Starring Allie MacDonald, Meat Loaf Aday, Douglas Smith, and Kent Nolan
Directed by Jerome Sable
Music and Lyrics by Jerome Sable and Eli Batalion
Let's get out of the camp-fest and into a literal camp...and something a lot scarier than a rock and roll vampire. This Canadian satire of The Phantom of the Opera and 80's slasher films may be the first and only attempt to cross operetta with the teen horror genre. Anyone who saw the 2004 Phantom knows that it already has it's fair share of problems, and this one doesn't improve things a lot. How far does this weird north-of-the-border genre slash-up look now? Let's begin on Broadway, as diva Kylie Swanson (Minnie Driver) begins her final run in The Haunting of the Opera, and find out...
The Story: Kylie is murdered backstage after the show by someone wearing the mask of the show's villain, Opera Ghost. Ten years later, her traumatized daughter Camilla (MacDonald) and son Buddy (Smith) work in the kitchen at their guardian Roger's (Meat Loaf) theatrical camp. The campers are all thrilled when Roger announces they'll be doing a Japanese kabuki theater version of Haunting...except Buddy, who hates musical theater after his mother's death. Camilla auditions and begs Roger to her mother's lead role of Sophia. He protests, but the show's ambitious director Artie (Brandon Uranowitz) is impressed and convinces Roger to let her play the role, to the disgust of Liz Silver (Melanie Leishman), who usually plays the leads.
Artie gets Camilla to make love with him to keep her role. She goes along with it at first, but can't make herself go all the way. Joel (Kent Nolan) tries to warn everyone about there being a killer loose, but they go on with the show anyway. Roger's called a Broadway scout, and he's desperate for the money. Camilla thinks she's going to do her mother proud...but the Metal Killer is very real, and he'd rather do her, Roger, and everyone in the camp in.
The Song and Dance: I do give the movie some credit for running with its goofy premise. It's not often you see slasher films done as operetta backstagers with a little heavy metal thrown in. Real-life musical fans and theater geeks like me will notice tons of references to other genre tropes, cliches, shows, and songwriters like Stephen Sondheim, and slasher nuts will get a kick out of nods to everything from Friday the 13th to Hellraiser. Meat Loaf makes the most of his limited role as the camp's owner who is bound and determined to put on this seemingly cursed show and impress that Broadway agent.
Favorite Number: Kylie and her daughter sing sweetly that "Everything Is Wonderful" backstage at The Haunting of the Opera, when of course, it's anything but. This becomes little Camilla's "Dance of Death" as she imagines herself performing her mother's role onstage, even as she's being done in. Cut to 10 years later, and the theater geeks who look forward to camp sing about why it's "Where We Belong." Liz admonishes her rival and her boyfriend to sing "Like You Mean It" during rehearsals. "Enter Metal Killer" when Alfie dies and hears a screeching heavy metal riff that attacks him...and everything musicals stand for. After Alfie's death, Roger rouses the teens by reminding them that "The Show Must Carry On."
What I Don't Like: This is way too obvious to be a spoof of horror, heavy metal, or operetta. None of the kids have voices appropriate for the rather dull material, and most of them are so stiff and silly, they make the teens in non-musical slasher flicks look like geniuses. They focus a lot more on the music than the horror; while we do get blood and gore, the really scary stuff doesn't kick in until half-way through. They could have further explored the similarities between the grand melodrama of 80's Andrew Lloyd Webber extravaganzas and 80's hair metal, but didn't even scrape the surface. There's times the theater geeks are treated very condescendingly too, especially during that "Where We Belong" number. And anyone who listens to the kids for five minutes and hears who loves musicals and who doesn't will guess the identity of the killer way before Camilla does.
The Big Finale: This is a little too bloody and badly-written for me, but if you're a bigger fan of slasher movies or horror satire than I am, this might be worth dodging killers at camp to check out at least once.
Home Media: Cheap and easy to find on every format; many platforms stream it for free.
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