Review by Louis Fowler | Anchor Bay Entertainmet | Buy at Amazon.com
PREDATOR meets FROM DUSK TILL DAWN in SLAYER, a supremely silly but incredibly fun little jaunt that stars the perpetually square-jawed Casper Van Dien (star of one of my fave cheesefests, the Christian-backed THE OMEGA CODE) as “elite commando leader” Hawk, who’s moving a group of soldiers through the South American jungle as a tribe of pre-Incan vampires hunt them down one by one. The vampires, it seems, are attacking humans because of man’s encroachment on his jungle domain, due to deforestation. I bet that wasn’t in that Al Gore documentary!
So while Van Dien and crew march through the jungle, two of his army buddies have been turned into vampires (one of which is Kevin Grevioux, who might as well change his name to Michael Clarke Duncan 2) and are helping the vampires strategize, but apparently their strategy is just to capture a scientist (of what, I’m not sure) who just happens to be… Casper Van Dien’s wife! No bullshit! So, she’s kidnapped and dressed in robes while Ray (Toad from X-MEN) Park jumps around as an acrobatic Russian vampire and then, if that wasn’t enough, reinforcements led by Lynda Carter show up to help them! The fuck?!?!?!
I love love loved every minute of this film! Yeah, it’s a goofy as it sounds, but that’s the charm of SLAYER; it’s great to watch a fully unpretentious horror yarn that is not only aware of it’s B-movie status, but wears it proudly on it’s sleeve. It just piles one ridiculous cliché on after another, but it doesn’t care! And, as a bonus, the commentary featuring Van Dien is a hoot and holler. It’s as hilarious as you would imagine it would be. I seriously hope he makes nothing but crappy movies like this for the rest of his life.
Wait a minute… hope? He's Casper Van fucking Dien! Of course he will! There’s no hope about it. And it’s the hopelessness that makes SLAYER a cheap blast that I’ll recommend to any horror fan craving some cheap thrills.
