Blades (1989)

Blades (1989)
March 24, 2009




SYNOPSIS
There is a rogue lawnmower killing people at the Tall Grass golf course.

SHORT REVIEW
If you've always wished that "Jaws" starred a killer lawnmower instead of a killer shark, then, boy do I have a movie for you. For anyone else, you can do a lot better than this.

REVIEW
So, the first ever movie on "I Watch Horror Movies." I probably should have watched something that somebody's actually heard of, but that didn't work out as planned. I wanted to watch "Deep Red" last night, but I was too busy listening to the new Mastodon album. Since "Deep Red" is 120 minutes long, I needed a shorter movie to watch. Somehow, that ended up being "Blades", an obscure late 80s Troma flick.

"Blades" is apparently a comedy-horror movie, but in reality, it's basically just "Jaws" with a lawnmower instead of a shark. The plot of "Jaws" is basically ripped-off completely, right down to the "shark hunter" being replaced with a "lawnmower hunter" and the shark gutting scene being replaced by a lawnmower gutting scene. Yes. A lawnmower gutting scene.

You'd think all of this would be funny, but it's not. Despite "Blades" being a "spoof", I really think there were less than ten "jokes" in the entire movie. The only mildly funny scenes are the lawnmower attacks, and those are just about nonexistent.

Speaking of nonextistent lawnmower attacks, "Blades" is really slow-paced and pretty boring. Other than a few bloodless cut-away death scenes, virtually nothing happens in the first hour of the movie. So, by the time something actually DOES happen (there are a couple pretty cool "lawnmower-eating-legs" shots), you could really care less. And that's really unfortunate, because the last thing a movie about a killer lawnmower should be is boring.

Overall, the movie is just too dull to be memorable, and the lawnmower attacks are too few and far between to be cool. There's no scares or suspense, because you know everything that's going to happen if you've ever seen "Jaws". So, it's not a good comedy and it's not a good horror. "Blades" gets:



2 out of 5 chainsaws (PRETTY BAD, SKIP IT)