This post was contributed by Sara Bimmel, who has blogged about dozens of topics on dozens of fun sites. She loves absurd horror movies and spends some of her time writing on a related subject, Halloween costumes, over at StarCostumes.com.
Is it possible to go wrong with a cheesy horror movie that had a $500 budget, features numerous relatives of the director, has a really funny name, is described as a “recommended Gitmo interrogation tool” on IMDB, and is only 60 minutes long? I didn’t think so.
“Blood Shack,” also known as the far more fun to say “The Chooper,” was directed by Ray Dennis Steckler, who is (in)famous for being involved with absolutely ridiculous movies that have titles like “The Adventures of Rat Phink and Boo Boo” and “The Incredibly Strange Creatures That Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.”
In “The Chooper,” Carol Brandt (played by Carolyn Brandt, believe it or not) inherits a drab-looking ranch out in the middle of nowhere. The only people who live nearby are Daniel, a ranch hand who treats the Chooper’s existence as merely an inconvenient fact of life, and a few kids who love playing in the haunted ranch house. The house is, of course, haunted by the Chooper, a bizarre, ninja-like creature from a Native American legend that is never fully explained. Whenever anyone goes near the house, Daniel utters his trademark line: “The Chooper’s gonna get ya!” Since this is a horror movie, no one ever listens, and the Chooper does indeed end up getting a lot of people.
There isn’t really much gore in the movie (and by “much,” I mean “any”), but I think some of the movie’s sheer charm would be lost if there were. The Chooper never says anything, and you’re never quite sure when he’ll show up, but he isn’t especially scary, and the real fun of the movie comes in watching him run full-out with his impractical sword raised high above his head. It’s impossible to describe the way he moves—it’s something between the attempted sprint of an online gamer and the stance of a person who is trying to intimidate a lion—but it’s comic gold nonetheless. Oh, yes, and the movie also includes a hyper-extended scene at a rodeo that is completely unrelated to anything else in the film. If you like a few “yee-haws” with your horror hee-haws, this is the movie for you, folks!
“The Chooper” does actually have a plot. Carol is being pressured to sell her inherited ranch property by Tim, the villain of the movie (he even has a mustache), but it becomes more and more difficult to care about what’s actually going on in the movie as it progresses (and who’s trying, anyway?). Suffice it to say that this is a film that shouldn’t be missed. Get that Chooper before it gets you!
1 comment:
The big box VHS of Chooper is quite a find...if you can find it.
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