Powerful

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

I think the makers of "Memorial Valley Massacre" may have been trying to capture the heyday of the slasher film even as the genre was on its last legs. Squeaky-voiced fat kid? Check! Slutty Girl? Check! Cameron Mitchell? Check! I'm just still not sure if they meant it to be a comedy or not.Plotwise, we've got people at a campground and some murders. But there IS a discussion about torrential rain that won't let up, even when it's obviously bone dry. It also becomes Memorial Day at 5am too. That reminded me of Slaughter High, where April Fool's day ends at noon. MVM has a decent body count but no real gore (at least in the version I have). And it seems to go on forever, even with a mere 90-minute runtime. Absolutely awful.

A rich landowner and a rugged, alcoholic outdoorsman open up a campground to raise money for surrounding projects (shopping malls and such). But in the maiden weekend of camping, the campers face a bear, nasty storms and a hermit caveman who is none too fond of his peace being ruined.The film has some standard 80s staples: punk kids, a few token blacks (though, unlike many horror films, not killed off right away), a campground (see "Friday the 13th" or "Sleepaway Camp"), metal music, topless girls, etc. If you like 80s horror (and I do) you will find some familiar themes here and that's a good thing, in my opinion. But even a good set-up doesn't always make for the best follow-through.The death scenes are really weak. And the problem with that is, I am not sure if this movie was trying to be a horror film or a comedy. It's not scary enough to really be a true horror film, but not funny enough to be a comedy. What it ends up being is a bland mix of both. The same goes for the caveman: he is in no way threatening, but also not really funny. So what happens? He ends up just being bland and dumb, being more silly than anything. Not to mention the makeup department did a horrible job, and his background story makes no sense. (I won't give it away, but let's just say he comes across a lot more primitive than you'd expect.) Somebody, somewhere loves this film and probably watches it and screens it for friends. I am not that guy. I have no doubt I will some day watch it again, but I can't say it will be soon and I can't imagine why I would unless there was some sort of money or alcohol involved. If you need to see one more 80s film where campers get hacked up, this is your film. Otherwise, just listen to Weird Al's "Nature Trail to Hell"... it's actually less cheesy and more graphic.

If we are going to stack movies against each other, this is the best I can do. I don't know if this the biggest wastes of time I've ever used, but it ranks up there. We have a pack of rednecks and "bad kids" staying at a dumb looking campground. Running around is a guy who apparently knows how to make clothes out of animal skins, but can't help breaking the necks and backs of the campers. The principle characters are campy and stupid, as are the people running the camp. It's just that there is no effort to make things even remotely interesting. There is a wet t-shirt, some biker talk, and some kids harrassing the stupidist looking people on the face of the earth. I knew I was in trouble when the title came on from the right. As if someone had an overhead projecter and put it over the film, already in progress. Sometimes I have fun with these silly rip off movies. This one was just horrible.

You know you're in trouble when a movie trots out the toilet paper before the 10-minute mark. A bunch of cranky campers have come out for the grand opening of Memorial Valley, which is plagued by negatory vibes (dead dog in the well); woe be unto the unfortunate souls who decide to stay, because a Beastmaster-type with poor oral hygiene is stalking our resident idiots (horny, mullet-headed teens; drunk program director; his Ivy League apprentice). Many phony-looking deaths ensue, plus a twist that's completely obvious the moment it's 'revealed.' "Memorial Valley Massacre" is an inferior rip on Wes Craven's "The Hills Have Eyes" (which wasn't that great to begin with), with a pulse that alternates between campy humor and stone-cold seriousness (or at least as much as a film like this can convey); as a result of the tonal indecision, it becomes an unintentional hoot, perfect for a MST3K-style skewering ("Space Mutiny" star Cameron Mitchell even has a cameo!).