Are All Summer Camps This Dangerous?

Film: Madman
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

When a particular genre movie makes a lot of money, it immediately spawns imitators trying to cash in on the formula. Asylum is an American film company that produces what are kindly known as “mockbusters,” films that are clearly derived from major pictures and made on the cheap. Pacific Rim becomes Atlantic Rim for Asylum, and why remake I am Legend when you can just call it I am Omega. Madman is like that, although it wasn’t made by Asylum. This is a film that is clearly derived from Friday the 13th, and it’s not shy about its source material.

That being the case, it’s not a shock that this begins like The Fog, with people around a campfire telling scary stories. However, rather than this being about an important anniversary for a town, we’re at a summer camp, listening to the head counselor Max (Carl Fredericks). What Friday the 13th discovered, either by genius or by chance, is that summer camps are the natural habitat of what Siskel and Ebert used to call “dead teenager” movies. The kids in question are isolated, horny, unsupervised (since they are the counselors), and vulnerable.