Mill Creek's Chilling Classics follows up the Yul Brynner Mafia movie with Memorial Valley Massacre, a perfect example of why I love these sets so much. Any given collection has a fair number of movies I've seen, some I've heard of, and quite a few I know nothing about. Those are the movies I look forward to. Memorial Valley Massacre is one I knew nothing about, and as I do with such things, I put it on without so much as reading the synopsis on the DVD sleeve. And oh the joy of surprise. Memorial Valley Massacre is sort of...well, it's like...so it's a Jaws rip-off mixed with Friday the 13th and, oh, I don't know, Iceman or something. Cameron Mitchell, overacting like mad in a role that absolutely does not call for it (the best time to do it), cameos as the owner of a new campground. The campground is not ready to be open -- roads are unfinished, water hook-ups aren't running, et cetera -- but this is Memorial Day weekend, damn it, so Mitchell demands that the camp be open. Which is good, because there are long lines of angry campers waiting to be let in, with all the frustrated excitement of a gang of teens waiting out a delay before their favorite rock band takes the stage.

The biggest problem, however, is that there is a caveman running amok, and he takes offense to the intrusion of obnoxious fat kids on three-wheelers, so the bodies begin to pile up.

So I'll let that sink in for a while. Ready? OK. Aside from the fat kid, there's also a biker gang with a tendency to yell "whooooo!!!!" every time anyone says the word "beer" or holds up a beer or shows a beer or opens a beer...they love beer. In fact, when one of the chick bikers wonders aloud "No running water. What are we gonna shower in?" the obvious response, of course, is "Beer! Whoooo!!!" There's also a couple of those guys where you can tell they wanted to have punk rockers in it, but the people making the movie didn't really know what punk rockers were. So you get these weird mutant new age/punk/regular 80s guys with puffy hair and sleeveless t-shirts and knives. They also have their slutty girlfriend with them, because someone needs to dance to generic synth music and show her boobs. Their big line is, "What's wrong, old man? Don't you like speed metal?" Why any of these people would even be at this lame campground is anyone's guess. All that really matters is that each of them is gonna make that caveman mad, and he's gonna grunt and do backflips out of the trees until he kills them all and stops the encroachment of modern society on his idyllic valley.

Best not to think too much about this film, like why did the caveman get riled up when the campers arrived, but not during the construction process? Then we could have had the caveman fighting Killdozer! And then there's good stuff like, on a clear, sunny day, when the fat guy gets killed, all of a sudden there is a thunderstorm that lasts as long as the death scene and is apparently confined just to that location. You could also wonder how the caveman learned to operate heavy machinery and electronics equipment, but mostly all you need to do is sit back and have fun. This movie is top notch drive-in gold. Any movie where bikers and sluts and fat chicks in hot pink stirrup stretch pants get stalked by a guy who looks like the monster in Frankenstein Conquers the World is going to deliver a good time.

Labels: Set: Chilling Classics