Moonstalker.

Stop.

Stop right there.

Before you read this, you have to promise me something.

Promise me that somehow, sometime, you will watch this movie. Because even I, immensely talanted in the ways of comedy as I am, cannot adequately describe the full wonder that is Moonstalker. The plots that turn up, only to go nowhere. The terrible acting. The sleazy 'sex' scenes. The painfully repetitive and outdated synthesizer soundtrack... All things you have to witness to believe.

It's a little hard to track down, I know. A little obscure, even. On IMDB, it has only nine reviews. (To put that in perspective, 'Women in Cages' has eleven.)

But you need to see it.

You all do.

The world needs to know...

About Moonstalker.

Before we start, you get a bit of backstory; you see, it appears that my habit of watching very, very bad movies for entertainment got out around my father's workplace. How? Why? I'm not sure. But it led to one of his co-workers lending me this beautiful little gem.

Now, with a name like 'Moonstalker', you might be expecting some kind of camp-a-riffic science fiction thriller. But you would be wrong. This film earned its moniker because our villain stalks. And he does so by the light of a weirdly cropped still-photo of the moon.

We start with a group of young'uns doing a ritual jig around a campfire in the middle of winter. As one does.

Our hero (as I shall henceforth brand the killer, since he is the main credited actor and the only likeable character) creeps up and, presumably, kills them all.

We then abruptly cut to a fresh batch of the most godawful southern accents y'all ever did hear. I was actually fairly alarmed, at first. These people (husband, wife, and two un-southern but equally irritating offspring) are out camping in the hopes of some familial bonding. You will hate them. But don't worry, they die.

Not immediately, mind you. First, they meet a creepy old man who is about as unsubtly evil as them come, constantly talking about his son, Bernie, in the past tense and swinging a poorly-sharpened axe about.

Bernie, of course, is alive and well, and soon to rid us of our first wave of appallingly offensive characters.

Annoying Daughter sneaks off to have herself some cigarettes, alcohol, and music (as those gosh-darned teens are wont to do),

while her family is massacred. And it is hilarious.

Bernie's father sends him off to kill Annoying Daughter, and promptly drops dead of a heart-attack.

No, really.

At this point, I admit that I was expecting our bubble-headed dame to go the 'final girl' route, evading Our Hero long enough to pluck up her courage for a final confrontation... but we have no such plot depth. He steals a truck and runs her over.

Oh, yes. The truck was one belonging to Some Dude, a participant in a wilderness-councillors' training program. Bernie kills him, takes his clothing, and, after receiving some helpful directions, makes his way to the training camp itself, making the entire ordeal with the family a weird sort of drawn-out 'introduction', which will be rendered completely useless later.

In the meantime, we meet our second set of irksome protagonists: eerily-familiar-but-he's-no-one-you-know-really-I-checked Ron and his potential-rapist buddy, Bobby, who are wilderness guides, and Debbie, also known as 'the one who lives, damn it'. She gets directions to the camp, but her car breaks down for no significant reason, and she gets a ride from Ron and Bobby.

We're then introduced to the delightful group of people who attend the camp. You will hate them. Don't worry, they die. They're also shockingly useless, so I'm not going to bother naming any of them aside from Regis, the camp-runner whom everyone dislikes, and his wife, Marcie.

Some stuff happens, Bernie revisits his old home to pick up some weaponry and prompt a horrible little voiceover-from-the-past, and two of the campers are killed, but everyone thinks that they're off having the sex, so they don't bother looking for them seriously.

Soon, a police officer rolls up and...

And...

Okay, this man. People. This man.

This man personifies this text-face: >:<

I am serious.

Every time I see him, his face and his terrible, terrible accent send me into gales of choked laughter. I'm kind of in love.

So anyway, he tells Ron that there's a killer on the loose, and to be wary. Ron then tells Bobby, who starts cracking jokes and making a spear out of a stick and knife. You'll never see it again. At the behest of the other campers, Bobby tells an exposition-laden tale about how Bernie came to terrorise the area all those long years ago.... It's at this point that I notice an odd habit this movie has of focusing on speakers for a long time and not moving until they finish their story.

At any rate, Bobby tells of how Bernie and parents lived peacefully until the guv'ment decided to build a road through the woods and told Bernie's family to move. His father refused, chaos ensued, and Bernie's mother was killed, prompting him to go mad and slaughter the campers we saw in the very beginning. I am suddenly very interested in watching a film about that story.

People disperse, leaving Debbie and Ron alone, where she asks him if the story is true. He confirms it, and mentions that the cabin is still up there. Excited, she asks if they can go see i-

Wait.

Didn't the government want Bernie's family to move so that they could build a road, which they then built after the whole mother-shooting fiasco? Why would the cabin still be there? Doesn't that mean the family could have stayed all along? Hm.

Anyhow, Ron and Debbie meander off to go see the cabin. (why does she want to see it, anyway..?)

Next is a scene that makes me wonder if the director actually changed his mind at some point and decided to make an honest comedy. It's just... wow.

So Marcie and Regis and two of the other campers are killed, awesomely,

while Bobby gets some disturbing pity-flirtation from one of the other gals. We get some confusing character development, then he dies and she gets dragged off.

Meanwhile, Ron and Debbie have made it to the cabin and conveniently get to strip down because they are idiots and were attacked by a puddle.

Also, we get a little sojourn over at the police side of things, where we're introduced to a plot thread that goes absolutely nowhere, and some more people who will die.

So Redshirt With a History goes over to the camp and falls into Bernie's trap and dies.

No, no. I'm not glossing over that. No way. Let me explain the trap in detail.

Redshirt With History (RWH) wanders by the camp and hears some music. This music is the most unenthusiastic rendition of 'she'll be comin' 'round the mountain' that I have ever heard. Up the hill, silhouetted by firelight, he sees a group of campers swaying back and forth in time to the music.

He holsters his pistol and walks up, warning them to get away, but when he gets closer it turns out that (gasp!) the swaying campers are really corpses!

Tied to a plank of wood! Tied to the trees! Attached to a girl in a noose whose struggling motions are causing the plank to swing! RWH quickly lifts the plank to try and release her, when suddenly Bernie, having hidden in the treetops, throws a spear-thingy at him! Causing him to drop the plank and snap the girl's neck before he dies!

So. In summary: Bernie horded all his victims' bodies, found a nicely cut plank of wood that was just the right length, set up a fire, found a radio and a terrible recording of people singing, dragged a conscious camper into the trees, trusting that the whole 'being hanged' thing wouldn't kill her within a few minutes, whittled a spear, and hid in the trees.

All before he even knew that the police would be coming to that specific area in the first place.

That, my friends, is preperation.

So we cut back to Debbie and Ron, who aren't doing anything interesting, except maybe putting some clothes on, when Ron steps outside and is killed. Debbie runs back into the cabin and hides behind a doorway with an axe, swinging it as soon as a behatted figure leans into the room. But wait! It turns out that she killed, not Bernie, but one of the police officers who just happened to wander in entirely unannounced and stick her head through a doorway without a weapon drawn!

Horrified, Debbie runs back to the camp and into a truck, where there is a rifle on the seat. She shrinks into a corner and aims the rifle out the window, a dark figure appears, she shoots!

And we cut to the next morning, where two people are discussing the previous night's events in such a terribly stilted way that you can practically hear the crew shuffling around cue-cards off camera.

A lone ambulance rolls up, and we see that it contains Debbie, who is now completely mad.

The ambulance drives off, and a few moments later is followed by a truck.

Being driven by none other than Bernie himself!

He calmly exits onto the city street. Cue credits.

But wait!

If Bernie is alive, then that must mean that the person Debbie shot was...

....!

But seriously, folks. I love this movie. Not just because it's the perfect blend of terrible and hilarious, but because I feel somehow... attached to it. It's my first, untouched, MST3K quality movie. It hasn't been reviewed on ThatGuyWithTheGlasses, it isn't famous or ubiquitous like Manos: The Hands of Fate, it's just... quietly horrid. I would make some sort of virginity analogy, but I think I've come off creepy enough as it it.

Before I finish up, I'd like to mention two things that baffle me.

The first is the scene with Bobby and his blithe enamorata, snarfing around the fire. At one point, he suggests that they should spread out the sleeping-bag by the fire to... get more comfortable, as it were. He unrolls it, only to reveal a severed arm.

The girl, understandably, becomes distraught, but Bobby calms her, saying that it's fake and only a joke. They pack up and leave to get killed.

So... all right. Was that supposed to be an arm that Bernie stuffed in a bedroll? Was it actually plastic? Are we supposed to tell the difference between the rubber limbs being thrown about and a rubber limb that's really supposed to look fake? And, perhaps most importantly, you can see the arm's bloody stump before he even unties the bedroll.

The second thing is a small one.

At the end of the credits (yes, I watched them all), there is a bit of block-text that reads:

"Filmed Entirely In THE STATE OF NEVADA".

Now.. is that normal? Do all films have their location emblazoned at the end? It's an odd sort of tourism promotion.

"Visit THE STATE OF NEVADA! Filming Location of MOONSTALKER!"

Something for me to contemplate.

Another thing that's good to contemplate is that, out of the entire cast, only four people went on to have actual careers. Bernie, who seems to have been quite successful, Regis, who did some normal stuff, including several episodes of DS9, Marcie, who did stuff that I think is probably porn, and the son from the beginning, simply credited as 'Boy'.

Everyone else seems to have vanished from the face of movie-dom. Probably wise.

My verdict:

You need to see this as soon as is humanly possible. Watch it more than once. Subject all your friends to it after you've seen it yourself, grinning at them maliciously each time they exclaim "are you freaking serious?!".

And with that, I bid you farewell. Happy moonstalking.

Spin.

Moonstalker is © MCMLXXXIX (seriously, that's in the credits.) Cinema & Theatre Seating LTD.