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I'll say this, "The Slaughter" starts out great. The opening scene with a bevy of the most beautiful witches (or witch worshipers, or whatever they are) that have probably ever graced the screen this side of porn getting naked, seductively self-mutilating themselves (!!) and calling to life the demon-woman pictured on the DVD cover is up there with the phantasmagoria of Ken Russell in his prime. It's very MTV but also effective...all double exposures and reaching hands, muted, digitized images and an eerie score. I was already prepared to accept I'd gotten my $1 rental money's worth for taking a gamble on an unknown DVD with a neato cover. Had it gone on in this way I was prepared to call this the most original fear film to have come out in decades, but it couldn't keep it up.Cut to a bunch of beautiful, stupid young people "required" to be in a haunted house for one of the lamest reasons ever (they're cleaning it) and we're back on the same ol' territory as any run-of-the mill haunted house flick. The good news is that this is a dumb movie about idiotic people made by people who appear to be quite smart. The characters are oddly likable because it's clear the actors are talented and were having a ball (I particularly enjoyed the brain-fried stoner and the slutty girl). Unfortunately, the tone of the film goes from being scary-with-some-humor to out and out ridiculous and it descends into "student film" territory. I wish we were having as much fun as the people making the movie seemed to have been...either let us in on the joke or let us laugh AT you, but when people in a movie on a screen are laughing at themselves it seldom is fun for an audience.The script has some fun one-liners and fast-paced dialog, the effects, though incredibly cheap, are fun, the gore is gratuitous and gloppy and the make-up on the demon-woman is really, really nice. The actors are all beautiful and fun to watch, the attack scenes (when they come--you have to wait a good 50 minutes! Sheesh!) are satisfying. Too bad the witch just never really DOES anything, too bad there's just no plot at all and too bad we've seen most of this before a million times. The speed-monster-metal score is a nice touch, though it doesn't really suit the material that well.Oh, who am I fooling--this movie blows! It really is something only a slightly-feeble-minded 12 year old could truly enjoy, but as a dirt-cheap rental before Halloween I found it was actually amusing enough. Next!
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