads of Sleepaway Camp references only serve to remind the viewer that, ‘Hey, it’s been awhile since I last saw that one…’ while at the same time pointing out, again, which is the finer film. Yes, we get it, this is a spoof and you’ve worked with Felissa Rose before.
“Shot in ten days on a budget less than El Mariachi’s,” it is what it is. Not entirely without its charm or minor amusements, but probably not a flick you’re going to be watching again, either.
Bonus features include a trailer, a “Making of” segment that takes viewers “Behind the Massacre,” and a collection of alternate and extended scenes.
– Tom Crites
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
