The 1980s was the decade of cheese. There was tons of it everywhere; in fashion, in music, in television and especially in films. MEMORIAL VALLEY MASSACRE is a late-era slasher flick that's absolutely laden with it. Bad fashions, bad hairdos, cheesy characters, and rubbish mock-serious dialogue: it's all here, and it's all utterly campy. I was half-wondering if this was a comedy when I sat down to watch it, and indeed there are some bits that are openly comic. But in the end, it proves to be yet another backwoods slasher heavily inspired by the likes of Friday the 13th.The flick kicks off with Cameron Mitchell cameoing as a ruthless property developer opening his latest venture, a campsite. Mitchell's cameo is about two minutes long, and he looks surprisingly healthy despite his advanced years. The other big cameo in the film is the star of '70s biker flicks, William Smith, here looking a lot like Bennett in COMMANDO. Smith doesn't have a great deal to do either, but it's nice to see some older faces amongst the mainly youthful mulleted cast members.So what does MEMORIAL VALLEY MASSACRE offer the viewer? A poor pacing to begin with. The last half hour is pretty good, packed with death and action; the first hour has none of this, so it really is just a bunch of folk talking in the woods. There's a hilarious romance scene inserted to pad out the running time, and it lasts a full ten minutes. There's a wet t-shirt dance to entrap the male audience's attention. There's some creepy narration from cast member Jimmy Justice, playing a black janitor who surprisingly DOESN'T get killed first of all, as is usually the case with non-white actors in these movies. Justice is a great guy and he helps make the first hour surprisingly bearable. Not so John Kerry, the nominal lead, whose ham acting gets worse as things go on. I did enjoy Mark Mears' straight-mannered youthful hero, though.Elsewhere, all kinds of clichéd folk make up potential victims. There's a kooky old couple, their creepy fat 20 year-old son, a bimbo, some jocks, a gang of bikers (!), a few other black people to make up the numbers, and an ageing blonde bimbo. If they'd have thrown a nerd into the mix then it would have been just right. Sadly, John Ceso's hermit villain is probably the worst character in the film, and the least scariest bad guy you'll see in a horror. It isn't really down to his acting, although he's never more than an ugly, skinny 20-something. No, the moment you see his cheap, tacky caveman costume, his mop hair and his goofy joke-shop teeth, all suspense and fear is blown, and that's not too good seeing as his identity is revealed early on in the proceedings.So, as is always the case with slashers, the film makes or breaks its reputation on the strength of the kills. The last half an hour is an orgy of murder, ranging from axe deaths to knifings, people falling in spike traps, getting burnt, or crushed beneath cars. The little gore we do see is campy and fake, but the murders have an inventiveness that makes them fun to watch. The ending goes for pathos but fails spectacularly. I found MEMORIAL VALLEY MASSACRE surprisingly entertaining, and although it's bad, it's a lot of fun because of just how bad and dated it is. Give me this trash over a po-faced mock-horror any day.

This movie is in the public domain, so it keeps popping up in bargain collections, drugstores and on-line for download, often free and sometimes with phony copyright information. I first saw this film as the second half of a $1.00 double feature DVD with another Cameron Mitchel turkey. Apparently he would turn nothing down. I think it's hard to know what to make of this movie. It starts off with an electronically inserted title card (Memorial Valley Massacre) A pretty good sign that this movie, whether released or not, started out with a different title. Research turned up the the title "Memorial Day" as its filming title. That's not a very good title in that it does not indicate a horror movie. But then, perhaps this is not one. The word "massacre" is misleading also as it makes you expect buckets of gore. Its not here. At least not in this cut. Recently (2011) I found a title "Son of Sleepaway Camp" online for free download. I found it to be the same film only it is a bit different. Apparently re-cut for foreign markets (Or more likely the U.S. version was cut, as it is much tamer. While the U.S. version plays like a slightly daring "made for TV movie" (The most shocking thing is a quickly glanced nipple that probably went unnoticed during editing.) This other version seems faster paced than the "Massacre" version. The title "Son of Sleepaway Camp" is even worst than "Memorial Day". What the heck does that even mean? I no longer own the "Massacre" version so my ability to review is impaired. The title sequence looks like the "real" one. The titles are burned in rather than electronic. The order of events seemed different to me. As though the action and murders are pushed closer toward the end. Mitchel's role seemed longer to me as well. But I cant imagine having a single name actor in the cast and then cutting him out of part of it. The single love scene is the biggest difference. This version is "hard core"!!! It is far too graphic for an R or PG-13 rating. It would not even get NC-17. Be ware if you are purchasing this on-line for a teen viewer and it reads Rated R or any other rating other than X. I am not certain of which versions have what content. I know that it was fashionable to add sex to foreign versions, but I guess they may have cut the sex out for the "Massacre" version. That version did seem ridiculously tame to me when I saw it. THe most graphic murder has a guy set on fire and running around. Its an impressive stunt and is pretty rough. I know they shot it "slo-mo" to make it run longer but I still had to wince. I believe the final murder has some added guts in one version that the other did not, but I'm not sure which version that was. I am not sure I can recommend either version. Though the "Son" version seemed more like a horror movie to me. Did this thing play in US theaters? I had never heard of it or even seen it written about in Monster mags at the time (1988) like Fangoria or Gore Zone. (I was also unaware of Mitchel's passing only a few years later, so I'm not always on the ball.) Where the heck did this thing pop up from?

Synopsis: David Sangster (Mark Mears) has just accepted a new job from his father (Cameron Mitchell) to oversee the opening of the brand new Memorial Valley campground. With the help of George (John Kerry. . . no, not that one), David must attempt to get around all of the problems the camp is facing (dead construction workers, tainted water supplies (with rotting animal corpses), inoperable bathrooms, etc.). To add to the heap of problems, a psychopathic murderer is wandering the camp unleashing his vengeance and attempting to cut short the campers' weekend.Review: Hoping for a lighthearted romp through the California wilderness, I picked up Memorial Valley Massacre on a whim, without actually looking up any reviews or ratings. I saw the plot, saw the availability, and that was enough for me. After I started watching, I decided to take a peek at the IMDb page just to see what I was getting into. Needless to say, the 2.6/10 user rating did not instill much confidence in me. But, I kept on with it and decided to give it a fair shot. Ratings have been wrong before (many, many times). Somehow, regardless of all the hate it received. . . I really enjoyed it. It's not a great film by any means and fans of the more grisly 80s slashers won't like it, but it's very watchable in some inexplicable way to the point where I actually had a lot of fun with it. Technically speaking, you could do a lot worse: The acting is passable, as is the writing. The direction was actually quite good and took advantage of the beautiful location they had, taking plenty of time to give the viewer a look at the wildlife around them. Obviously, there are plenty of negatives: The film is extremely unoriginal, taking no risks whatsoever and essentially only going for a watchably dumb film (which it achieves). The predictability doesn't help much and, even with the weirdo killer, it's extremely obvious to see where it's going. Also, the movie's very tame, showing little and not giving much of what a slasher fan would hope to find. In the end, if one is looking for the next great hidden slasher gem, they won't find it here. . . but, if a good time is all that's wanted and thinking can be put on hold for 90 minutes, I wouldn't totally disregard Memorial Valley Massacre.Obligatory Slasher Elements:Violence/Gore: There's a bit of violence, but the majority of it is very tame and the worst of it is offscreen. There isn't much blood, except for a few scenes with just a few drops.Sex/Nudity: Just a wet t-shirt, a girl in a towel, and some heavy making out. . . nothing to see here, folks.Cool Killer(s): If by 'cool,' it means 'hilarious.' The guy is, seriously, some kind of caveman, dressed in animal skins and fang necklace and all. Weird.Scares/Suspense: Very little. There are some attempts at jump scares, but you can see them coming from a mile away and really don't do much at all.Mystery: There's one 'mystery' of the film, but it's so obvious when it's introduced that it shouldn't even count.Awkward Dance Scene: Dancing in the rain in a thin shirt with no bra? Not awkward, just hot.- -Final verdict: 5/10. Simply for the watchability.-AP3-

"Memorial Valley Massacre" is a more than capable slasher when it gets going.**SPOILERS**Arriving at the Memorial Valley Park, head Ranger George Webster, (John Kerry) informs David Sangster, (Mark Mears) that the park isn't ready to open but is allowed to do so anyway. As the crowd pours in, including friends Tom, (Zig Roberts) Emily, (Dusty Woods) and Chuck, (Michael Spenard) bikers Eddie, (Eddie D) Leon, (Dan S. Fambeau) Morie, (Charles Douglass) Flo, (Christina Sullivan) Rita, (B.B. Selco) and Sara, (Lyvingston Holmes) as well as local girl Cheryl, (Lesa Lee) all decide to stay with them and rough it in the wilderness. As night falls, one member of the group is found dead in the forest, and local bear reports force them to put the blame on a bear. Forming a search party with the others, they all go out to find it, but are soon separated and disappear one-by-one. Realizing that a mysterious killer has been responsible all along, they all launch a stand against them to get out of the park alive.The Good News: This was quite a nice surprise. One of the best parts of the film is the simply spectacular last half-hour of the film. This is where the killer goes crazy and begins offing the members like crazy. Except for a couple, the film's over-a-dozen kills all come in this section of the film, and there are some quite good ones as well. Several are crushed under a flipped-over truck, another is set on fire when they stand in a pool of spilt gasoline, impaled in the stomach with a spear, another falls into a trap with spikes lining the bottom, an ax in the chest and much more. This is such a fast paced series of scenes that it leads into the next one very quickly, hardly leaving the previous one in question before it's on to the next one. That's the way to handle a slasher film, where the slashing is quite excellent and it gets a lot of time. It's not necessarily suspenseful, but there's enough to warm over any genre fan as this end section is pretty loaded with such things. There's even some nice chasing going on, where it gets some more excitement into the film. The chase through the forest to catch the rider on the scooter is a prime example, where the film keeps on delivering great action without it being a killing. The assault on the campground at the end works for the same way, and it is also a great action scene. There's plenty of innovative ideas brought into play, and the non-stop action of it really excites. The last really good part is that, even though the middle section isn't all that suspenseful, action-packed or even showing of normal slasher elements, this one doesn't really become boring. Nothing happens, but it stays watchable throughout and doesn't slip into moments of boredom or sleepiness. That's a great factor for the film, and it adds with the others into a nice slasher.The Bad News: This isn't all that bad and has a few problems. The most obvious is the complete and utter nonthreatening killer. The women in the film are bigger than the killer, and that in itself should be a clear indication of how large he is. The fact that he wears a bunch of animal skins and looks like a caveman doesn't help with intimidation either. Even worse is the fact that the movie decides to reveal the identity of it early in the beginning of the film, as this one really could've been driven in the middle section by making it a real mystery about who was responsible without ruining anything else in the film. They still could've played up the jungle-man version, but it would've had the middle section all the more suspenseful if it plays off the unknown member in the campground aspect a little more. The last real flaw is that there's way too much time in between the killings. The first one occurs pretty early into the film, then they drop off until the end segment, where it goes completely killing crazy. That leaves the middle section pretty slow-going, and for the hardcore slash fans, the middle is going to be a little slow. The low-budget feel could be a problem, but it isn't pronounced like the others, and not as detrimental either.The Final Verdict: A completely cheesy and quite clichéd affair, this is a really fun and enjoyable slasher when it gets down to it. Really recommended to those who enjoy the style of campground slasher or the genre in general, while those who aren't huge genre fans will find this one to be quite bad and not worth it.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Language, Brief Nudity and a mild sex scene