cult film freak: MIMSY FARMER MOTHERING RUGGERO DEODATO'S 'BODY COUNT'

Mimsy Farmer in BODY COUNT Year: 1988 Rating: ***

With CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, groundbreaking Italian auteur Ruggero Deodato invented the found-footage horror sub-genre that THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT reinvented decades later, so it's no real sin that he ripped off American slasher franchise FRIDAY THE 13TH: which already had about six films by 1988...

Both involving teenagers who get picked off in the woods by a masked menace... the supposed spirit of an Indian Shaman from long ago... making this a genuine BODY COUNT horror, built right into the title...

Bruce Penhall in BODY COUNT

Problem is, there are way too many victims when only real-life motocross champ Bruce Penhall and mousy-cute Italian starlet Luisa Maneri, with a few of their camper-camping friends, really matter, including a fat guy providing a fake-jump-scare while wearing a spooky mask... exactly like the legendary Larry Zerner did introducing the hockey mask into the third 13th...

Leaving the most intriguing aspect for the b-story involving a very important actress playing an attractive middle-aged wife/mother... as American-born Mimsy Farmer, initially appearing in 1960's counter-culture exploitation flicks, wound up a French resident/1970's Euro scream-queen... so she'd have been one of the pretty young victims only a decade earlier...

Luisa Maneri and Mimsy Farmer in BODY COUNT

As the secret lover of Charles Napier's stalwart sheriff while married to abusive SWAMP THING antagonist David Hess, their dark soap operatic story-line isn't given enough screen time the same way the young campers aren't distinguished enough for their hunt-and-chase demises to really matter...

Overall feeling like Italian horror icon Ruggero Deodato doing visual genre calisthenics, making rural Italy look like rural America whilst providing a few creative death sequences... unfortunately it's all in one bloody ear and out the other.