| The Zero Boys Directed by Niko Mastorakis (U.S.A �1986) If the National Rifle Association were to bankroll a slasher film, the resultant picture would probably turn out something like The Zero Boys. The title characters are a hotshot team ofstraight shooting weekend warriors who usually wipe the floor with any opposition they face during their Saturday Skirmish competitions. Although they were once the most pathetic team to have ever fired a paintball (hence their unusual name), Steve, Rip, and Larry are now the premier team in the competition. Their main rivals are led by a nasty jock named Casey, who happens to be Jewish. Casey is known around Skirmish circles as �Rabbi Rambo�. The moniker wasn�t coined due to good graces. Despite his semetic origins, Casey wears a black Nazi S.S. officer�s uniform (complete with Swastika armband) when he�s trading high velocity paintballs with the Zero Boys in the game zone. Perhaps he has some self loathing issues, or maybe a bigger case of identity crisis than Black Gestapo�s Colonel Kojah. And Casey isn�t even the oddest member of the Skirmish fraternity. Other opponents wear Cowboy suits, and other examples of ridiculously inappropriate paintballing garb. The mixed spectacle of military uniforms and ten gallon hats made me wonder when the gay police officer from the Village People was going to show. Today�s contest has more at stake than the usual paintball extravaganzas. Casey and Steve have made a little wager. If the Zero Boys win, Steve gets to take Casey�s girlfriend Jamie (the ditsy cheerleader from Night of the Comets) camping in the mountains for the weekend. Naturally Stevo places a well aimed paint pellet right between the eyes of his Hebrew Himmler adversary. A furious Casey is forced to admit that the Zero Boys are the best via a gilded megaphone to the gathered throng of teenyboppers and paintball groupies. Jamie is even more furious about being used as a cheap wager. She breaks up with Casey on the spot, yet agrees to go through with the bet. The Zero Boys is full of similarly inexplicable human behavior. She leaves for the mountains with Steve, Larry, Larry�s girlfriend Trish, the always goofy Rip (who has a mystifying large patch of grey in his hair� is acting that stressful?), and his long suffering girlfriend Sue. All seems well as they set up camp in an isolated forest far from their smog filled city. But as they relax in the afternoon, our heroes hear a bloodcurdling scream in the distance. Apart from the perennial joker Rip (is his name short for rip-snorter?). �Come on you guys� somebody�s probably just raping mother nature again� he tells his more paranoic friends. Nevertheless, they decide to investigate. The gang re-load their supplies into Steve�s truck, and drive in the general direction of the scream. As the pick-up slowly negotiates through the heavily wooded area, Jamie catches a glimpse of a terrified woman running between the trees off to the side, deep in the dark forest. They search for her to no avail after discovering a trail of blood, and come across a deserted backwoods house some time later. �What kind of people do you think live in this place?� Rip ponders as they walk into the cosy living room uninvited. �I don�t know� survivalists maybe� Larry suggests. They find a note stuck to the refrigerator by the owners indicating that they�re away for the weekend. And we all know what six oversexed kids in an empty isolated cabin equals� party time, pre-marital sex, and knife fodder for the resident backwoods maniacs. Rip and Sue retire upstairs for some pre-requisite slasher flick hanky panky, as do Larry and Trish. Steve and Jamie enjoy a more innocent moonlight stroll around the nearby lake. As you may have predicted, all is not as it appears at the seemingly quaint lakeside cottage. Jamie finds a small bone by the water, and shows it to Steve. She surmises that it must be human, and elaborates on her suspicions in one of the most laughable lines of throwaway dialogue in the picture. �How good were you in anthropology?� Jamie asks Steve as she waves the skeletal evidence in his face. �I haven�t taken it yet� replies the confused collegiate Zero Boy. �Well I have� it�s a section of vertebrae� she tells him knowingly as they return to the house. Strange things have also been happening inside the quaint lakeside abode. Trish looked up at a crack in the roof during her coital embrace with Larry to see an eye staring back down at her. Budding anthropology experts, and eyes peering through holes� The Zero Boys seem to be degenerating into The Hardy Boys. Amazingly the vibes of oddness, pieces of alleged human bone, and voyeuristic optic organs actually convince the six kids to leave before five of them are brutally murdered. A slasher clich� is mercifully avoided. Unfortunately for them, another clich� lurks just around the corner. Steve�s truck won�t start. As they inspect the engine, a violent storm begins. Jamie sees the silhouette of an enormous man with a Bowie knife at the edge of the clearing as a flash of lightning momentarily turns night into day. By the time the next bolt of lightning races across the sky, the figure is gone. So it�s back into the house for our heroes as they unload their supplies again for the umpteenth time that day. Here�s where things get interesting. Concious of the fact that they�re probably being watched by less than friendly people who�ve watched Deliverance one too many times, Steve, Rip, and Larry bring out the big guns� literally. They open their equipment chest, and break out three UZI sub-machine guns. Jamie�s points out that running around in a pitch black thunderstorm with fully automatic firearms is just a little excessive. Thankfully for the audience, the boys dismiss such thoughts as the rantings of a tree hugging commie bimbo. As the Zero Boys investigate the mysterious barn behind the house, they discover a torture chamber that looks like it may have been built with leftovers from the set of Bloodsucking Freaks. The area is also full of tens of thousands of dollars worth of audio-visual equipment. They find a snuff videotape, and play it back on the torture chamber VCR. It shows the torture and murder of the young girl in the very place that they�re now standing. There�s even congealed blood on the leather torture chair. The victim is the very same girl that Jamie saw fleeing earlier in the afternoon. It seems that our heroes have stumbled upon a hive of thrill killing snuff filmmakers, and for the first time in slasher history, the victims out-gun and outnumber their opponents. As the unseen killers play mindgames against the six trespassers, and pick them off at every opportunity, the Zero Boys are going to have to use all their Skirmish savvy to live through the night, pick off their stealthy sick in the head adversaries, and save the day. Despite the fact that our heroes heavily outgun the machete and crossbow toting villains of the film, The Zero Boys is able to retain a fair degree of suspense, largely due to the collective stupidity of the lead characters. Commonsense would suggest that the best course of action would be to stick together in a well lit room with UZI�s at the ready. But for whatever reason, our heroes regularly split up, and enter dark areas alone. So this film isn�t exactly an exercise in plausible human behaviour. It is however a fairly atmospheric and entertaining kind of �boys own adventure�. Fans of pissweak lesser known siblings of established Hollywood actors (We all know that there�s quite a large direct to video fanbase of Don Swayze, Frank Stallone, and Jim Hanks enthusiasts out there) take note� Martin Sheen�s brother Joe (Soultaker) Estevez appears in this film as a limping mountain man. Entertainment : 2.5 out of 4 Watchability : 3.5 out of 4 Overall : 3 out of 4 Reviewed by Blake |