Directed by David Paulsen
Written by David Paulsen
Starring:
- Christopher Allport as Nicky
- Jim Doerr as Robert Fathwood
- David Gale as Mac Macauley
- Devin Goldenberg as Jay Alsop
- Marilyn Hamlin as Marie Sales Pettis
- Caitlin O’Heaney as Shirley Sales
Rating: 
Porn galore low-grade proto slasher directed by David Paulsen earns a certain distinction for being a genre visionary, the whole shebang is like an auspicious pre-Halloween flash-forward to the impending slasher craze that would take over the late ’70s and early ’80s horror fare. However, I have a feeling that this so-called cachet is just straight-up hyperbole. It foreshadows the crudeness that would deem the genre ridiculously infamous, but just that, everything else is mere sleaze-fest exploitation; the kind of bawdy stuff you’d get at a scuzzy seventies Grindhouse theater.
Certainly not great horror, but most certainly mesmerizing schlock. Shot in 1976 and then released by Cannon Films in 1979, David Paulsen’s sweaty horror is a farrago of baffling writing and hare-brained filmmaking. On a personal note, even though I am fully aware that this is crummy cinema through and through, my stance on the film is equivocal; a love/hate relationship. It has aggravating pacing issues and crosscuts erratically, but this unevenness is offset by a miscellaneous jumble of randomness that invokes the essence of a kinetic psychotronic trance driven by the sweeping soundscape of a banjo-ish score layered with alternating synth & folk.
It’s all randomly assembled; and its unruly array of lowbrow antics never fail to be alluringly odd, -Christopher Allport playing an assertive, proudly gay man ass-kicking a pack of homophobic macho types in a bar; a mustachioed sleazeball saying creepy things to a woman in a bikini in the middle of a lake; the same girl later awkwardly fondling a cow; a lady being scorched with branding iron; a weirdo soliloquizing in a cemetery; and plenty of fucking. Each of these segments do not have the slightest storytelling association, they are just there as padding. Is the plot about a group of people vacationing in upstate New York while being stalked by a loony and horny locals? I really don’t know, much of the film felt like I was watching a “broken movie” with the wrong reels thrown together in purposeful disarray to fashion an irrational whole. Bloodless and stultifying, but its weirdness gives it a certain gloss.