Memorial Valley Massacre (1988)

There's an argument to be made that the two films whose success triggered the whole slasher movie boom of the late seventies and eighties, Halloween (1978) and Friday the Thirteenth (1980), also established two strands of the genre: the urban or small town set slasher and the outdoor slasher, respectively.  The latter takes summer camps, forests and country parks as their main settings, with teenagers, hikers, park rangers and the like as protagonists.  It is this category into which Memorial Day Massacre (1988) falls, with its action taking place at a campsite set in a remote country park.  A late entry in the cycle, Memorial Day Massacre is clearly desperate to find some new angle for the slasher movie, but ultimately comes up short.  Its main 'innovation' lies in its antagonist.  Where the killers usually featured in such movies are revealed as maladjusted psychopaths triggered by some trauma, who otherwise can pass as normal, Memorial Day Massacre gives us a murderous caveman rampaging around, killing campers, with a desire to protect his 'territory' being his apparent motivation.  Now, if this had been made in the fifties, this would have been a real caveman who had somehow been thawed out of a glacier or similar.  But this was the eighties, so a more 'rational' explanation was required: which was that this 'caveman' was actually a kidnapped child who had escaped into the wild and grown up feral, living in a cave, wearing animal skins and hunting stuff with homemade weapons, like flint-tipped spears, axes and the like.  In a plot 'twist', it turns out that the Head Ranger at the campsite is actually the child's father, convinced that he is still alive and using his job to try and track him down.  Which is also why he's so keen for the campsite to open, despite a series of deaths and accidents that have accompanied its development.

The film's problem is that, in spite of its bizarre choice of killer and a location that would seem to offer plenty of opportunities for interesting slasher action, it never really seems to get going.  The build up seems interminable, as more and more characters and accompanying sub-plots are introduced, not to mention entirely uneventful.  The characters, though plentiful, are all stereotypes - a gang of middle-aged bikers, an obnoxious couple and their even more obnoxious son, a trio of teenagers and a retired general and his wife who just want to spend the whole weekend in their luxury camper van - and none of them are particularly likeable, so when they do, inevitably, get offed, you just don't care.  Then there are the staff, the aforementioned Head Ranger with a secret, who is assisted by the token older black dude who you just know is going to become a victim and the son of the park's owner, an environmentalist out to try and stop the park's ecosystem from being damaged.  The conflict between the Head Ranger and the owner's son becomes the film's main source of conflict, plot-wise, with the killer's appearances being relatively sparse and his presence unsuspected for a large part of the movie.  On top of all that, none of the killings themselves are particularly interesting or well staged.  In fact, there is a decided lack of gore altogether, which, along with the lack of any sex and nudity, just adds to the TV movie feel of the whole film.  (There was a version released in some overseas markets under the title Son of Sleepaway Camp - a different and unconnected slasher franchise - which included hardcore inserts).  On the plus side, Memorial Day Massacre does feature both Cameron Mitchell and William Smith in its cast.  Unfortunately, neither features that prominently, with Mitchell appearing early on in an extended cameo, playing the park's sleazy owner, while Smith has a slightly larger role as the general.  Neither, however, is used particularly effectively in a film that badly needs their characteristic brand of scenery chewing.  Smith's role has potential but, disappointingly, he never gets to face off with the killer before being killed off.

To be fair, Memorial Valley Massacre isn't especially bad, it's just bland, with flat and uninspired direction from Robert Hughes which never properly exploits the locations or the movie's premise. (Most of Hughes' work has been in video and TV production, doubtless explaining why the film feels like a TV movie).  It also doesn't help that the caveman killer, frankly, looks ridiculous and, despite the fact that he kills at least a dozen people in the course of the film, is strangely unmenacing.  While the film is actually quite watchable while its on, it is entirely unmemorable.