Six college friends camping in the woods for a week-out retreat, learn the history of the area where they're staying at. Supposedly an old Nordic legend tells of a blood-thirsty warrior known as a berserker, which they would be dressed up in bears' fur and wear their snouts as a mask. Vikings used them for raids. Well, it's only a story, but the young adults find out it might be reality when they start being killed off one by one, by an unknown figure, but maybe it's the grizzly bear that seems to be wandering the area.Awful, awful, awful. Sure I read nothing but damaging opinions on it, but I'm a sucker for backwoods horror films, so I just couldn't pass it up. In all, it was mostly a weakly done and very tatty cheap third-rate woodland slasher item with the usual textbook plot slanted within its tiredly predictable stalk and slash structure. Sometimes being an inept production can raise some unintentional fun (like "Don't Go In the Woods"), but "Berserker" was a incoherently lifeless drag. Sex (a rather hot and heavy scene) and blood runs freely, but these attack scenes are plain insipid. The killer basically rubs the blood on its victims and delicately scratches them to death with its claws and teeth. Oh, it's laughable! Something even more eye-boggling was that we had in one corner a caring grizzly bear and in the other the Berserker, which they came to blows in one oddly interesting, if senseless clash. The bear (maybe on its search for a picnic basket) does get plenty of screen time (more than the Berserker) thanks to the questionable editing, but it goes on to feel redundant to the story. What we get of the berserker is disappointing, and lacking with more talk of it than action. The grimy look of the film can get sinisterly atmospheric, but they indeed went overboard in letting the fog creep into all of the night sequences. Sullen lighting works at times, the open locations standout, a brooding score keeps right at it and so does the louring sound effects. Too bad that the stringy direction fills up the plodding running time with stuffy shenanigans, aimless strolls in the woods, moronically exasperating collage twits and numbingly old-hat jump scares. It's pretty empty on the suspense front, because were lampooned by a ghastly terrible rock soundtrack and bland photography telegraphs everything in an straight-forward fashion. This lazily amateurish handling, really lets slip of an more than decent and fascinating folklore belief. Instead of working something good from this inspired premise, it goes up the same worn-out path and falls into ridiculous patterns with a mundane script. I didn't think the performances were overly cruddy, but Beth Toussaint stands out for a particular reason and a cocky Greg Dawson. The versatile veteran actor George 'Buck' Flower's fervent performance was a breath of fresh air and a modest John Goff's plays a concerned, washed-up sheriff.A sloppy, grubby and daggy bottom-barrel slasher exercise, which no wonder why it's pretty much a forgotten staple of its sub-genre.

*Contains spoilers, Agatha Christie fans look away*Oh no. Just when I thought I'd seen the worst killer in the woods film with CAMP BLOOD. I found this little beauty glaring back at me on a tatty looking stall at my local car boot sale. I had mixed emotions about this after examining the cover. It looked a little, well, how can I put it, 'shoe string budgeted' to say the least! But I've survived DREAM SLAYER and even VIOLENT SHIT intact, and the tagline did state that "...The screaming suspense would start clawing at my nerves."(!) So I boldly went where I bet many have been disappointed before.A Berserker is an age old Nordic legend, from Viking times(so it says 'ere). Berserkers were kept tied in chains and used as the first line of assault during raids. Because they ate human flesh they were cursed by the God Odin and forbidden a restful death. So to this day they're blood kin reincarnates them. Now present day America and a group of fun loving college kids set out to explore a remote woodland. As they joyfully embark on their carefree mission, they have no idea of the horrendous surprise that fate has in store for them. (Pretty much like I had no idea of the horrendous disappointment that fate had in store for me inside this shoddy video box!)The plot sticks close to the general slasher sense of things for the most part. For example there's the classic over cliched 'campfire tale' scene, where low and behold one of the group jumps out to give everyone a good old scare. But there is one question that is playing on my mind since watching this dribble. And it must be bugging the hell out of you too. Who is it that's actually killing everyone? The berserker or the bear? I'm afraid that I could not work it out for the life of me. Ok so it was near on 3am when I watched this. And I was pretty tired. But It all seemed to make no apparent sense. The Berserker is most definitely up to no good at the end of the film, and judging by the movie's name it's meant to be about him. But if that's the case however, (and I have to give the killer's identity away to discuss this, but believe me you're not missing much!)why do we see the murderer waking up from his sleep after the first two student killings? He must be either a very fast runner or he's been talking to Arnold from the PSYCHIC KILLER fame and mastered out of body travel. And if that's so, why wern't we informed? I can picture it now, the first ever slasher flick where the killer attacks whilst asleep in bed...Excellent!One of the better points was a remarkable HAL HOLBROOK lookalike who goes by the name of John Goff. He is a fairly talented actor who some of you might have seen along with George 'Buck' Flowers playing small parts in Carpenter classics such as THE FOG, THEY LIVE and more recently BODY BAGS. Buck also earned a role in the late eighties dorm slasher CHEERLEADER CAMP. Surprisingly enough the two of them together wrote the screenplay for the 1976 slash-a-thon DRIVE IN MASSACRE. And I was even more puzzled when I found out that another BERSERKER cast member - Joeseph Alan Johnson - wrote 1988's arctic splatter epic ICED!Another thing worth(?) mentioning is the soundtrack. It looks pretty obvious that director Jeff Richard had a couple of mates who were in a rock band at the time, and he let them record the songs for his film. They've done the job exceedingly well. Sorry I'm joking, They're terrible. Here are a couple of the lyrics from one of the songs that the track listing shows as being called 'Cool Dude': "STOP telling me what to do about this, STOP telling me all about that. I don't wanna hear it, cos that aint where it's at!" It then breaks into the worst chorus in pop history which goes something like: "Cos I'm a coooool dude" Etc! Lately, if i ever get depressed I've simply fast forwarded to that scene and turned my TV up to the max. You'd be surprised how soon it cheers me up!Rounded up I can safely say that Berserker is marginally better than CAMP BLOOD. But still, that's hardly anything to boast about! There's no gore and the body count isn't exactly huge either. I'd never heard anything about this feature before I spotted it whilst out and about. And after watching it, I can understand why it was soon forgotten...

ok, for a start, the beginning is pretty good, a guy dies and its meant to be a rumour, you see the guy dying but no ones sure if he really did or not, its just a rumour, i like that idea. but after that the film is totally daft. for a start, i thought the berserker was just a warrior later on you realise it was one of the guys you see. i dont wanna spoil it and tell u who it is but you'l never guess. ~~~SPOILER~~~ at the end where the berserker dyes, he mutates back into the indian guy, WHATS UP WITH THAT. i enjoyed watching the film then they just pop out with some sad and crazy ending. this film is worth £5 or $7

I rented this movie along with some other b-flicks to watch with my friends. All I can say, is I wasted my $1.99. It was confusing, the film quality was bad, not to mention a total lack of a plot. The cover was kind of cool and that's about it...