Bloodlust at Camp Carpenter

While the screen is still dark, the rattling, repetitious sound of an old-timey projector plays in the dark. Of course it is an affectation. The film is being played from a digital projector, and the retro sound-effect is playing through the speaker system. Light pops across the screen, jittering up and down. Five words coagulate out of those bursts of light:

Based on a True Story

Hey, can we pause it for a second here? Okay, cool.

See, if this line were omitted--if they just changed a couple names, file the serial number off, that sort of thing--then I would be fine. People like slashers, I get it. I've watched some of them. That's not the problem. The problem is that... well, this is just a lie. Okay? That's why I'm here. This is a lie. Okay, you can hit play.

The words fade out. And then, with a bang of piano keys, the title appears:

Bloodlust at Camp Carpenter

A lakeside scene fades in. Water splashes regularly on a stony shore. The music drains out until the only sound coming from the speakers is the regular slosh of water. After several seconds, footsteps grind gravel somewhere off screen.

Pause? Yeah, I'll just raise my hand in the future.

Okay, so if I remember, they didn't actually film this at Camp Carpenter, did they? Yeah, looking at this, I'm like... that's not Carpenter, I know Carpenter. I think they filmed it somewhere in Canada or something like that? It's like... c'mon, if you're gonna say this is the true story of Camp Carpenter, don't you think you could make a little effort in order to actually make it look like Carpenter? Like, if you're going to exploit the murders, put in some effort.

A female speaks in a tone that sounds artificial and forced.

Jonny, take it easy... Jonny...

The camera pivots, depicting a pair of young people entangled on the beach. The same high, female voice says,

Did you hear that? I'm serious, Jonny. I think someone's out there.

Jonny looks up towards the camera. He smiles at the attractive woman he is making out with.

There's no one there.

The woman isn't convinced.

I swear I heard something, Jonny...

Okay, okay. So, this is supposed to be Jonathon Franks and Shirley Hiar. These two were the first killed, and they were killed the night before the primary massacre. It was only later that the police proved they were killed at the scene, and because Shirley's car was stolen that night, everyone assumed that they ran off together. That much is true. However, we reported them missing immediately, and there was never any evidence that they'd ditched the kids in order to screw, you know? Also, Jonathon went by Jonathon. I never heard anyone--not even Shirley--call him anything except Jonathon. Full name, all the time, and they would have known that if they asked anyone who was there.

The scene rolls out exactly as it has in a dozen other movies. The axe swings. Blood splatters across the rock. Jonny goes down first, letting the actress playing Shirley shrink back in her blood-soaked bikini and shriek with terror. The axe swings again.

Their bodies are dragged away, leaving a pair of red smears on the stony beach.

In the next scene, it is daytime. The movie introduces the characters who will become its main cast. There is a mystery: has anyone seen Shirley? Has anyone seen Jonny? But no one is terribly concerned. Everyone laughs, assuming that the two will turn up hung-over and potentially pregnant.

The camera skims past a young man with a blunt in his mouth, his hair swept back and a devilish grin on his mouth.

Oh man... I can't believe it. Yes. Okay. Since I'm doing this, I'll do this: this bastard is supposed to be me. Can you believe that?

I do appreciate that they gave me a six-pack, but c'mon. I never smoked at Carpenter. People think that all of us counsellors had a non-stop orgy while we were there, but guess what? Movies made that up. Any time a movie is like, "this is what young people are doing. This is a depiction of their sex-filled lives," we should be like, "c'mon, you're full of it." Did some people sneak off for a quickie here and there? Sure. Did the police find drugs at the Camp? I think they did, but you'd have to check that to be sure.

But would any of us have just lit up in front of these kids?

Come on. These are kids from nice suburban families, and if one of them goes home and says that there were drugs going around, you bet we'd get screwed. None of us were that stupid. Sure, sometimes you noticed a bit of skunk smell in the woods, but out in the open? In front of the kids? Never.

At least they didn't give me a major part in the movie.

Woah, dude. Do you see the rack on her?

I never said that.

The next half hour is fairly bland. The dialogue sucks. Everyone fits into neat stereotypes. There are a few half-hearted sex scenes, but they're so random and context-free to be sapped of anything approaching passion. They will only be titillating to children who still do not have access to the internet. All of the main characters perform some sin involving neglect towards the children, morally justifying the slaughter in which they will be victims. When the sun finally sets, it is a relief. At least the movie will continue.

The four main characters leaving the camp proper, walking down to the lake.

Okay, so from left to right, that's Rod, Eden, Bart, and Karina. If you read the articles about the Camp Carpenter massacre, you probably already know their names. And yeah, technically, the movie gets some shit right. Like, who lives, who died? The movie gets those right.

That said, the four of them weren't together on the night of the massacre. I don't think Rod and Eden even knew each other all that well, and they definitely weren't hooking up. That's what makes this so weird to me. These were real people, okay? Rod's family settled out of court with someone, but Eden's family are still trying to get justice for their daughter.

I just don't understand how a movie like this gets made.

Rod and Eden sneak off together. Rod's hand creeps up her shirt, exposing her bra and cleavage for the leering camera.

Gross.

Oh, Rod...

And again I say: gross.

Something shuffles in the woods. It is the inevitable. It is an axe. It is the bloodletter. He is unstoppable. Later in the movie, he will take a blast from a sheriff's shotgun, and he will not stop moving, and in this scene the audience senses that implacability.

Rod! Watch out, Rod!

The erotic turns violent with no breathing room in between.

So Rod's an interesting choice here. Of the victim's of the massacre, he's one of the few who died from wounds to the back. He was running away, and he didn't make it. But he didn't have a girlfriend. He didn't deserve this, you know? He didn't. He was running for his life, he wasn't fast enough, and that's it. You want to find a moral in that bullshit? Do you?

With the body-count rising to four, the scene cuts away from the corpses and returns to Bart and Karina. They are star-crossed lovers, more blushing and innocent than the horny teens from before. They sit on the end of a dock, feet hanging over the water, and Karina giggles into Bart's shoulder.

They actually were dating. That's true.

The murderer appears on the dock's end. The counsellors don't realise that he's there.

Okay, so I haven't seen this scene yet, but I've heard about it. It annoys me. See, Bart's corpse was actually found in one of the cabins. The kids in his cabin testified to what happened. When he got the emergency call, he blockaded his cabin, and he held off the attack with his own body. When he couldn't hold out, he made himself a distraction so the kids could get away. He wasn't some negligent piece of shit. He died protecting those kids.

But where are the kids? In the movie, the kids disappear after dark. Seriously, you don't see a single shot of any of the campers after sunset, because they only exist in the movie to justify why these counsellors have to die.

It's just... it's just so... I don't know. I feel like there has to be a better word for it. Mean-spirited, I guess?

Bart is decapitated. Karina slips off the dock, swimming and shrieking. The axe-killer stands on the dock's edge between the corpse's body and head. Karina looks back at him, gasping and screaming, her head slipping under the water. The axe-killer might be a statue for all of the humanity or compassion he shows.

Why would you do this? Why!?

There is no response.

Later, the film will switch to a series of flashbacks. Inexpertly written and produced, there is no true central character in Bloodlust at Camp Carpenter, so when the first batch of teens are offed, the movie switches to the bizarre introduction of a new protagonist. This is the sheriff who will later shoot the axe-killer. He also receives exposition about Grant Wurtz, the child who became the axe-killer.

The various characters delivering exposition explain that Wurtz was raised in an abusive home, and when he attended Camp Carpenter as a child, he was abused by one of the counsellors while other counsellors looked on and laughed. The movie uses flashbacks to depict every sordid detail. Someone hypothesizes that he has returned to take symbolic revenge upon this place which harmed him.

None of that happened. In court, someone testified that they saw Wurtz dad hit him once, so sure, maybe he was an abuser. Other people denied it, I don't know, I wasn't there.

But Wurtz didn't attend Carpenter. We have a complete list of every kid who attended going back to the 50s. Wurtz wasn't one of them. I think he'd been to another summer camp, but I don't know if anything happened there either. But the movie-makers had to turn this into a dramatic story, and in a dramatic story, things have to make sense.

You know, I heard an interview with the piece of shit who wrote this movie, and he said something about how no one wakes up in the morning and thinks, "I think I'll be the bad guy today." Okay, maybe that's technically true. But sometimes people are evil for no reason. Sometimes people just like hurting other people. Maybe he doesn't say, "I choose evil," but he still chooses evil.

Everyone wanted there to be some rationale for Wurtz, but there wasn't one. He rolled in like a tornado, okay? That's all.

Finally, after the sequence where the sheriff pursues Wurtz through the woods and fails to kill him, Karina finally returns to the plot. She has swum to shore while Wurtz was distracted, and she retrieves her keys in order to escape. However, Wurtz apparently intuits her plan, because he intercepts her at the parking lot. As an audience, we've already scene Wurtz get blasted with a shotgun and keep moving, so Karina appears entirely screwed.

I know you...

Wurtz responds with his first gesture of humanity: he tilts his head to the side, considering her.

I heard about you. I heard about what happened here.

The actress delivers the line with melodramatic compassion, as if she hasn't seen Wurtz decapitate her boyfriend less than an hour before. The camera slowly spins around, revealing the kitchen-knife she has behind her back.

She didn't use a kitchen knife.

No one deserves what happened to you.

She steps closer. When she finally coaxes her way into range, she swings and slashes his jugular. He still chases her for two minutes and thirty-seven seconds before slumping over and tumbling into a bonfire.

So, what forensics actually discovered is that Wurtz' cause of death was that shotgun blast. He bumbled around in the woods for another twenty minutes before he bled out. If the sheriff had aimed a couple inches to the left, he would've just dropped like a rock.

Karina herself got the same emergency call as Bart. She also barricaded her cabin and turned out the lights. Wurtz never got near them. After an hour, she went out to find her friends, and it was all already over. I don't think she ever saw Wurtz while he was alive, but I might not be right about that.

Still, that night haunts her, and this movie? It only makes it worse.

That night hurt. It hurt for all of us. I've spent so many hours in therapy, you wouldn't believe it. So for this movie to be made, for them to say it was based on a true story, for them to make up all of this bullshit? It drives me bananas. If I saw the writer who pitched this idea, I would spit in his eye. I would-- If I said what I would actually do, you'd be obligated to report me to the FBI, okay?

It's disgusting. She has PTSD, I have PTSD, and it wasn't a joke, okay? Not for us.

Did I see Wurtz?

You really want to know?

Yeah.

Yeah, I saw Wurtz. He was a pathetic kid. I saw him lingering around the camp, and I saw another counsellor tell him to get lost. That was it. And then that night, I was... I was out at the lake. I saw someone moving in the bush, so I grabbed a big stick, and I told them to get back to their cabin before it became a problem. They went away, and that was that. I never knew for certain if that was Wurtz, but... but I think it was.

And that keeps me up at night. Because why didn't he choose to jump me? Was he just a coward? Was there some twisted impulse in his head? I don't know. But I know this much: I survived that night without a scratch and a bunch of good people died. I've tried to make sense of that, and I've tried to tell my own story that can turn them into good guys and bad guys, but it's just not that simple, is it?

I do know this. None of those kids deserved to die, and no one deserved to be the subject of that terrible movie. If you pay to see it, I hate you. If you fund a sequel, I hate you.

And most of all, if you believe what you saw on the screen was real? I hate you. I hate you so much you will never understand it.