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Unrated
Directed by Jeff C. Smith
Review by Dr. Royce Clemens
“Every shot of this movie looks like someone’s last known photograph.”
-Joel Hodgson
I am befuddled by these exercises in irony. Movies like PLANET TERROR and many of the Troma films that play some of the dustier conventions of horror films for laughs. Exactly how the fuck am I supposed to react? If it’s bad, does that mean it’s good? If the parody stops and it becomes a horror movie in its own right, does that mean it failed in its purpose? It’s almost as if these filmmakers try to put themselves in a win-win situation where putting on a top hat and tails and dancing when their movie fucks up somehow absolves them of their responsibility to the audience. “Ya see? It’s not bad! IT’S A JOKE!”
But then I light up a smoke, sit back, and look at the bigger picture. What is being promised? Thank God that STUPID TEENAGERS MUST DIE! makes its purpose known right on the one-sheet:
“EXCESSIVE VIOLENCE, GRATUITOUS NUDITY, ZERO BUDGET…”
Ohhhhhhhhhh, umkay. Then score! This movie has all that!
Especially the “Zero Budget” part. Filmed on what seems to be a camcorder, the only way STUPID TEENAGERS MUST DIE! could get more low-tech is if it was a cave-painting. But it has some heart to it. It looks like everyone involved had a lot of fun and they gave it their all. It has that grubby, homemade charm that Hollywood wants to stamp out really, really bad.
A group of conspicuously older looking stock teen characters in the nineteen-eighties are holed up in a house where a group of murders took place. You got the goth chick, the ditzy blonde, the wimp who crushes on the ditzy blonde, the tough guy, the two lesbians and the token black guy among a few others. They attempt to summon “Murder McGee” with a Ouija board and the TEN LITTLE INDIANS plot where they start dropping off one by one plays out.
The little riffs on convention start fairly early where an assailant with a sheet over his head takes out the “Star-Athlete.” He falls on the floor and the music swells and stops and the camera just holds the shot as he bleeds… And bleeds… And bleeds… For a RIDICULOUS amount of time.
The rest of the movie is a loosely connected collection of gags around a horror movie framework. But these gags work more often than not. I particularly like a dialogue exchange after one of the lesbians is sitting with “Generic Heroine” and says she doesn’t want her lover’s blood on her. So she takes her top off and “Generic Heroine” walks her out, leaving the “Ditzy Blonde” and the “Geek” who’s crushing on her alone together…
BRIAN: Umm… You have some blood on your shirt, too.
TIFFANY (staring): For fuck’s sake, Brian…
There are a few things that I’m sure weren’t intentional that I found funny as well. They’re in this house where all these murders took place, right? Then why is it that that there’s no dust anywhere, there’s still electricity and all the furniture looks new? And remember the dude in the sheet who kills the guy before the credits? They never explain who that guy is.
But what I found is that the actors didn’t fall into the trap that many of these movies have and this is making self-referential asides to the camera. You know, where they have a look on their face that let’s us know “GOSH, THIS IS FUNNY!” That kind of thing usually succeeds in pissing me off. But here? They act like their lives are in danger instead of acting like they’re in a comedy. The standout is Jovan Meredith as Kane, the “Token Black Guy.” Not only does he leap out of the horrific stereotype of the black guy dying first in this kind of movie, but he has this kind of honest authority about him. He is this film’s “Most Likely to Succeed.”
I must also mention, being as this site is run by a wide cross-section of perverts, that Lindsay Gareth, who plays Tiffany, the blonde, has won an award for her work in STUPID TEENAGERS MUST DIE! Granted it was “Best Breasts” at the Backseat Film Festival, but DAMMIT, I AM NOT HERE TO JUDGE!
STMD! runs out of steam for a few minutes at a time, but how well it works when it’s on more than makes up for it. It reminds us of a day when horror movies weren’t strained political commentaries or the dreaded “Gorno.” It takes us to back in the day… When this kind of thing was fun.
3 out of 4
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