Wicked Lake (2008)

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Highly Overrated But Still Good

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Four young, well-endowed hotties rent a cabin in Hicksville, USA where they've been followed by a group of morons consisting of an ultra- feminine art student, a mentally challenged (?) pervert, a geriatric war veteran in a wheelchair, and their sadistic ringleader. Also hot on the girls' tails are a couple of greasy, dirty, toothless country bumpkins whose most impassioned lines are, "God damned city bitches!" Let me not forget to mention two detectives who are pursuing the damsels in distress. Only they're not damsels in distress. At the stroke of midnight, they transform into bloodthirsty demons - bloodthirsty LESBIAN demons.This is... one of the worst I have ever seen and I have watched some major stinkers. Unfortunately, not even all of the T&A could save Wicked Lake. The tone of the film is constantly changing and confusing for the viewer. Am I supposed to laugh? Is this character to be taken seriously? Much of the movie looks like it was shot with a camcorder, the dialog made my ears numb, and the acting is deplorable. I live for B-movie horror and low-budget amateur efforts so I've made it a habit to overlook sub-par acting but, in this case, it's so bad that it's unforgivable. Even worse, when they're not 'acting', they're zoning off, unresponsive to anything that's happening with the rest of the characters. It's a complete mess.I'm irritated that I wasted 95 minutes of my life on this cinematic piece of excrement.

Exploitation movies are a special genre. They don't need great acting - and this movie has terrible acting, which is par for the course. It also has lousy writing, stupid plot twists and cheap cinematography. All these things are only to be expected in this genre.What you really need in an exploitation movie is, well, some exploitation. Buckets of blood, lashings of sleazy sex, and overall a movie that will horrify good, decent citizens everywhere.And that's where this movie falls down, sadly. It has lesbians - coy lesbians, who kiss each other quite nicely, but don't show TOO much skin, and never seem to get past kissing. It has distinctly un-scary vampires, a bunch of hillbillies who are just gross and sweaty rather than scary, and the gore is laughably fake, and again, not too excessive.The thing is, excess is what exploitation movies are all about. There's a lot of potential in this movie's Suspiria-meets-Deliverance plot, but for some reason the film-makers didn't have the courage of their convictions. Maybe there's someone out there who can take the same premise, and do it sexier, nastier - and better.

Some directors make films that go on to become cult classics. On the flip side, you have lazy, untalented hacks who desperately want their films to be viewed as cult classics and think they can accomplish this by making everything as loud, vulgar and obnoxious as humanly possible while populating their already annoying movie with jerks and weirdos who scream moronic comments at each other from beginning to end. It's about the cinematic equivalent of a 5-year-old brat having a screaming tantrum in hopes that someone out there actually cares. And that brings us to WICKED LAKE, an embarrassingly awful ADD horror-comedy from some guy named Zach Passero. It was written and co-produced by Chris Sivertson, who made multi-Razzie winner I KNOW WHO KILLED ME starring Lindsay Lohan, which actually looks like a genre masterpiece in comparison.Things begin with a nude model posing for some nerd who speaks in an annoyingly forced Michael Jackson-like girlish whisper tone. She goes home, he follows her, gives her a painting of a unicorn, basically makes an ass of himself and runs home crying while some horrible cover of the horrible song "Bang a Gong" plays over the credits. Then we get a brief glimpse at the home lives of both the model and the nerd. The nerd lives in a cartoon-like abusive household full of obnoxious men who beat each other up for no reason and SCREAM idiotic childish insults instead of having a normal conversation. Every single one of them seems retarded and/or unhinged. Yeah, this is real hoot so far... The model is a lesbian who lives with three other lesbians, none of whom have any notable characteristics that set them apart from one another or make them the least bit interesting. But as we all know, any time you get four inexplicably hot lesbians together they just can't seem to keep their hands off one another, which leads to a slow-motion group sex scene that lasts several minutes. Cause that's just what all lesbians do in their free time when they aren't fixing cars or playing softball.The four lesbians then head out on some sort of vacation and basically prove to be boring, unlikable bitches on the way to their rented lakeside cabin while another horrible cover (this time of "Radar Love") plays. When they stop at a gas station, Angela Bettis is seen exiting a bathroom. Thanks for stopping by Angela. Don't know why you bothered, but we appreciate the effort.The ladies finally arrive at their destination for some HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK-style unpleasantries. The nerd and his obnoxious, ugly male relatives use their apparent psychic abilities to find them. So the guys break in, overact, scream and act like obnoxious attention-starved cretins while holding the ladies at gunpoint and forcing them to do things they don't like, such as cleaning up a puddle of puke on the floor. One of the ladies gets her ass smacked with a belt before being forced to work the wheelchair-bound patriarch's "nub." I think this is supposed to be funny. But it's really not. At all. Unless you're about 11 years old. And since it's all so poorly directed, acted and written, it's not the least bit disturbing or horrific either. Just dull, unconvincing and tedious.Naturally the ladies get to turn the tables on their attackers and are revealed to be blood-drinking vampires... or something. Maybe demons. Or succubi. Or I guess they could be werewolves since the full moon sets them off and they growl every once in awhile. I couldn't really tell what they were. Maybe they said at one point and I just didn't care. They like blood and human flesh. And making out and rubbing up against each other while covered in blood. Since the main portion of the film is hardly enough to adequately fill 90 minutes (despite having no less than three music montages thrown in), there are completely pointless and boring scenes features detectives tracking the girls. One is played by Tim Thomerson, who has nothing of interest to do. To extend the running time even more, this resorts to several of those trendy prolonged 'torture' scenes a la HOSTEL where the victim is tied down and taunted/terrorized a bit before being killed. Zzzz. Gimme a break.The dialogue and acting are all beyond terrible, and not in an amusing B-movie sort of way. Every time a horror scene begins it's accompanied by an extremely annoying and clichéd metal guitar riff that's as bad as the rest of the soundtrack, which includes a clueless screechy metal redo of "It's a Wonderful World" over the end credits that fits in with the tone of the rest of this garbage. I usually give films with some blood and nudity at least a 3 because I think those aspects might redeem a film somewhat or give it some exploitation/guilty pleasure cred but this garbage doesn't really deserve any extra credit.

Send 4 smart ass babes who interact all lesbian with each other for no real reason to a cabin in the middle of no where. Send 4 creepy Texas Chainsaw Massacre type guys to the cabin so they can torture them! Gross shock and blood peppered with attempts at humor. BUT WAIT! The lezbos are vampire witches!?!? YAY! LET THE REVENGE BEGIN!! Throw in a couple of Hillbillies and 2 Keystone cops, dicks getting bitten and shot off an you have the perfect blood and babe gore fest! I feel sorry for all the actresses (and some actors) involved. I now know people will agree to ANYTHING to get a credit on IMDb. Marc Senter as Caleb was very good. (wished his character was in it longer) and kudos getting Al Jourgensens music and some of the special effects (head in microwave for example)...but other than that.......Unless you are a crew or cast member STAY AWAY!