Welcome to another installment of the TRASH BIN, where we watch the worst movies Hollywood has to offer, according to the critics, and give you our thoughts, good or bad. This week we will be looking at the direct to DVD horror movie... CRIPPLED CREEK.
Crippled Creek,
written and directed by Hans Hartman, is a story about three young women who go
on a ‘girls only’ camping trip in the forests of Connecticut where the Hooper’s
grandparents have a cabin. The young women are Mady Hooper (Ashley Totin), her
cousin Bambi Hooper (Evy Lutzky-Bjorn) and their friend Aubry Laput (Jennifer
Jules Hart). Along the way, they meet up with Forest Ranger Greene (listed in
the credits as ‘himself’) who assists them in getting to the trails that lead
to the cabin. He also warns them about an old hermit named Josiah Trapper (Hans
Hartman) who lives in the woods and does not like people intruding on ‘his land’.
Once there, the
girls are not settled in long before two men, also on a camping trip, join
them. Tom (Paul Logan) and his buddy Gary (Michael Dionne) introduce themselves
as just a couple of lawyers out for a relaxing weekend, but it’s obvious they
have an agenda once they find out the three lovely ladies are there without any
men around. Bambi and Aubry are just as
interested in pairing up with the handsome men for sex in the woods as their
friend Mady is opposed to the idea of having their ‘girls weekend’ derailed by
the intrusion of Tom and Gary into the mix. However, the five of them all hang
out for a night around the campfire, full of booze, pot and the telling of creepy
stories.
One of these stories is the set up for the ‘urban
legend’ that haunts the very woods they are camping in. A tale about a man who
became a cannibal when he was lost at sea and had to eat his shipmates to
survive. When he was rescued he had an affair
with the wife of another sailor. They were caught by the husband and the cannibal
guy killed him. The townsfolk tried to hang the cannibal guy but his head
popped off and he died. The wife was drowned for adultery. The legend was that
the three spirits haunt the woods looking for each other and for victims to
kill in revenge.
This sets up the premise
of the horror in Crippled Creek and eventually the group begins to fall prey
to a mysterious killer in a wide brimmed hat. As the bodies fall, Tom starts to show his true colors as a bully and an adulterer
having led the love struck Aubry into believing he was single and available.
Crippled Creek seemed
to be yet another movie trying to follow along the footsteps of The Blair Witch
Project and was, to that end, filmed in grainy tones and poor audio without being
a ‘video camera POV’ movie like The Blair Witch Project was. However, the real horror of Crippled Creek is
how badly critics and audiences alike received it. They were brutal with comments like ‘Horrendous, avoid
like the plague’; ‘a deathly boring dud with occasional nudity by the actresses'.
One thing I have to agree with about Crippled Creek is that it moved way
too slow in getting down to any kind of suspense or horror action in it.
Crippled Creek is almost completely taken over by a whole myriad of scenes where
nothing happens but inane banter and lots of talk about sex. Interspersed is the unexplained addition of
Ranger Greene popping up out of nowhere to harass Tom and dote on Mady. This whole thing about his behavior is never really explained.
It’s nothing but an unused ‘smoking gun’. Between the endless dialog and the surprisingly non-pornographic sex scenes,
by the time the real killer starts racking up a body count, the audience may not
even care what happens to the characters, especially Tom.
The one part I do strongly disagree with the critics of this movie is
the level of acting in it. Crippled Creek had a bad script, there is no doubt
about that. The premise was good, but the writing needed more polish before it
ever even went before a camera. What saved it from truly being unwatchable was
the acting. Particularly Paul Logan, whose character of Tom had to go from
being an affable jock with a pragmatic nature, to being a full on selfish, woman
beating bully when the pressure of survival became too much to handle. All
of the actors in Crippled Creek did an excellent job of showing what happens
when the veneer of civilization slips off under pressure. I have an idea that this might have been the ‘moral’
behind the horror movie aspect. Which means it could have been better if
someone had taken more time to give the script the life it needed.
CRITICS' SCORES:
Rotten Tomatoes (Audience Score): 10%
IMDb: 2.7/10
MARLA’S SCORE: 4/10
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