Blu-ray Review – Wacko

Joining the early '80s craze to pants horror entertainment is director Greydon Clark, who gifts the world "Wacko," his version of a slasher parody. Perhaps slightly miffed to watch as a bunch of no-budget scary movies conquer the box office, Clark elects to take down the absurdities of the genre, arriving with screenplay credited to four people and a cast that's loaded with noted character actors, blended with younger talent from the day. The 1982 endeavor has no shortage of jokes, with Clark particularly attentive to the speed of the film, which carries on with rat-tat-tat timing, always on the hunt for cliches to spank and characters to mock. This is Clark competing in a post-"Airplane!" world, and it's a big swing and a miss for the man behind "Joysticks," "The Return," and "Uninvited." Instead of triggering laughs, "Wacko" mostly demands bewilderment, often coming at the audience with complete enthusiasm but no refinement or even simple punchline taste. It's a scattergun of lame gags and clownish performances that's periodically hard to watch, with Clark so caught up in the production effort, he misses a prime chance to dig into the goofy idiosyncrasies of slasher cinema. And yes, pies are flung during the run time. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com