In producer Wong Jing’s The Deadly Camp (1999) two groups of vacationing friends are terrorized by a family of psychotic lepers on a remote island. The film is a hodgepodge of set pieces derived from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Friday The 13th (1980), and Predator (1987) that is more concerned with humor than either gore or terror. In true Wong Jing fashion this emphasis on comedy comes with an emphasis on political incorrectness that will make The Deadly Camp difficult for some to sit through.
By far the most compelling parts of the film are those that revolve around a camcorder. The character “Doc” (Tsz Sin Lam) has brought his camcorder on vacation with him and is keeping a kind of video diary. This exercise makes up the opening credit sequence; introducing characters by way of “Doc”‘s DV footage. Later, the night vision filter on the camera is used to see the killers during the dead of night. Here the cinema itself becomes a means of survival although this concept is never adequately elaborated upon in the film.
For the most part The Deadly Camp is a perfectly serviceable low budget slasher film from writer and director Bowie Lau. Lau incorporates as many genre tropes as he can and attempts a comedic take down of these conventions. However, the self-reflexive aspect of The Deadly Camp never really lands because it never achieves actual horror and the comedy itself is hardly worthy of a high school locker room. Lau all but wastes an appearance by Anthony Wong and seems unable to make any of the younger cast members either likable or interesting.
The Deadly Camp is the third film in Vinegar Syndrome’s triple feature boxed set Made In Hong Kong and has been heralded as the “dud” in the collection. The Deadly Camp is not as good as Erotic Nightmare (1999) or as fun as The Demon’s Baby (1998), but it isn’t all that bad. Lau does get some mileage out of stringing together disparate styles from other films .
