Blood Hook (1986)

Directed by Jim Mallon [Other horror films: N/A]

While I generally enjoy slashers and slasher-like flicks from the 1980’s, something about this one didn’t quite work for me. Dare I say, I wasn’t hooked.

One thing I do appreciate about this film is the story – while they had characters who never really did much, I did like the characterization of some of the main performances, and though it was sort of muddled due to the low-budget quality of the film, I think the backstory on some of the characters here was interesting and a bit deeper than you might expect.

Of course, the movie throws in a bit of humor too, and it’s not too over-the-top, which is another thing I give Blood Hook props for. Oh, it certainly felt silly at times (just an over-sized fishing hook flying out of the dark, with no indication of someone nearby, felt a bit much), and the ‘loon-woman’ was just hilariously ridiculous, but the light-hearted tone, if anything, was far more muted than I expected (especially for a film distributed by Troma).

Speaking on that point, actually, there is a longer version of the movie out there, clocking in around two hours, while I saw the more common Troma release, which cut out quite a bit, from my understanding. Given that I didn’t particularly care for what I saw, I sort of doubt I’ll try out the longer version, but it should be stated that, in all fairness, that I didn’t see the ‘most complete’ version of Blood Hook out there.

For a movie of such a low budget, I will say that much of the cast did decent. Most of them appeared just in this single film (which was filmed on location in Wisconsin), such as Christopher Whiting, Sara Hauser, Don Winters (probably one of my favorite performances in the film), and Paul Drake. Others appeared in a handful of other movies and/or episodes, such as Mark Jacobs, Lisa Todd, and Bill Lowrie. Lisa Todd had perhaps one of the funniest scenes, in which she’s trying to connect on a personal level with the killer – something that I generally wouldn’t care for, but worked well here.

As much fun as the movie can occasionally be (personally, I wasn’t feeling all that invested until around the half-way mark), Blood Hook dragged much of the time. The little gore there was struck me as decent for the budget, and like I said, the story itself was actually pretty solid, but this movie didn’t work on some level for me, which is a shame, as it certainly had potential.

Honestly, this may just be one I need to give another shot a few years down the line – I could see my opinion improving a bit if I gave it another chance. As it is now, though, I find Blood Hook a rather sub-par slasher during a time when so many better horror flicks were being released.

5.5/10