Blades (1989).
“What is this, a goddamn Texas chainsaw massacre?”
Directed by Thomas R. Rondinella
Written by John P. Finnegan, William R. Pace, and Thomas R. Rondinella
Starring Robert North, Victoria Scott, Jeremy Whelan, Holly Stevenson, and a lawnmower
The Stage.
The Tall Grass Country Club is gearing up for its first televised pro-am golf tournament, which could bring in a lot of new members. In order to help their clout, they bring in a new instructor named Roy Kent, a once proud golfer who’s since succumbed to the bottle after bombing during a big professional tournament…but Roy Kent choking in the clutch is the least of Tall Grass’s worries, because a killer runaway lawnmower is literally chewing golfers up and spitting them out.
The Review.
Robert North (in his only acting credit) plays Roy Kent, a washed up alcoholic ex-pro golfer who always has a worried look on his face that begs the question, “Was that fart just a little too wet?” When he’s not putting or dodging a killer lawnmower, he’s dodging the club owner’s wife who wants him to give her the ol’ 9-Iron. Victoria Scott plays his love interest named Kelly Lange, a female golfer who expected to get the job that Roy was given. At first she’s angry, but we know that at some point, they’re going to bone. Her only other acting credit is ‘Unified fund mom’ in the 1996 film Kingpin, so I guess she’s only interested in on-screen roles if the films center around sports that are really fucking boring. Together, these two doofuses drink at work and try to solve the mystery as to why golfers keep ending up mutilated in the sand traps, and once they link up with Deke Slade, an ex-groundskeeper at the club, they go hunting.
The deaths that happen on-screen are few and far between and barely show anything. We get the view from the mower’s point of view - low to the ground, winding through weeds and grass, until we reach the screaming dummy who didn’t just move to the side and then we cut to something else to hear the screams. Although we see the remnants, that part of the film is pretty lackluster. The film tries to be funny to support its absurd premise, but none of the jokes really land. Continuous failed humor attempts include a police chief who constantly holds golf course meetings to assure people everything is fine, an insane redneck mob that is deployed to find the culprit, and Norm, the clueless club owner whose wife is looking for a hole-in-one from Roy.
I will give some credit to the director here - there are some occasional bursts of great imagery here, like the lawnmower silhouetted against the setting sun, and there’s some pretty dynamic camerawork as well. For a first-time filmmaker, he seemed pretty skilled behind the camera. I can’t say the same for the pen game, but who knows who was to blame for the terrible script, seeing as three people have screenwriter credits on this one. How it took three people to write this film is simply beyond my level of comprehension.
The End.
In terms of Jaws ripoffs and parodies, you can do a lot worse than Blades, although this feels less like a parody and more like a reenactment with golf carts. It almost feels a little too grounded in reality - with a plot as bizarre as this, I think it could have been a lot more wild and definitely a lot more fun. As far as goofy horror comedy films are concerned, there are much better entries than this, but it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
