Blood Hook (1986)
** (out of 4)
A small town in Wisconsin is having their annual fishing contest, which draws people from all over the country. A group of young adults plan on having some fun but before long they notice several people are going missing. It turns out that a mysterious person is using a fishing hook to kill people.
BLOOD HOOK is a film that got released by Troma and it turned into a pretty big hit on VHS. The film is a send up of the slasher genre, although it doesn't go too far over-the-top in regards to laughs. It's easy to see why the film would gain a cult following but I must say that I had a few too many issues with it that prevented me from enjoying it more.
I will say that I really enjoyed Jim Mallon's direction and I thought he did a very good job at building up the atmosphere of this small town. I also liked the look of this small town, the wooded area and the lake itself becomes its own character and a good one. I'd also argue that there are a few creative moments in regards to some of the death scenes and I liked the "fishing" nature of the murders.
With that being said, this thing clocks in at a whopping 111-minutes, which is a good forty-minutes too long. I really don't understand why this thing lasted so long and especially since there are so many scenes that just run on and on and on. There are so many characters here and many of them are given a lot of screentime for no real purpose. I really thought the film and its style would have worked a lot better with a 70 or 80-minute running time.
I also thought the majority of the characters were mildly interesting but just not enough to warrant the time. The death scenes are good for what they are but there weren't enough in that long running time. BLOOD HOOK had enough interesting moments to make it worth sitting through to this rabid horror fan but I think most people will be completely bored by it.
