Bloody Creek

This movie is awful, but that’s the point of this release. Bloody Creek is a release from Gary Whitston of the New Jersey-based production company WAVE. The film follows several solo women hikers who make the deadly mistake of hiking alone in Bloody Creek State Park - the park sign was hastily nailed to a random tree the director chose. I love the first kill in this movie, where a woman goes backpacking with an obviously empty backpack, containing nothing but a half-empty bottle of cognac - honestly, the only way to camp! And then, in a very long and drawn-out stalking scene, as she downs the bottle, she is finally attacked by a machete-wielding psycho who decapitates her in a very cheesy way. I love it when the killer hangs the head on the tree, but they couldn’t afford a dummy model head, so they just tied the actress’s hair to a branch and shot her head just above the shoulders with her tongue sticking out, which is the best scene in the film and utterly hilarious.

The rest of the film moves at a snails pace as we watch a new hiker (Christine Cavalier) as she hikes into the back country, meets two park rangers—as a current park range I spotted those thrifted NPS shirts even through the vhs decay—one of whom loves to work for the park where the other is more of a city boy, that is until hes trying to impress the gorgeous hiker. She sets up camp and immediately undresses, naps, and has a dream where she is brutally murdered by the ranger, after being coaxed through a corn field into a cabin, in a scene that has some interesting low-budget gore but is drawn out in a way that begs for at least one cut in the editing booth.

Later, she is actually murdered by the machete-wielding psycho after an additional, overly long and uncomfortable sex scene. The dream sequence has some good low-budget gore, but both scenes are excruciatingly long static shots of poorly acted murder, which at some points is so bad it’s good, but then goes on long enough to where it just becomes overdrawn. There are some really hilarious cuts during the sex scenes. For some reason, they just cut to the cop sitting at his desk, then back to the sex; they do this a couple of times, seemingly for no reason, which I did find really funny.

 The film quickly becomes incomprehensible by including the viewpoint of the murderer, a police officer who gets caught by his partner. There are also scenes with a cop going undercover as a hiker and a standoff climax with the killer cop, which doesn’t make any sense at all, and I guess the killer gets away, but there is no way of knowing in this confused and poorly made mess.  Ultimately, this movie would be serviceable for a bad-movie night; however, the scenes do overstay their welcome in a not particularly campy way.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
Thanks to Saturn's Core and OCN Distribution, we have another SOV feature making its journey to Blu-ray. This release is on a region-free Blu-ray housed in a standard case; there is no additional booklet, but there is a reversible cover for you to choose which deliberately bad cover art you want!

This film was scanned directly from the original SVHS master tapes. I do love these movies being released at all, but because the film was shot with limitations, it’s impossible to get a clear picture; no one wants a clear picture when it comes to these releases from Saturn’s Core. The point is to revel in the poor quality of SOV films, and I admire that they get released and will watch all of them; the poor quality adds to the enjoyment of the film itself.

The audio of this release is in DTS-HD MA 2.0. Like the video quality, there is trouble making the SOV sound good due to the limitations of the SVHS copy of the film this release was transferred from. Again, this adds to the type of release this is supposed to be; the audience is not expecting high-quality audio from the Blu-ray release of Bloody Creek.

As always, Saturn’s core goes above and beyond with their bonus features; the features are 100% the main draw to these releases because they go the extra mile in finding obscurities attached to these shot-on-video releases that almost no one has heard of. Included is an interview with one of the actors, David Caglione, where he talks about his career and work on Bloody Creek. They dug up an old cable access interview with mother/daughter stars of the film Christine Cavalier and Terri Lewandowski, which is a good watch. There are also two teasers, one a trailer for Bloody Creek and a teaser for the additional short film Thrill Kill. My favorite inclusion in these extras is the short film Thrill Kill, directed by Gary Whitson and starring Christine Cavelier. The movie is also terrible, but there’s a fun Casio keyboard score, which almost makes it worth watching. The sequel, Return to Bloody Creek, which was shot in 2022, is an absolute gem of crappy unnecessary CGI reminiscent of Neil Breen, but without the charm. There is also a behind-the-scenes reel from the making of the sequel.

• Audio commentary with Richard Mogg, Author of Analog Nightmares: The Shot on Video Horror Films of 1982-1995
• “A City Boy at Heart” - an interview with actor Dave Castiglione (HD 12:35)
• Archival cable access interview with Christine Cavalier and Terri Lewandowski (SD 14:49)
• “Thrill Kill” (1994) (SD 28:04))
• Bonus Movie: Return to Bloody Creek (HD 1:15:36)
• Behind-the-scenes footage, bloopers, & photos from Return to Bloody Creek (HD 38:16)
• Trailer

This is a phenomenal release of a movie that only the fine folks at Saturn’s Core could preserve. I really love and admire the lengths they go to to preserve shot-on-video skeevy schlock videos. The. The film itself is somewhat worth watching, but it has overly long static shots of sex and murder, which are both acted out atrociously. Bloody Creek is almost a good, so-bad-it’s-good movie for a bad-movie night, but the main issue is that it's incredibly boring. Some effects are charming and gory, but there are not enough entertaining bits for me to recommend this film. I would recommend picking this up to get an idea of the hyper-regional films of W.A.V.E., which is interesting to learn about a small schlock-film movement in the Delaware Valley. This release is strictly recommended for those interested in discovering movies seen by only a handful of people, for schlock preservationists, and that’s about it. For everyone else, I would not recommend picking up Bloody Creek. It's For Fans Only