Body Count



AKA: Camping of Terror
AKA: Camp Terror

A gal and her beau are macking out in a tent, but she has to go drop a log (or something) before they leave for the night and she wanders off for some privacy. But instead of finding a good squatting stump, she stumbles upon a parked police car with its lights on. Curious, she goes to investigate and ends up accosted and killed by an unknown assailant wearing a pathetic looking mask. A similar fate befalls her useless boyfriend when he goes to investigate her screams, the whole thing being witnessed by a small boy who wandered into the woods looking for…his teddy bear? WTF….

Anyway, 15 years later, a group of vacationing teens pick up an army guy named Ben, who is having car trouble. The group is looking for a fun place to camp for a while and – what luck! – turns out Ben’s parents own a campground nearby, so they all head over there. Ben’s parents are happy to see him, but not so much his new friends. Turns out some weird stuff has happened the last few years, including several missing person’s cases, and Ben’s dad has become obsessed with trapping some Indian shaman guy who’s reportedly out there causing mischief in the woods. But Ben’s mom convinces him to let them stay, because after all, that shaman business is nonsense, and nobody cares that the campground was built on an old Indian burial ground, so what’s the worst that could happen?


As it turns out, quite a lot.

Body Count is an Italian slasher from 1986. It was directed by Ruggero Deodato, a man some horror fans may be familiar with, due to his much more well known movie, Cannibal Holocaust, a film so brutal and gory that not only was it seized and banned in many countries, but the special effects were so realistic that Deodato was arrested on suspicion of murder and all the actors had to appear in court to prove that they were, in fact, still alive.

Now, that little bit of historical trivia might get some people’s hopes up regarding the quality found in this film. And I am here to tell you that if it did, then you’re gonna need to reign in those expectations quite a bit. Because, while decent, unlike his more notable work, the effects here could probably just be considered decidedly “okay”, even by slasher standards. And the same could be said about the dialogue… and the plot… and just about everything else in this strange little movie….


Seriously kid, what the hell are you doing out here?

The more I think about it though, the more I think calling the movie “okay” may be being too generous. Cause lets face it, I’ve seen some real stinkers over the years, and this film has some oddities that even put some of those to shame. Because there are a few things going on in this movie that are just weird.

Some of them are plot related, like the aforementioned teddy bear that keeps popping up sporadically throughout the film that, for the life of me, I cannot figure out the purpose of. I initially thought it was supposed to signify someone’s impending death or something. But the sheriff has it at some point early in the film and he didn’t croak, so I don’t know what the hell is up with the freakin’ bear. Maybe it’s just a holdover from an earlier draft of the script and lost its meaning during rewrites. Or maybe they were just going for an aesthetic that simply didn’t pan out. Either way, the bear is just confusing.


And it could use a bath.

But most of the issues simply arise from the characters behaving strangely. And I don’t just mean like acting cosmically stupid by doing dumb nonsense like running up the stairs when a killer’s chasing after them. I mean, they do dumb crap like that too of course, like when the boyfriend from the beginning of the film hears his girlfriend screams of terror and his first reaction is to go out into the woods and yell back things like, “Hey, are you putting me on? We really need to go. What’s going on…” *another shriek of fear* “…Stop kidding around.” (Dear God, you deserved better, Rose.)


Behold, the face of an IDIOT.

But it’s much more than that. I’m talking about stuff like watching your friend/boyfriend (relationships are confusing in this movie) fall from a cliff, and instead of running to his aid or, heaven forbid, even just checking to see if he’s okay and not a mangled corpse, instead you run screaming into the woods, stop at a rundown bathhouse that you find in the middle of the forest, go to the sinks in said bathhouse at the end of the hall and then…take off your sweater and look at yourself in the mirror? I’m sorry but, what? I know they were just setting up a death and all, but that is NOT a normal human reaction to the situation. It’s bad enough she didn’t stop to check on the guy, but then she just abruptly stops what she was doing to lovingly check herself out in the dirty mirror? It literally feels like she got a case of  sudden onset temporary amnesia or something and forgot what the hell she was doing. It’s just so WEIRD. And I might forgive the movie if this were just a one-off situation. But it’s not. Other people make equally head-scratchingly bizarre choices in this film. And just as in this case, it’s usually used as a lame excuse to set up their untimely demise. But…come on guys. Was it really THAT hard to come up with a way to kill these people in a way that didn’t make it look like they were suddenly suffering from brain damage?


Considering some of the situations in this movie, maybe it was…

Oh, and the dialogue and acting? It’s a mixed bag. The movie does have a few film veterans, like Mimsy Farmer, Charles Napier, John Steiner and David Hess (Last House on the Left, To All a Goodnight). So when it comes to the older actors it’s not all bad. But everyone else? It can be pretty bad…and occasionally confusing. Which actually makes more sense to me than a lot of strange things going on in the film. Because this is an Italian film, written by Italians, so I’m kinda assuming it was originally written in Italian before being translated into English and… Well, lets’ just say that I think some things may have been lost in translation. Because there are several lines and jokes in here that simply don’t make that much sense and I just… I don’t know. Either something’s not quite right, the Italians getting re-dubbed changed some things, or I’m really dense and missing something.

Though I did like how half the cast was wearing some kind of American sports team shirt so you wouldn’t immediately guess that the film was shot in Italy. That was a nice, amusing touch.



Now, the one thing the film gets really right is the violence. Because about 9 or 10 people kick the bucket in this movie so, as the title suggests, there is indeed a fairly large body count. But remember, I said that the film wasn’t as impressive as Cannibal Holocaust, so you shouldn’t expect to be blown away by anything. Several deaths occur either off screen, happen so fast that you don’t actually see anything, or you only see the aftereffect of the death, not the death itself. So…yeah. I think the most FX intensive one is the ax to the skull, but that’s about it. Other than that, it’s just a bunch of quick stabbings, though the one involving the mirror was quite a bit more creative than the others.


I regret to inform you that this chick does not survive.

And sadly, any excitement of the upcoming deaths is all kind of mitigated by the fact that the middle of the film sort of pushed itself into a very predictable and annoying pattern. Because for a while, everything revolves around the abandoned bath house in the woods that the campers insisted on cleaning up so that they could use the showers (Wait, didn’t their camper have a shower? And how was there even water still running if the building was abandoned? Oh wait, that’s one of those questions I’m not supposed to think about with this movie, isn’t it?…). So anyway, the pattern goes as follows: Someone goes into the bath house -> death -> someone else goes into the bath house -> they find the last person’s body -> they freak out  -> death -> someone else goes into the bath house -> they find the last person’s body -> they freak out -> dea-… Well, you get the idea. The movie could have used just a bit more variety, is all I’m saying.


And a better mask.

Now, all that said, there are actually two things I really liked about the movie. The first is that it has some very nice atmosphere. The movie was partially filmed on location in the Abruzzi region near the Apennine Mountains and let me tell you it is very pretty out there. Like, unlike other horror movies shot in the woods I can see why someone would want to camp here. Camp Crystal Lake? Garbage. This place? Absolutely lovely.


Ah, such a nice scenic spot to fall to your death.

And the second thing, is that there’s actually a subplot in this movie, one involving Ben’s mom having an affair with the sheriff and his dad knowing about it and being royally pissed off, that actually explains why no one can contact the outside world. Because – Surprise Surprise – one of them dies, and they naturally don’t want anyone calling the sheriff over a little homicide. Now, normally this type of nonsense would bother me, because I honestly don’t give a damn about all these pathetic people’s petty personal lives. That’s why I don’t watch dramas. But here I actually kind of liked it, because it happened in the middle of the “Pattern Death Sequence” so all the revenge plottin’ and whoring (and bonus murder!) helped keep the movie from feeling too dull. So yay for that, I guess.



But like I said, for the most part Body Count is just okay. There are a couple more added oddities, like the atrocious mask, or the killer somehow miraculously managing to materialize a wig to match the hair of his victim by, I don’t know, pulling it out of his ass or something. And it even has a couple good parts and some amusing bits. But overall it’s pretty standard stuff as far as slashers go. Fans of the genre will appreciate the death toll and the variety of buxom babes in various states of undress. Hell, they’ll also probably appreciate some of the strangeness. But casual horror fans will likely want to skip this one. It’s fine for what it is, but there’s simply not much of note here.

Body Count is available on a variety of streaming services.

Body Count is also available on DVD, but based on the exorbitant prices, it appears to currently be out of print.

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