Review by Ben Bussey
Perhaps the greatest challenge of being a horror reviewer is finding fresh and creative ways to say “this film is a piece of shit.” Not the cheeriest opening sentence ever, I know, but the sad reality is that the direct-to-DVD horror market is and always has been strewn with cowpats from the devil’s own satanic herd. Yes, I stole that line from Blackadder, because Varsity Blood left me stewing in a pool of apathy so deep that I can’t even be bothered to come up with colourful put-downs of my own (assuming that ‘stewing in a pool of apathy’ bit doesn’t count).
It’s rarely a good sign when, as you sit down to contemplate the film you watched most recently, you find your mind instead drifting to the last film you saw before that. However, my second-to-last film was Best Worst Movie, the documentary on the singular cult phenomenon of the legendarily awful Troll 2, which offers up some fascinating insights and arguments into what constitutes a ‘so bad it’s good’ movie. Troll 2 is truly a rare breed, given that while it is a terrible piece of filmmaking on pretty much every level, there’s so much about it that is quirky and unique that the viewer cannot help but remember it.
Varsity Blood is, in many respects, every bit as bad a film; it’s horribly shot, horribly written, horribly acted, with pathetic make-up effects. But whereas 25 years later people are still talking about Troll 2, I’d be astonished if anyone remembers Varsity Blood at all this time in six months – the reason being, there is absolutely nothing to make it stand apart. Obnoxious teenagers go through textbook high school drama; they all spend way too long talking before someone in a mask starts killing them, unimaginatively; climactic reveal of the killer is framed as a big surprise, except we don’t care who it is or why they’re doing it. The end. In other words, there is absolutely nothing in this film that hasn’t been done innumerable times, and better.
This film singularly fails in everything it sets out to do. Setting cheerleaders and jocks against a masked maniac, it’s clearly setting itself up to be a sexy, gory guilty pleasure movie, but then it fails to deliver on all those key guilty pleasure elements. For the most part the cast keep their clothes on; the trailer below shows pretty much the full extent of the sexploitation. As for the deaths, when they do occur (which isn’t nearly often enough, particularly in the first 45 minutes) there’s an uncanny tendency to cut away before the murder weapon actually makes contact, and in any case it’s so horrendously lit that you can’t see a damn thing anyway. Sometimes lack of budget and resources prompts creative decisions; in this case, they just tried to cut corners. Pitiful.
If the sex and gore (y’know, the things that people actually expect to see in these films) are underemphasised in some misguided belief that the audience is actually going to get invested in the characters – guess what, yet another epic fail. As pretty as these young folks are, they have the combined screen charisma of a Rich Tea biscuit, only with a fraction of the flavour. Not even a cameo from the esteemed Debbie Rochon does much to liven things; from the look of things they could afford her for maybe two days of filming, and you can practically hear her counting down the seconds in her head, much as you will likely find yourself doing should you choose not to heed my advice and voluntarily sit down to watch this shitfest. Need I say more?
Varsity Blood is out on Region 2 DVD on 11 August 2014, from Image Entertainment.