Saturday the 14th series

(In French, On Cable TV, November 2021) No one in their right minds is going to call Saturday the 14th Strikes Back a good movie, and even describing it as funny would be a stretch — for a parody of early 1980s movies, it’s not witty, not very well executed and seldom laugh-out-loud funny. The low budget of the product is immediately obvious, and while the script does wrap up its parodies and homage into something of a real story, it doesn’t score any particularly good jokes along the way — other than the impromptu vampire musical segment, that is. While it’s a sequel to Saturday the 14^th, it’s not really necessary to have seen the first film. Still, what Saturday the 14th Strikes Back manages to create — and this isn’t as obvious as it may sound — is a good-natured goofy atmosphere in which everything and anything is just off-the-wall crazy. The casually amusing lines are tossed off without grace, but they create a film in which absurdity reigns and is executed with a great deal of earnestness. While the laughs are infrequent, the smiles are almost constant, considering that the film does its best to entertain without quite managing to take it to the next level. It leaves a slightly better impression than the first film did, and writer-director Howard R. Cohen just keeps cranking up the goofiness until a climactic supernatural battle that’s quite unlike anything else. I’m not saying that you should have a look at Saturday the 14th Strikes Back. But if you do, well, chances are that you will be intrigued by its craziness.