Two teens are murdered at a wooded Colorado campground said to have been cursed long ago by an Indian shaman. 15 years later, a group of annoying people decide to stay at the same campground and are systematically picked off by a masked killer.
Ruggero Deodato is a long way from "Cannibal Holocaust" with this sloppy mess of a slasher flick. Being a fan of slashers and Deodato's previous work, I had been wanting to see this one for a while, but I came away seriously disappointed. The stalking scenes jump all over the place as the killer's abilities are exaggerated to an extent too absurd to ignore. The kills themselves are pretty bland, a scene involving an axe being the notable exception. One victim's hair color changes as he (or, more accurately, his stuntman) falls off of a cliff. There's also a kill that echoes one from the first "Friday the 13th", though not as competently done.
The characters are annoying troublemakers who bitch about everything and pull stupid pranks on each other. Horrible dubbing doesn't help. David Hess and Mimsy Farmer are present as the camp owners. They don't have much to do other than act suspicious. Some major plot points are left wide open, and the ending doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Even Claudio Simonetti's score fails to strike a chord.
The best thing going for "Body Count" is the filming location. There's also a nice nightmare sequence, but as a whole, this is the weakest Deodato film I've seen. Thankfully, he would redeem himself with the underrated "Phantom of Death" the following year.
