BLOOD HOOK (1986)

BLOOD HOOK (1986)

Tagline: You Can't Worm Your Way Out.

(Horror, Comedy, Don’t Get Hooked) [R]

I think something's gone wrong around here. I think something's very fishy.

In this one the big fishing tournament “Muskie Madness” is coming up and a bunch of new people is showing up including Peter van Clease who was traumatized as a kid after seeing his grandfather hooked by a lure and dragged into the lake…never to be seen again. As it turns out the same thing is happening to a handful of would-be fishers, but no one wants to believe it. It doesn’t take long before Peter and his friends are caught in the middle of it all. Will anyone get out of this tournament alive, and who is behind the BLOOD HOOK?

First off, this movie was originally titled “Muskie Madness” and it’s a LOT more fitting when you start looking deeper into the storyline here. This is considered a slasher I guess, but it probably could have also fit into my “WHY IS EVERYTHING WEIRD HERE” Halloween reviews theme. I should also say that while we do get a few dry humor lines, this really isn’t a comedy if you are trying to watch it for that. It’s kind of like saying FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: JASON LIVES was a comedy. Yes, we get some funny lines in that movie, but it was never intended as a comedy. This movie is telling you it’s a comedy, but the humor is so "Sahara Desert" dry that it’s hard to tell. 

What horror fans will like about this one is that there is plenty of blood and guts. I mean, there are some pretty gnarly scenes in here, but one in particular almost landed the movie an X rating from the MPAA. Most of the movie is shot in the daylight with a pretty bright cheery color pallet, so the few crazy scenes almost feel out of place. That acting is gloriously horrible which is just perfect for a flick like this, so in both those areas, we have a winner. 

Acting wise outside of those I have listed we do get Lisa Jane Todd who continued acting till 2012’s horror film PLAYBACK. She is okay in this but plays a pretty unlikable character after some of the stuff she pulls. We also get Mark Jacobs who would go on to act until 1994 showing up in the movie GOODFELLAS and others. Very few actors in this movie actually went on to do other things as far as acting.  Don Winters who plays Leroy, Christopher Whiting who plays Finner, Sara Hauser who plays Kiersten, and probably a bunch of people I am missing only have this one movie as their only feature-length film. I can say that Christopher Whiting ironically became a writer for Mystery Science Theater 3000, and the director also worked for Mystery Science Theater 3000. If you are not familiar, that is a show that makes fun of movies that fit into the same crazy campy wheelhouse as this one.

One thing missing from this movie was a decent score and cinematically there is nothing really special here. It looks like they were purposely trying to do most of this during daylight. There is some character development and that helps. They even throw a bit of a love triangle in there, or at least what could have been one. 

Overall this is definitely a movie you remember after watching it but do not expect STUDENT BODIES level humor. This is more of a horror flick for fishermen. I have to give it a 3 out of 7 due to a few scenes I would definitely have taken out or shot differently. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF SPIDER LAKE FILMS LTD. PARTNERSHIP AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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