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1987 - Italy Directed By: Ruggero Deodato Starring: Bruce Penhall, Mimsy Farmer, David Hess, Luisa Maneri, Nicola Farron, Andrew Lederer, John Steiner, Ivan Rassimov and Charles Napier.
Aka
Camping del terrore
The Eleventh Commandment
Current Availability
A budget priced UK DVD is available but this is a heavily cut version. An uncut version is available on DVD in mainland Europe but is of middling quality. This film also regularly appears on the UK digital channel "Zone Horror" (formerly known as "The Horror Channel") in a print that seems to be uncut, so UK viewers with digital subscriptions should keep their eyes peeled. As of the time of writing there is no US R1 DVD release either available or planned.
Recommended?
Mildly recommended. While Body Count is hardly essential an interesting exploitation cast and a heavy dose of Deodato's trademark violent misanthropy makes it worth a glance for fans of gory slasher films and latter day Italian horror.
Review
From the director of the infamous Cannibal Holocaust (1980) comes a rather belated attempt by the waning Italian horror industry to drag a little more mileage out of the American slasher movie genre, which had itself reached its peak in the very early eighties. Featuring a choice cast of Italian and American exploitation and horror stalwarts, Deodato then takes his cues from such “hike into the woods turns sour” flicks as Just Before Dawn (1981) and The Final Terror (1983) presenting a by the numbers tale of hapless kids who venture off the beaten track and soon wind up as carved meat.
Body Count kicks off in typical fashion by introducing us to a busload of teenagers with the usual slasher movie penchant for childish pranks and rampant promiscuity. Once in the middle of nowhere they make the mistake of picking up the mild-mannered Ben who soon directs them to the isolated campsite run by his parents - Julia (Farmer) and the cantankerous husband Robert (played by exploitation’s ultimate rent-a-psycho David Hess). Little do they know that fifteen years earlier the camp had been the site of several savage murders, reputedly the work of a murderous Indian shaman whose evil spirit haunts the woods. Before the viewer even has time to blink, these kids are dropping like flies, victims of a brutal knife-wielding killer stalking the surrounding woods and mountains. Are the killings the work of the evil shaman? Or is there an altogether different explanation or the growing pile of butchered teenage corpses?
Predictably Body Count suffers from the same flaw as any other Italian film that tries to pass itself of as an American production, namely the fact that nothing can cover up the blatantly Italian descent of the teen cast members who stand out like a very sore thumb alongside the numerous genuine American’s in the cast. It is also likely that Body Count is not likely to please Italian horror diehards, this being a film blatantly having been made with foreign export markets, principally the United States it would seem, in mind.
Nonetheless if one can look past this they will be privy to a more than fair slasher effort that succeeds due in equal part to both a good cast, energetic direction and a liberal dose of splatter. The plot is nothing new as Body Count adheres to the tried and tested approach as the female cast runs around screaming and manages to trip over every fallen branch in sight as they flee from the killer. What in the wrong hands could have been extremely familiar and risible stuff instead registers (up to a point) due to the gusto of Deodato’s direction who turns the film into a non stop crescendo of set piece deaths which are actually quite suspenseful, despite the reliance on slasher clichés for their effect. The killings themselves are also a good deal bloodier than is usual as Deodato serves up enough vicious stabbings and resultant spurting wounds to sate even the most demanding of gorehounds, all set to a typically thunderous Claudio Simonetti score.
One respect in which Body Count stands out from its slasher brethren is its more graphically upfront attitude to sex and nudity, which instantly marks it out as a continental production. The girls here are certainly far more hedonistic; making their American slasher movie counterparts look practically frigid in comparison. In Body Count a girl’s idea of simply introducing herself to a boy involves ramming his head into her breasts which makes quite a change from the teasing coyness exhibited by females in most other films of this ilk. Deodato it would seem had no intention of letting the slasher cliché of the teasing girls making the horny boys work for it get in the way of him loading the film with naked flesh and the grinding together of teenage torso’s and simply throws said cliché completely out of the window. In any case, given the considerable amount of naked female flesh on display it is doubtful that anyone will be complaining.
It goes without saying that the presence of a good many exploitation veterans certainly doesn’t hurt the film at all. Horror an exploitation fans will probably be most excited over the appearance of David Hess, legendary in such circles for his portrayal of sadistic sex killer Krug in Wes Craven’s The Last House On The Left (1972). As knowledgeable fans will know Body Count actually sees Hess reunited with Deodato, the two having worked together before on the extremely nasty The House On The Edge Of The Park (1980). While Hess is as committed as ever, it is actually a little disappointing that Deodato never opts to allow him the chance to shift into full on berserk mode. Nevertheless the script rather cleverly feeds off the fact that many viewers will assume Hess to be the killer (with him being so typecast) and goes out of the way to suggest that Robert is the killer, even giving him a motive in the form of his wife Julia’s affair with the local sheriff (Napier). It is therefore a pretty neat surprise when Hess actually proves to be a red herring, the killer’s real identity when revealed actually coming as a genuine shock, although it is later negated by a rather daft final attempt at raising a cheap closing jolt. Elsewhere in the cast we have Mimsy Farmer, a regular Italian horror leading lady, who is pretty flat and weak as usual but at least provides plenty of unintentional laughs in her clandestine “romantic” scenes with Napier. Further down the credits, the presence of old hands like John Steiner and Ivan Rassimov lends the film an edge if nothing else.
Overall judged by any standard Body Count is a strictly paint by numbers exercise in horror filmmaking that makes no attempt to do anything original or novel. Therefore Body Count is actually a very tired film in conceptual terms that luckily manages to rise slightly above most of its American slasher counterparts through slick, polished direction and upping the ante in terms of both sex and violence. The prevailing sense of familiarity is hard to look past at times but if nothing else Body Count can be appreciated as a fairly engaging insight into how one of Italy’s most uncompromising filmmakers works within a rigid formula to create a routine genre picture.
Also Try... Just Before Dawn / The Final Terror / The House On The Edge Of The Park / Stage Fright (1987, Michele Soavi) / A Blade In The Dark.
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