Director – Ruggero Deodato, Screenplay – Alex Capone, Luca D’Alisera, Sheila Goldberg & David Parker, Jr., Story – Alex Capone, Producer – Alessandro Fracassi, Photography – Emilio Loffredo, Music – Claudio Simonetti, Special Effects – Roberto Pace. Production Company – Overseas Filmgroup.
Cast
David Hess (Robert Ritchie), Charles Napier (Sheriff Charles), Mimsy Farmer (Julia Ritchie), Luisa Maneri (Carol), Nicola Farron (Ben Ritchie), Bruce Penhall (Dave Calloway), Andrew Lederer (Sidney), Cynthia Thompson (Cissy), Stefano Madia (Tony), Nancy Brilli (Tracy), Elena Pompei (Sharon), Sven Kruger (Scott), John Steiner (Dr Olsen), Stefano Galantucci (Tom), Ciella Fradella (Rose Olsen), Valentina Forte (Pamela Hicks), Ivan Rassimov (Deputy Ted), Lorenzo Grabau (Bob)
Plot
A group of young people head up to an old abandoned camping ground. Along the way, they pick up Ben Ritchie, a soldier returning from duty. Arriving at the camping ground, they are ordered away by the owner. However, this proves to be Ben’s cantankerous father Robert and Ben persuades him to let them stay. As they group set up camp and begin partying, someone begins stalking and killing members of the group. There are rumours that this is The Shaman, a legendary Indian medicine man who killed people there fifteen years earlier.
Ruggero Deodato (1939-2022) will always be known as the director who made the notorious Cannibal Holocaust (1979), the film that pushed the envelope in depiction of on-screen savagery in a major way and was banned almost everywhere in the world. Beyond that, Deodato had a five-decade career in Italian exploitation cinema and has made a number of other films in genres ranging from the peplum and the adventure film to a number of entries in the horror field (see below for Ruggero Deodato’s other films).
Surprisingly, Ruggero Deodato had never worked in the popular Italian Giallo film fad before this, although he did so subsequently with Phantom of Death (1989) and The Washing Machine (1993). Body Count however shows him readily adapting to the Slasher Movie fad that was all the rage in the US in the early 1980s. In some ways it makes perfect sense for giallo directors to take on the slasher film – both genres centre around a parade of deaths and victim line-ups, the main difference being that giallo goes for the extravagantly arty whereas the slasher film went for the gory punchline. The idea of giallo directors wheeling their style around to use on the slasher film seems an exciting idea – alas, it was a marriage of styles that never happened.
With Ruggero Deodato in the director’s chair, there are however other possibilities – that of a slasher film that pushes the envelope in the same way that Cannibal Holocaust or even House on the Edge of the Park (1980) did. On the other hand, Deodato does none of these things and Body Count is simply a standard slasher film. If you didn’t known it was Italian-made and cast with a number of Italian actors, you would simply assume that it is a regular US-made slasher copycat. The plot treads familiar ground – a summer camp setting where a terrible crime happened years ago; the partying teens; the line-up of potential suspects; the legend of the boogeyman.
Mimsy Farmer and Davis Hess
The film does feature several American actors – David Hess, the lead thug from The Last House on the Left (1972) and Deodato’s House at the Edge of the Park; Italian horror regular Mimsy Farmer; and B and action movie regular Charles Napier. That said, the film never does much with any of them. Hess broods and acts a little crazy, Napier asserts authority as the police chief. There’s a love triangle going on between the three that does factor in at the end but you also feel that the actors could have been better employed.
To be honest, one suspected more from Ruggero Deodato – at the very least something that pushed the envelope more than it does. We get a few knives through throats and the like but this is not anything that is more than the average Friday the 13th sequel or copycat of the day offered up on a regular basis. On the other hand, the version that has been released to dvd appears to be cut – it runs to 1 hour and 23 minutes as opposed to the original which is supposed to run 90 minutes. That means that some seven minutes is missing. I have no further details on what sections these constitute and this will have to suffice until an uncut release is forthcoming. It may well be that a much more extreme version of Body Count is out there as opposed to this entirely unexceptional version.
Ruggero Deodato’s other films of genre interest are:- the masked superhero film Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen (1968); the cannibal films Last Cannibal World/Jungle Holocaust (1977) and the notorious Cannibal Holocaust (1979); the sadism and torture film House on the Edge of the Park (1980); the sf adventure Atlantis Interceptors (1983); another savage jungle adventure Cut and Run (1985); the slasher film ; the sword-and-sorcery film The Barbarians (1987); Dial Help (1988) about ghostly phone calls; Phantom of Death (1988) about a man who needs to kill to rejuvenate; an episode of the anthology The Profane Exhibit (2013); and Ballad of Blood (2018).
