Director/Screenplay – Brad Sykes, Producer – David Sterling, Photography – Jeff Leroy, Music – Ghost, Makeup Effects – Jeff Colbert, Ernesto Cornejo, Sissy Hyde & Steve Worley. Production Company – Sterling Entertainment/Dead Alive Productions.
Cast
Jennifer Ritchkoff (Tricia Young), Garrett Clancy (Worth Milligan), Missy Hansen (Adrienne Palmer), Ken X (Shemp Mosely), Mark Overholt (Lance Summers), Jane Johnson (Vanessa Green), Timothy Parck (Todd Beekman), Courtney Burr (Patrick), Lisa Marie Bolick (Lola), Tim Sullivan (Dr West), Brannon Gould (Jeff), Natascha Corrigan (Rose), Le Ana Masiello (Ashley Dupree)
Plot
Following the massacre at Camp Blackwood aka Camp Blood nearly one year ago, the sole survivor Tricia Young has been locked in a psychiatric institution with police disbelieving her story about The Clown. She is now approached by director Worth Milligan who wants to make a film about the incident. Tricia signs on as a consultant to the film because it means being able to get out of a padded cell. However, as the group trek out to Camp Blackwood and begin filming, The Clown reappears and begins killing them.
Camp Blood has been a surprisingly prolific series of modern Slasher Films. The series started with Camp Blood (2000) from director Brad Sykes, who returned to make Camp Blood 2 and Within the Woods (2005). The series was taken over by other directors for the likes of Camp Blood First Slaughter (2014), Camp Blood 5 (2016), Camp Blood 666 (2016), Camp Blood 7: It Kills (2017), Ghost of Camp Blood (2018), Camp Blood 8: Revelations (2020), Children of Camp Blood (2020), Camp Blood 666 Part 2: Exorcism of the Clown (2023), Camp Blood X: Animated (2023), Camp Blood 9: Bride of Blood (2024) and Camp Blood: Clown Shark (2024).
It is evident that Camp Blood 2 is being made on a low-budget. As in the previous film, there are no sets – apart from a couple of scenes at the start, the entire film is filmed in the woods. The asylum scenes are shot in just a regular room in a house – there are no locks on the door of Jennifer Ritchkoff’s padded cell and when the FBI agent comes to interrogate her, he simply kneels down on the mattress on the floor beside her. As with the first film, there is the same shot-on-video look even when it comes to the dvd transfer. A big turnoff is also that this film’s slim running time (75 minutes) is padded by liberal amounts of flashback footage recycled from the first film.
Camp Blood was okay, but I didn’t much get into Camp Blood 2. The filmmaker making a film about the original murders has some legs as it an idea, but it is back to the usual business of the slasher film in short course. Here however, two-thirds of the film are taken up by introducing the set-up before we get back out into the woods and the killings commence. As the film crew treks into the woods, the film even namedrops references to The Blair Witch Project (1999), which would have been massive at the time Camp Blood 2 was made.
Jennifer Ritchkoff and The Clown
Camp Blood 2 does feature some not too bad gore effects. There is an incredibly fake one where Courtney Burr gets his hand cut off with a machete. Later in the show though, there are some good effects like where Jane Johnson gets a machete in the face and out the back of her head, or with Timothy Parck’s throat slitting and Ken X getting broken bottles shoved into both of his eyes.
The film is filled with some bad performances. In the role of the film director, Garrett Clancy starts out fairly bad but gets better as the film goes on. On the other hand, there is a ridiculous performance from Ken X as the perpetually drunk cameraman, while Courtney Barr is no great shakes as the set assistant Patrick either. On the plus side, it feels as though Jennifer Ritchkoff has gotten better since the previous film and seems to be making an effort to actually act.
Brad Sykes has since gone on to make a string of other low-budget horror films with the likes of Babes in the Woods (2000), Evil Sister 2 (2001), Mad Jack (2001), The Zombie Chronicles (2001), The Coven (2002), Death Factory (2002), Demon’s Kiss (2002), Lord of the Vampires (2002), Loving Angelique (2002), Scream Queen (2002), Witchcraft XII: Lair of the Serpent (2002), Goth (2003), B-Witched (2004), Bloody Tease (2004), Mutation (2006), Plaguers (2008) and The Pact (2013).
