Review- Blood Shack

Ray Dennis Steckler is the only filmmaker I know next to Ed Wood who has the balls to shoot 10 minutes worth of rodeo footage so that his film can be over an hour. Yes, you heard me correctly. The action and "suspense" all come to a screeching hault (because they were gaining so much momentum, right?) and we get to enjoy cows getting lassoed and all that bullshit because the film wasn't long enough to get a theatrical release.

The Chooper, later renamed Blood Shack for obvious reasons (It sounds really dumb, like maybe a motorcycle film or porno hybrid. I guess the only reason horror fans saw it was because they thought it was called The Chopper, a surprisingly easy-to-make typo. So I guess the aforementioned reasons weren't that obvious), is a bizarre film about an actress (played by Steckler regular Carolyn Brandt) who inherits a farm that turns out to be haunted by a guy who yells a lot and looks kind of like Peter Stormare in The Big Lebowski (with the jumpsuit). Despite the fact that she "buys the farm" she never dies. *Spoiler*

Blood Shack was produced for $500, a testament to what imagination and craft can do for a film. Just kidding, Blood Shack has neither of those things. The acting sucks, there's a little bit of blood, and the cheese-factor is turned up high. There is one of the most bizarre fight scenes I've ever seen on celluloid, involving two guys duking it out whilst two little girls play around with a shovel. I thought for a while that these two events would converge, and one of the guys would get impaled on the shovel or something like that, but no. The fight ends and the girls just keep on digging. But what do you expect?

That's the whole vibe I get from the film. I want to criticize it, but you can't get your expectations too high, especially from the director who brought you such classics as The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies?!! (and yes, that "?!!" is part of the title) (damn, I have a lot of parentheses in this review)? At least he went for a bit more subtle approach with the title, instead of flat-out giving you a synopsis.

Blood Shack, or The Chooper, is a great b-movie sleepover slice of cheese with enough goof-ups to keep you and your friends generating those MST3000-esque quips. It doesn't overstay its welcome, independent on which version you see, rodeo or not.

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