Background: Following When a Killer Calls, they made a cash-in on The Omen called 666: The Child, both of which dropped on the infamous release date of June 6, 2006. I wasn't able to get ahold of the movie but it might've been decent considering it gets a sequel the following year. At first glance, this appears to be a cash-in on the Halloween franchise but claims to be an original film as opposed to the typical mockbusters The Asylum is known for. Written by Michael Gingold, the editor of Fangoria since 1990.
Plot: A psycho escapes from an insane asylum and goes on a killing spree after crashing a Halloween bash in this scary slasher film based on actual events that took place in 1982. Derek Osedach, Rebekah Kochan, Scot Nery, Sean Durrie, Alicia Klein, Erica Roby. Directed by Mark Atkins. - Rotten Tomatoes
Rebekah Kochan, who played the babysitter in When a Killer Calls, and Derek Osedach (Frank, the fuck up) are both in this.
The movie starts with a kid hiding under the bed as his parents are being held at gunpoint by two intruders wearing masks. The mother is molested before being shot.
The father says something about how they weren't "supposed" to kill her. The mother is barely alive when they shoot her again in the head, the effects for the headshot are actually pretty decent! The bullet exiting her skull hits a steam pipe that the kid is now inexplicably standing next to (why is there a giant pipe in this room?) and the steam burns his face. The scene crossfades to a white mask that looks an awful lot like the Michael Myers mask from Halloween.
Skip ahead 10 years and it's Halloween day, the burnt kid is now in an mental institution. He no longer has lips and his entire body looks like beef jerky, so I'm just going to call him Jerky-Man.
Two orderlies are taunting Jerky-Man by wearing a masks the same masks the intruders were wearing while raping and killing his mother, causing him to (understandably) go apeshit and kill both of them before escaping The Asylum. (har har)
The effects of Jerky-Man ripping out the orderly's throat are decent but his disfigured face is so obviously a mask because his mouth doesn't move when he grunts inside it.
Cut to a group of young people visiting their friend who's preparing for a Halloween party. The group heads into the house where we're treated to a lesbians make out session.
 |
| And tits! |
The guy throwing the party, David, goes to the bus station to pick up some generic leather jacket and sunglasses wearing "bad boy" named Daryll.
This is part of an elaborate "prank" that doesn't really make sense. Todd and his girlfriend are transporting a costume and bunch of medieval weapons that are illegal in the state they're in. They pass a police checkpoint where they find out the Jerky-Man escaped
Jerky-Man was hiding in one of the stalls at a random gas station. Luckily for him, Todd picks this particular gas station bathroom to change into his costume, bringing a big box of knives and weapons with him that Jerky-Man conveniently uses to kill Todd and steal his costume.
The similarities to Halloween are hard to ignore but they address one of the issues people usually have with the Carpenter classic. In Halloween, Michael Myers escapes the mental institution and steals a car. Fans have always questioned how someone who spent a majority of their life institutionalized would know how to drive. After killing Todd and stealing his costume, the Jerky Man gets into the car with Todd's girl and tries to drive the car. He's shown fumbling with the vehicle and not being a very competent driver
Jerky-Man runs into the babysitter from When a Stranger Calls and recognizes the necklace she's wearing as the same necklace his mother wore.
Alright, the big "prank" at the party, this is where the plot really breaks down for me. So the prank is that Daryll, who no one at the party is supposed to know, is crashing the party and hitting on all the girls there. After being asked to leave the party by David and refusing, they get into a scuffle before Daryll pulls a gun on Todd, who was supposed to be in on the whole thing. Fake cops are supposed to show up and Daryll is supposed to take the cop's gun, car, and Todd as a hostage.
There are a couple problems with this, if Todd was supposed to be taken hostage then why did he need all the medieval weapons? This wasn't just one axe or knife, there was also a large variety of swords. Why risk crossing a police check point with a ton of illegal weapons if Daryll was just going to pull a gun? Turns out Todd was killed and replaced with Jerky-Man, so it was lucky he smuggled a bunch of illegal weapons past the police checkpoint or the killer would have to rip everyone's throats out with his Slim Jim fingers.
Another thing that bothers me about this scene was how intimated Jerky-Man is when Daryll pulls a gun on him. Slashers are usually maniacs that aren't afraid of guns but this guy cowers and drops his axe when Daryll points a gun at him.
There's a Juggalo at the party!
After strangling Daryll with a seatbelt and disemboweling him with a giant sword, Jerky-Man returns to the party and kills a couple having sex.
Jerky-Man puts The Iron Claw on the babysitter then ties her up.
 |
| Tits and lesbian sex scene! |
Some chick is eating some weird looking cake in a bubble bath while a nerdy jester is reading more about Jerky-Man online.
 |
| Bathtub tits! |
This is probably the best kill of the entire movie. Jerky-Man stabs a sword down through the top of his head then pulls it out the front of his face, splitting his face in half. The effects are decent but there's this strange pause when Jerky-Man stabs him.
David calls the babysitter and she desperately tries to reach for her cellphone. He hangs up before she can get to it, so she gives up on trying to reach for her phone completely and takes a nap instead.
Jerky-Man tries to interrupt the clam rubbing session and totally gets his ass kicked by one of the lesbians before pulling off this awkward kill with a random coat hanger.
WTF was up with that?
David grabs a gun before seeing the Nerdy Jester's laptop still open to the article about Jerky-Man. When the camera zooms in, the laptop's screen also zooms in on the article.
David finds the babysitter tied up and tries to free her. Instead of yelling something helpful like "BEHIND YOU!" she just keeps yelling "David, David!" repeatedly until Jerky-Man knocks out him out from behind.
We see flashbacks to the night Jerky-Man's parents were murdered. His father hides his mother's corpse in the wall before committing suicide. Jerky-Man tears down the walls to find his mother's corpse
The babysitter frees herself and grabs David's gun, which only had two bullets for some reason, and shoots Jerky-Man.
After the police arrive, the bodies are taken outside and one of the cops is interviewing the babysitter. One of the body bags sit up and she shoots him with the cop's fun. Turns out David was in the bag and Jerky Man is still on the loose.
The movie ends with Jerky-Man getting picked up by a shirtless redneck
Final Thoughts: I feel like I should be doing Joe Bob Briggs Drive-In Totals for this movie
16 Dead Bodies
13 Nekkid Breasts
Throat Ripping
Throat Slashing
Lesbian Beatdown
Axe to the face
Sword through the skull
Sword through the face
Face melting steam
Mummified Mommy
While it's difficult not to draw a comparison between this and Halloween, this movie manages to miss some key components of the slasher formula. First off, the killer is awkward and clumsy. Even if not supernatural, the killer in slasher movies tend to be more threatening. Jerky-Man was afraid of guns and one of the lesbians just smacked the axe out of his hand with little effort.
The final girl is also typically the smartest or most competent one of the group, able to overcome the killer. This final girl is stupid, she doesn't do anything to survive and actually ends up shooting her boyfriend.
There are a lot of things left unexplained like what the significance of the necklace Jerky-Man recognized on the babysitter was. Why did it seem like his father was in on the home invasion? What was the point of him hiding his wife's body and then committing suicide?
The movie wasn't all bad, the effects were pretty decent but they used a lot frenetic editing that obscured some of the kills. There's also a funny gag in the movie's end credits
it's funny because the movie claims to be based on actual events at the beginning of the movie. There was also a ton of nudity and lesbian sex, so this movie gets some extra points for that. They're obviously just going through the motions but unfortunately they couldn't be bothered to steal the better parts of movies they're ripping off. Ultimately, this ends up feeling uninspired but was still a lot more watchable than When a Killer Calls and some of the Asylum's earlier mockbusters like H.G. Wells' War of the World and King of the Lost World, which were painful to sit through.