Census Bloodbath: Let There Be Carnage

Year:
1989
Director:
John Harvey
Cast:
Rhett Pennell, John Harvey, Kevin Schmidt
Run Time:
1 hour 49 minutes

Plot: Post Mortem - Return to Carnage Hall takes place five years after the events of 1988's Carnage Hall. The Einstein-masked killer has returned as a ghostly apparition who possesses various people and causes them to commit murders in and around the Tom Brown Hall dorm at Texas Christian University. The only people who can stop him are the people who accidentally summoned him in the first place during a seance gone wrong - wide-eyed freshman Danny Hughes (Rhett Pennell), his free-spirited roommate Wesley "Elf" Worthington (John Harvey), Elf's girlfriend Cassandra (Kimb Shiver), and Cassandra's roommate/Danny's love interest Lisa (Marisa Murray) -as well as the ghosts of two of his previous victims, Kevin Schmidt (Kevin Schmidt) and Todd Camp (Todd Camp), who need to do a good deed to avoid being stuck in Purgatory forever, watching endless reruns of The Love Boat.

Analysis: Why watch Return to Carnage Hall without having seen Carnage Hall, you ask? Great question. I have been doing dogged research on exactly how to watch 1988's Carnage Hall for years now. It is literally the only movie on my slasher list that I have never been able to find access to, either online or out in the world (VHS tapes and import DVDs usually help a lot in this department). For all intents and purposes it is a lost film, even though it was tantalizingly screened in Ontario exactly once about a decade ago. However, during my latest round of research, I did discover that it has a sequel. While this sequel is so obscure that it literally doesn't even have a page on IMDb, it clearly exists, because I watched it with my own two eyes.

Why watch said sequel now instead of waiting until it's time to cover 1989 slashers, you ask? An even better question. I was only able to access the movie via a non-downloadable video file hosted online, and I wanted to make sure I watched it ASAP in case the link ever went dead. Now. Enough dithering. Let's get to the movie.

Made on a slim budget by actual college students at Texas Christian University, the Carnage Hall movies are pure amateur hour, shot-on-video, microbudget nonsense, which is why I didn't feel terribly bad about writing off the first installment as a lost film. However, my experience of watching its sequel has transmogrified my feelings about the situation into those of profoundest regret.

While everything I said about the movie is true (and it must be said, the only available copy online looks like absolute dogshit), it is also an utter delight. This is clearly the result of a group of friends throwing anything and everything they thought might be funny onscreen, which usually results in sheer tripe, but in this case harnesses a sort of deranged comic energy that uplifts the entire experience. Not every joke lands, but like all the best comedies, there are enough gags delivered at such a rapid pace that you hardly notice the duds as they're going by.

It's no Airplane!, mind you, but there is a delirious "let's put on a show" energy to the whole affair that is buoyant and effortlessly charming. And some of the jokes are genuinely funny, if a bit broad. Take, for instance, the scene where Cassandra first meets Danny and instead of shaking his hand, reads his palm and mutters "five kids, good luck." Or the bits where Cassandra and Lisa are trying to interpret the words they caught during their seance, which turn out to be Kevin and Todd singing along to the Love Boat theme song.

In addition to being genuinely funny with an unusually well thought-out screenplay, the movie has a lush sense of creativity in spite of its ramshackle production value, and this results in a great deal of dynamic staging the likes of which usually can't be found within miles of a 1980s slasher this cheap. The filmmakers' creative impulses run roughshod over the movie, leading it to peter out in the third act as the movie runs a good 20 minutes too long, but that's a trade I'm willing to make for moments like the wailing electric guitar on the score that perfectly matches the cadence of a professor who is blowing her top at Danny and Elf (whose names, by the way, are for some reason a reference to Danny Elfman).

On top of all this, Return to Carnage Hall is a perfect time capsule. As is the case for almost any movie too cheap to afford such nonessential things as costumes, sets, and the like, the camera simply captures what things really looked, sounded, and felt like in the late 1980s. This adds a great deal of texture to the experience, particularly during a gloriously campy dress-up montage. But the jokes about, say, people up in Heaven throwing on a tape of Beetlejuice or the boys doing an impression of Zelda Rubinstein in Poltergeist offer some great insight into what was truly stuck in the craw of big time horror fans during the waning years of the decade.  A decade that I might remind you was one of the best times for the horror genre that there ever was.

The movie is hardly a masterpiece, but I had a hell of a time watching it. Given how brutal slogging through 1985 has proven to be, it really was a breath of fresh air to be watching a movie so joyously invigorated by the mere idea of being a goofy slasher.

Killer: The Einstein-masked killer, in various forms

Final Girl: Danny Hughes (Rhett Pennell) and Wesley "Elf" Worthington (John Harvey) feat. Lisa (Marisa Murray)

Best Kill: Elvis is stuck to the wall with telekinetically tossed CDs and has his head split in half vertically with a vinyl record.

Sign of the Times: The boys' rooms are plastered with totally radical mid to late '80s movie posters, including The Blob, A Fish Called Wanda, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, Sleepaway Camp II, Summer School, Beetlejuice, Spaceballs, Die Hard, Monster Squad, and From Beyond (the latter of which is featured prominently in Elvis' death scene).

Scariest Moment: Kevin and Todd use their ghostly powers to distort their faces and voices in order to make Danny and Elf listen to them.

Weirdest Moment: The entire movie opens on a fake commercial for a store that sells globes that ties into the actual movie in basically zero ways.

Champion Dialogue: “Have a little respect for the dead, asswipe!"

Body Count: 10

1. Travis is decapitated after having his head pulled into a toilet.
2. Chelsea is drowned in a fountain.
3. Janitor is impaled with a mop handle.
4. Makeout Point Guy has his head slammed in a car door.
5. Shoplifter is shot.
6. Mall Cop shoots himself while possessed.
7. Liz has an 8 ball thrown into her forehead.
8. Random Dorm Guy is strangled and hanged with a phone cord.
9. Elvis has his head split in half with a vinyl record.
10. Cassandra is stabbed with a machete by Elf while possessed.

TL;DR: Post Mortem - Return to Carnage Hall is a charming amateur slasher, even if it overstays its welcome.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1212