No doubt about it, this is exploitation filmmaking -- as soon as the credits have finished rolling a naked woman is killed after writhing on top of her killer. The man with the blade is, as the dvd cover proudly announces, Stephen Pearcy of Ratt (if you're close to my age they were fairly popular during your high school years with hair metal hits like Round and Round), and his appearance is milked, much like Sting's ten-minute cameo in David Lynch's Dune (another reference to bring you back to the era of Ratt), as one of the big selling points of this picture.

The film begins as 60's rocker Timothy Bach turns his back on the rock and roll and starts up a hippie commune, preaching some kind of Manson-esque hokum and getting his followers so damned stoned that a couple dozen of them can't get away the night that he decides that his take on Helter Skelter means killing his followers. As opposed to having his followers go out and kill the fat cats living in mansions (you gotta hand it to a musician that can interpret an old classic and somehow make it their own).

We flash forward to present day, and five teenagers are, in a setup so stale you can smell it turning inside the box, deciding to go off on a camping trip where the killings happened. The five machete stops are two couples and a woman who is a new friend of the other two ladies. Before too long, they're already starting to get on each other's nerves and they'll get on yours as well.

Many times have I read reviews by critics who complain that horror films don't take the time to set up their characters but this one does ... and does ... and does ... making its same points about each of its characters a zillion times. I couldn't wait for the bodies to start piling up.

An entertaining red herring pops up in the form of pervy Ranger Rogers, an employee that the department of park services could do pretty well to lose, and at about the 45 minute mark the teenagers start dying.

Things do go off into an entertaining twist in the last act of the film (it's not exactly a stunner, but it's played fairly well by the two performers involved when the killer is revealed and the last victim is so dosed that they can't do anything but listen as the killer begins the inevitable explaining the motivation behind the killings speech). And I thought the last scene of the movie was very enjoyable.

But basically, this is an exploitation slasher movie, the hamburger of horror movies, and if you're up for a hamburger this is a fairly good one, but it's nothing exotic.

Extras include a behind the scenes featurette (interviews with some of the young talent involved kissing every one else's butts as usual) that doesn't really get too in depth (it's brief, only 7 minutes) but I wasn't exactly moved to figure out the mysteries of the movie so its brevity was pretty welcome.

The film's trailer sells the film as if it's Stephen Pearcy's vehicle (his part was probably filmed in a day) which is kind of amusing once you've seen the picture, and there's two other trailers for non-horrific (well, I haven't seen the movies so I can't say) comedies released by the same company, including one called Eddie Presley about an Elvis impersonator. Daniel Roebuck was in this movie, and he was also in Bubba Ho Tep, which the trailer for this movie made me want to watch again.

Like I said, as a slasher it's not bad, it twists a few staples of the genre (one thing I should mention is that it does, in a way, reverse the old saw about the one girl who can defend herself from the killer be the one who's not sexually active), but it ultimately left me wanting a little more (and I do not mean this as a plea for a sequel ... I'll go to my dark master a happy man if I don't see Camp Utopia 2: Ratt Razes Rhode Island), because I didn't feel too scared when it was all over.