Categories
Movies

Three and a half reasons I love “Blood Orgy at Beaver Lake”

Everyone has one good love song, one good novel and maybe one good movie in them, and the real achievement of digital culture is that more folks– everyday regular folks like you and me– can have the opportunity to record that one good song, write that one good novel and even make that one good movie. I wish I could say that “Blood Orgy at Beaver Lake” was the one good movie destined to the folks at Silver Bullet Pictures. I can’t. It’s crap. But let me celebrate the 3 and half things I really sincerely LOVE about this weird, half-camp/half-bullshit horror movie, okay?

The first thing I celebrate at the top of my lungs to all that will hear, and that’s the poster for this film. The poster for “Blood Orgy at Beaver Lake” is probably the best movie poster I have ever seen in my whole life. The guy at The Lost Highway does excellent work. I have his rendition of a Hellraiser and a Trick ‘r Treat, but he really out did himself with this poster for “Blood Orgy at Beaver Lake.” It does everything a great trailer does: it sets the tone, hits some of the high points and makes you really, really want to see the movie. If you get absolutely NOTHING out of this review, get your ass over to their website and buy the poster. Buy two and give one to your gramma.

The second thing I unabashedly love about “Blood Orgy at Beaver Lake” is that it’s a complete feature length movie, and for that matter, it’s not the only complete feature film made by those weirdos at Silver Bullet Pictures. Digital video means that every idiot with a cell phone can shoot and edit a movie, but to be honest, not many folks do. It’s a drag to shoot enough footage, a severe bummer to edit it down and Lord save me from the drudgery required to produce a DVD, even if I must question if any time whatsoever was spent writing, directing and acting this piece of shit. Most poseurs wimp out long before half way through and never even complete a single film, let alone a full length feature. Silver Bullet Pictures have a half dozen complete feature films including Blood Orgy at Beaver Lake, available on DVD and in some cases even on VHS. I’ve sat through several of them, including “Heavy Mental VHS” which received distribution by Troma– which should give you a really good indication of the aesthetic operating here.

The third thing I abso-fucking-lutely LOVE about “Blood Orgy at Beaver Lake” is that Silver Bullet Pictures are based in the Detroit area. How many kids in Detroit grow up thinking they’d like to, I dunno, work at a casino or move someplace warm. Kids my age thought they’d work for Fords. These folks make goddammed movies, for fuck’s sake. How cool is that? Making a movie is a gazillion times cooler than any stupid party you had planned for Saturday night. These folks actually DO the stuff that you dream about doing.

The half point is that I sort of get “trash culture,” the campy, nearly bizarro weirdness that seems to guide Silver Bullet Pictures. If I squint and drink a lot of beer, I can frequently make it through a whole movie, say one distributed by Troma pictures, without suffering a blast of anal leakage. Lord knows, I’ve championed John Waters since the first time I saw Polyester but honestly, too many folks hide behind John Waters’ coat tail, IHMO without having the authenticity of being gay, outrĂ© and stranded in 1970’s era Baltimore. Too many folks borrow Water’s aesthetic and are too afraid to hang their balls on the line and actually attempt to MEAN something. Am I just being Midwest sentimental to think that “Blood Orgy at Beaver Lake” lands a bit on the positive side of that divide?

Saints preserve me, but I have the perverse sense that if Silver Bullet Pictures continue to make movies–and I summon all infernal powers and heavenly forces to help ensure they do keep at it–eventually they will find their own weird and express the uniquely bizarre and disturbing reality that is found in southeastern Michigan. Until then, when they produce that one good movie that I can champion without reservation, at least buy the poster for “Blood Orgy at Beaver Lake,” willya?

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #84 Bees and Spiders…and Nazis?

I was at a summer camp area for grown ups with those typical uninsulated, wooden cabins and a large meeting building that had lots of windows. The person in charge of the camp raised bees, normal, safe, honey-producing bees. They seemed almost domesticated, peaceful. But there was some kind of threat from up the road, or further out in the county from more violent, invasive bees. The person in charge of the camp could tell this somehow by a little crust of honeycomb he found on one of the paths. The bees knew there was something up too since they all took to flight and there was a very loud and intense buzzing sound everywhere. We all gathered in the meeting hall – probably two dozen men and women – and kept looking up the road for the invasion to happen. But I looked behind us, to the garden area where I saw these huge spiders advancing on us in huge hops. The spiders were probably two meters across with hairy arms striped black and a vivid yellow green. I yelled to alert our troops but the spiders had already started to spray our building with web. But either it was a strange kind of web or it dissolved when it contacted the honey because the webs dissolved and the liquid poured down the windows, trapping the dead soldiers in a clear wall of something that felt like liquid glass. As it hardened, this glass-like substance gave off fumes that sort of drove people crazy. Everyone who had survived stripped off all their clothes and started running around naked, yelling with great excitement about the important things they were going to do with their lives, now that they’d survived this attack. One by one, they ran out of the building, which I didn’t think was a good idea mostly because I wasn’t certain that the battle was over. Then a marrionette entered from the back of the building, from the door where the survivors had exited. He was probably three feet tall and was dressed like an SS Nazi field officer. I knew that couldn’t be good so I jumped on him and easily over-powered him (killed him? Can you really kill a marionette?) Just inside his jacket I found a folded up piece of heavy paper that had the invasion plans. But before I could open it up, I woke.