- trailer (windows media)

When I was in seventh grade back around 1981 I was writing stories, and after seeing Friday the 13th in the movies (thanks dad!) I wrote a screenplay about four friends that break down on their way home from a concert, along a long stretch of highway between exits.  Walking for a phone they stumbled upon a single home and barn.  A mentally ill old farmer who used to work in a slaughterhouse picks them off one by one amidst an overabundance of adolescent jokes and viscious killings.  If it had gone the next step and onto film, it probably would have looked a lot like Dark Fields.

Dark Fields is another for the super low-budget slasher shelf.  Five kids on their way to a concert run out of gas and end up stranded amongst the dark fields of a barren, meekly populated farm town.  These are the stretches of land you see while traveling long distance along the highway - those black, lightless miles between exits.  Drew leaves to collect some gas for the car and is never seen again.  They break into couples and begin to search around an abandoned, condemned home where nobody seems to live.

This slasher film is best probably for the 8-15 year old category, if they can get their hands on it.  There are hot, sexy teenage chicks, but no nudity.  Kids joyriding in a car, but no drugs.  There's a lot of juvenile humor - the repeated penis jokes, assclown references.  Anyone over 21, it'll give you a chuckle once or twice but then get a little old after a while.

The male actors crack jokes constantly, but they're off'd fairly quick.  The latter half of the film focuses on the two female survivors as they try to endure the last 40 minutes of being stalked by the most lethargically slow and easy to stop stalker you've ever seen in all your horror films.  Who is under this wad of black hair, an 85 year old man?  And the hair - cmon guys - isnt that the witch wig they sell at KMart?

If you know what you're getting into and still are up for Dark Fields anyhow, there are a few minor redeeming qualities that save it from being a sleeper.  Though extremely amateur, it does pace itself well enough to get you through, and there are some well built moments of tension and fright.  Jenna Scott who played the lead Taylor is a very pretty actress and glued the characters together well with her demeanor.  Her counterpart Justine, played by Lindsay Dell, is a shrill screamer, and lets her voice loose several times in the film - a B-movie scream queen on the horizon perhaps?  And even though the whole premise is old, the characters childish, and the killer a bit flat, you do get a couple of half decent kills, the atmosphere has a slight haunted house quality, and there was at least one good unpredictable moment when they do finally get out of the house.

Final analysis:  Lionsgate presents high school slasher horror 101 - a super low-budget movie set in a dark abandoned house with two hot young chicks and a couple of goofy guys that get off'd.  Light on the gore, heavy on the assclown cracks, its 80 minutes of amateur horror filmmaking that is clumsy yet watchable and even though it is rated R - its much more suited for the young Munster in your household.  Horror fans 21 and older, take it lightly.  Its OK and has its place in the low budget annals if you dont expect very much from it.

 CLICK HERE to purchase Dark Fields from Amazon.com