Back in the days of the video rental store boom, I rented from alot of different places. One of which was Blockbuster. Despite being known for offering the most popular titles in cinema, the one I went to offered an unusual amount of offbeat B-movies. Especially in the Horror section. Even a few obscure ones here and there. I remember renting such films as Beyond The Darkness, Vampyres and Silent Night Deadly Night, all from Blockbuster. I even saw my very first shot on vhs disasterpiece courtesy of the now dead video chain. And at the tender age of 12 or 13, I guess I just wasn't ready for the world of SOV Horror, because I pretty much loathed this so-called movie. As soon as it began, I knew exactly what it was. I just didn't know that was something people did to make money. So, you can understand how the opening credits might have confused me. With the video format already forcing me to not take this seriously as an actual movie, I wasn't willing to give this much of a chance. Which is irrelevant because this was still one unbelievable piece of shit like I had never seen before, and wouldn't again for many years.

The day Blood Lake was made, the slasher genre bottomed out. I'm pretty sure it never got any worse than this. The storyline is a big reason why. We got two fun loving teenage couples and a tag-a-long pre-teen couple, heading down to the lake house of one of the girlfriends. Everyone's got thick Oklahoma accents, the guys got their short shorts, and everybody is ready for some sweet 80's partying. One character, which is usually the first thing someone mentions about this movie, is li'l Tony. A loud mouth little blonde cocksucker who constantly tries to impress the big kids by bragging about how hard he's going to stick it to his little friend. An obnoxious pre-teen that would no doubt make things a tad awkward if this were real life. But this is definitely not real life. Everyone laughs off the little virgin's attempt at coolness, as we witness some very incoherent dialogue between the characters, which come off very improvised. Atleast I hope it is. The first 20 minutes is mostly mumbled banter and horsing around between the teens, until we get to the good shit. Water skiing! Gosh, that looks like fun!

Not all that fun watching these tools do it in a movie for ten minutes at a time, when it's clearly meant for filler. But in real life, sure. The gang make friends with a couple of guys and invites them over that night for some beers and countless games of quarters. After leaving late at night, they are slaughtered by a prowler, which leads to what is by far the most incoherent and mindblowing scene in the movie. The next day, a deputy stops by and has one of the guys come outside with him, where he shows him the bodies of the victims, and asks if he has any information about what happened. And you would think they were talking about what they had for breakfast, going by their mannerisms. Plus, the music was just loud enough that you could barely hear alot they were saying. A portion of the conversation could very well have been about breakfast for all we know. Yet, they were pointing at corpses. so, that's probably it.

I get that he didn't know his new friends very well, but Christ! Atleast one of you try and appear as though you're looking at something bad. I get no indication that the bad acting in this is anything but unintentional, which to this day, is amazing to me. The brutal murders which couldn't be seen due to no lighting has surprisingly put very little damper on the weekend festivities. It's not even clear who knows about this tragedy and who doesn't. Instead of leaving immediately, everyone continues with their beer drinking, fucking and kidding around with li'l Tony, until one of the couples randomly goes for a wallk late at night, and of course gets it. I forgot which couple it was. Like I said. Terrible lighting in this movie. I hope their deaths were gory. I like gore.

It wasn't until the late 90's when I rented Redneck Zombies that I would finally watch my second shot-on-video Horror. That of course was a more enjoyable experience, so, I finally warmed up to the idea that there might be something to these awful little home movies. But it wasn't until 2010, when I bought Cannibal Campout on dvd, that I knew I had to get every single one of these. So, I started with the first one I ever saw. About 17 years had passed since I had seen it, and couldn't really remember what it was about it that I hated so much. So, I bought a rather pricey vhs tape off Amazon, and as it would turn out, the very qualities I once despised were the same qualities which would finally win me over as an adult. Though, I'm not sure what that says about my own mental development.

I've seen countless SOVs since then, and some of them might even be a little worse in ways. But I've yet to find any type of movie with such amazingly dead acting, incoherent dialogue, and pointless characters. Seemingly no effort was put into making this atleast as good as the other VHS stuff that was coming out at the time. This is Todd Sheets territory, friends. Maybe worse. In an ironic twist, this is one of those bad movies which is only made watchable by its worst quality. The cock sure wannabe playa, li'l Tony, who is just pathetic enough to be funny. And another ironic twist, he would also be a significantly better actor than the big kids, which of course says very little. Blood Lake is one of the few "80's SOV's" left that is still without a dvd release. I look forward to the day it gets one, and any extras that might give us a better understanding as to how this thing ended up the way it did. But even after that day comes, any time I think of Blood Lake, I'll still imagine direcor, Tim Boggs, sneaking into Blockbusters in the late 80's and placing his piece of god awful shit amongst the real movies I would recommend Blood Lake to slasher completists, fans of vhs flicks, and anyone interested in obscurities which still haven't made it to the digital age. However, for those of you with standards, you may want to pass on this one. 4/10