Christina's House (2001) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

John Savage is in this movie. If you really admire the sensitive work he has done in the past in such films as The Deer Hunter, you had better avoid watching this and live instead with your memories.

WARNING: THIS PAGE IS FILLED WITH SPOILERS (not that you would want to see the movie, but fair warning just in case)

Damned if I can figure out why they made this movie at all. Count Floyd would love this film, because its one of those that Mrs Prickly would book as a scary movie, even though it isn't scary.

The plot: A bunch of people are murdered. Is it Christina's creepy dad, the creepy sheriff, one of the two creepy boyfriends, or a supernatural force of some kind?  

The only surprise they left in: finally revealing the murderer's identity. It was, needless to say, the least creepy and most sensitive of the four suspects. The best part of all - he had no motive! He was released from the same nuthouse where Christina's mom is being held. He and mom had many loony conversations, which planted in his mind that he should eventually kill everyone associated with Christina. So he did just that when he was released. Why not? He didn't have anything else to do.

The scariest things in the movie were cookies. You see, the killer started out by killing a girl scout who was selling her cookies. Mr Murderer then had more cookies than the average Safeway, so he disposed of this surplus by using them to scare people.

Example. Christina would think she was alone in the house, she'd leave a room, come back - and there would be a plateful of cookies, one partially eaten!

Cutaway to Count Floyd

"Did you see dose cookies, kids? Pretty scary, eh? Aroooooooooooooooooooo!"

Those were some scary mothafoggin' Oreos! Although I have to admit the pecan sandies were kinda creepy. 

Who is the audience for this movie? Slasher fans may be disappointed by the lack of slashing. Mystery fans will hate the fact that the murderer has no motive, and therefore he can't be deduced logically. In addition, there are elements of the plot which seem supernatural, yet Mr Murderer is just a regular human guy. He's a handyman. In fact, he looks perfectly normal until the very moment they identify him as the killer, at which point he starts making up his face like Marcel Marceau. (Only half-kidding. At that point they put white powder on his face and drew bags under his eyes. )

By the way, here's a tip for you moviegoing youngsters. If the family is too poor for a butler, the handyman did it.

Christina's House (1999) is a Canadian teen slasher film, sort of. Many will recall that Scoop recently did this film, and commented that there was nothing really wrong with it, but there was nothing really right with it either, that there was little startle type fright, and no suspense. Every character was strange enough to be the murderer except the actual murderer.

Scoop couldn't figure out why they made the film. Sometimes I love being second. First, I am not plagued with high expectations, and second, I can  build on what Scoop noticed. My suspicion is that this was intended to be an understated spoof of the genre. What confirmed my suspicions was an exchange between Christina (Allison Lange) and her father: 

Dad: "I don't know what's gotten into you lately."
Christina: "Don't be disgusting ... and nothing's gotten into me yet."

Add the fact that the terror and gore comes at you at a snails pace a la EuroHorror, and that the mood is reminiscent of Stephan King films and I  think this was intended as parody. Unfortunately, they were a little too subtle, and missed the mark. Lange poked through  her tops for the first 2/3 of the film, then suddenly had industrial strength bras under her tops. Maybe she finally saw a daily and had an attack of modesty. I honestly don't find this any worse than most of the genre.