Horrorgasm: The Blair Witch Project

Hi Gasmii!  P-Baby here for our weekly Horrorgasm date.  Well, pickings are getting slim in the Book O’ Crappy Movies, but I’ve still got a couple tricks up my sleeve.  Trick #1 includes going to Best Buy this weekend to stock up on some material.  Trick # 2:  The Blair Witch Project.  One of my all time favorite scary movies, it remains nestled cozily in its plastic DVD sleeve just begging for a bit of snarking on a Friday afternoon.  I am of course happy to oblige.

So I know The Blair Witch Project was one of those love it or hate it movies that I happened upon as an unsuspecting teenager at the local movie theater one night.  A friend of mine and I were attempting to take in the Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman orgyfest Eyes Wide Shut and were denied by a sold out box office (Side rant: WTF?  Nicole Kidman couldn’t sell out a movie these days even if everyone from Australia purchased three tickets each to see her next masterpiece.  Funny how things change in 11 years. Does Bewitched mean anything to anyone?  How about The Stepford Wives?  Or The Invasion?  Australia? Apparently a Best Actress Oscar win is code for make movies that are fucking terrible.  Good thing she’s busy being Keith Urban’s date at the CMT awards these days and being mom to Sunday Rose.  Is it completely against publicly acceptable behavior to say that I kind of think their baby is…homely?  I mean, not all babies are cute.  Facts are facts.  BTW, Nic, you adopted a couple kids awhile ago.  Just a friendly reminder.)

Anyway, after realizing that Eyes Wide Shut wasn’t happening, I naively suggested, “Hey, how about that Blair Witch one?  I like scary movies.”  My friend agreed, and then 90 minutes later, we walked out in our shit-filled pants convinced the witch was going to get us on the drive home.  I didn’t sleep in my basement for six months, as I was sure that some crazy bitch ghost would wake me up and force me to stand in the corner, just waiting to hit me over the head with the TV remote.  Anyway, Gasmii, the point is, I love this movie.  Onward!

If I was a film student in 1994, my title screen would have went like this.

The film opens at Heather’s house as she explains she is leaving for the weekend to go exploring in the woods.  Simple enough.  She’s studious and pretentious so she’s bringing some reading material with her that are actual books rather than the material I typically take with me when I’m traveling.

Heather then films the other asshats she’s tricked into coming with her, Michael and Josh.  They are all wearing flannel because it’s 1994.  I’m pretty sure right now Michael and Josh only agreed to this trip in hopes of a little menage action in the tent with Heather.

However, things don’t go quite as planned.

At the grocery store, they fill up their carts with Power Bars, Motts Apple Juice, and marshmallows.  I’d make fun of them for their lack of nutrition but my cart would probably be full of Mint Milanos and Diet Pepsi, which we can all agree that while a substantial source of sugar and caffiene, may not provide the necessary nutrients and vitamins for hiking in the woods for 3 days.

After the grocery store, the threesome decide to accost some unsuspecting locals and interview them about the Blair Witch legend.  Heather interviews that she wants to avoid any cheese while filmmaking, so I guess Josh is out of the evening’s festivities.  Josh, bro, some antibiotics and it’ll probably clear right up.

Mike fusses with the camera equipment while preparing for the initial shot of their documentary.  In the opening, Heather explains that in Burkittsville, formally Blair, many of the townspeople lay buried on the hill she stands, with an unusually high number of children that passed in the 40s. No one really remembers anything unusual going on at the time, and I’m venturing a guess that the witch thing kind of took a back seat to a little something we call World War II.

After the first scene, the group interviews some more locals including a kindly old man, a woman holding an annoying kid, and a generic backwards cap, flannel wearing oaf.  They all say about the same thing, that the witch is one scary bitch, but add some more folklore to the tale as well.

Woman:  I saw a documentary about it on the Discovery Channel, ghosts and legends of Maryland or something.  Two men were out hunting camping near the cabin she haunted.  Those assholes disappeared.

Generic Oaf:  Grandma told us the witch would get us if we didn’t get in bed. Took kids down to the basement by twos, made one face in the corner and kill one, then killed the other one.

They decide to pay Mary a visit.  Mary tells them she used to go fishing with her dad down at some creek and one day when she was fishing she felt like something was near her and gave her an eerie feeling.  It was a woman with hairy hands wearing a shawl.

In a scene meant to show absolutely nothing except what an annoying twat Heather is, she nags Josh about differentiating between meters and feet on the camera.  STFU, Heather.  It’s not Josh’s fault that America feels it necessary to devise their own measuring system, going against the rest of the planet’s population.

Calling it a day, Heather records Mike and Josh in their hotel room and they all get drunk.  Always a good idea when you are about to embark on a full day of hiking through the woods wearing 50 pound back packs.

The next day, they run into more locals fishing and they tell Heather about some girl named Robin Weaver who wandered off and got lost in the woods.  3 days later she appears back on her grandma’s porch, babbling about a woman whose feet didn’t touch the ground.

So after that rousing story, everyone loads up with their packs in preparation for their hiking trip from hell.  I kind of feel bad, knowing their fate but since Josh decided to wear camoflague today, my sympathetic side is going to take a nap.

They are making their way towards Coffin Rock and Heather swears she totally knows where she’s going which probably means they are already lost, 30 seconds into their venture.  Heather finds some large flat rock and pretends that is their destination, pausing to shoot another scene.

In the 19th century at Coffin Rock, five men were bound together by feet and hands with their intestines ripped out.  Writing was inscribed on their face.  These five were discovered by a couple of other hikers but after they left to find help, upon returning the bodies were gone.

Remember when Blair Witch first came out and it sparked this craze for people to go hiking on their own little haunted adventure, only their asses got lost in the woods for real?  Idiots.

They decide to camp for the night and struggle horribly putting the tent together as rain pours down on top of them.  Finally they get their shit together and figure it out, though Josh and Michael must officially turn in their man cards after that sad display.  The next morning, Josh says he heard noises that night while Heather says she heard nothing as she sleeps like a rock because she’s drunk all the time.  Josh says one of the noises was probably an owl and the other one sounded like a cackling.  I second Michael’s interjection that if I ever heard someone cackling in the woods during the day or night, I’d shit my pants.

Heather consults the map before heading out for the day but she may as well consult the Archie Comics in her back pack since that bitch has no idea where they are.  Regardless she swears they are all good and off they go.

The dudes bitch at Heather about her inability to find an actual trail as they climb up a mountain.  In between the hiking, we are treated to some shots of Mike’s nasty chest hair, something I could have gone my entire life without seeing.  They also fuck around and record Heather peeing.  Laugh it up while you all have time, losers.  Shit is about to  get real.

Mike and Josh finally revolt against Heather and tell her she’s a moron, as they’ve been hiking all day and have gone absolutely nowhere.

Heather refuses to admit they are lost and they bicker back and forth.  After each person takes a turn looking at the map, they put their fate back in Heather’s hands.  While GPS watches may not have been around back in 1994, I sure as shit know that the compass  had been invented for a couple of centuries at least.  That may have been a start.

They all take their turn crossing a pretty serious log and continue hiking, coming across an opening with some piled up rocks in a tree and on the ground.  Mary Brown told them about rocks before but no one paid attention because they thought she was insane.  Which she is.  But sometimes insane people know things too.  Seven piles of rocks are too many to be a coincidence, especially since seven children were killed by Mr. Parr back in the day.  That right there would have been my signal to get my ass out of the woods and back to my big red couch.

They set up camp for a second night and then decide to go back to the rock piles  for some night time shots.  Josh knocks a pile over so he’s probably done for in about twenty minutes.  The whole thing is pretty anticlimactic until they go back to sleep, only to be woken up by some  loud noises that sound like  rocks being clacked together.

Heather tries to get Mike out of the tent but he refuses to get up and explore.  She calls him a bitch for being scared.

As Mike says, you don’t fuck with crazy people in the woods.

So these guys can’t catch a break and it’s raining again.  No one is speaking to Heather at the moment beacuse she’s so goddamn annoying.  I don’t understand why she cannot admit that she’s fucking lost.   Mike and Josh are tired of her bullshit and so am I.  They are never making it to the car.  Mike has a meltdown and night falls yet again.

The night brings the same noises as the night prior, and I’m starting to sense a trend that all is not well in the woods of Burkittsville.  Heather gets up to explore again and nothing really happens, though my fingers were crossed for her demise the first go round in the theater.  Alas, this did not come to fruition and back to the tent they go.

The next morning, their camp site is sprinkled with rock piles similar to the ones they discovered earlier.  Three to be exact.  More bickering and I’m officially over these simpletons and ready for the scary shit to start happening.

So dumb bitch Heather has lost the map now, which doesn’t matter at all since these pinheads don’t even know which way is north.

Josh checks out of the whole situation and parks it under a tree.  They talk about how everyone is going to notice they are not home on the day their loved ones are expecting them.  I think it is now time for me to utilize the convenient fast forward button.

Oh, amidst the next ten minutes of time wasting, we find out that Mike kicked the map in the stream.  Heather freaks but frankly, I’d be more pissed if he threw my Archie Comic in the stream.  At least the Riverdale Gang could provide me entertainment while my ass is lost in the woods for days on end.

Ok, finally something interesting.  They discover a bunch of freaky stick dolls hanging all over the trees which officially means they are screwed with a capital S.

Camping night 4 and those arts camp brats are frolicking outside making noise and smacking the tent with their tiny hands.   The campers run away shrieking and sit in silence in the middle of the woods the rest of the night.

The next morning, they return to their camp site only to discover Josh’s shit has been thrown around everywhere and is covered in a nasty goo substance.  Heather asks a billion questions and it’s safe to say that  if I were Mike or Josh, I would have drowned her in one of the million streams they crossed 2 days ago.

Well, it turns out that even with a compass, these three are inept at navigation and end back up at the same tree they crossed once before.  Since I can only use so many pictures of idiots lost in the woods, I’m just going to summarize what happens up until the creepy ass house at the end.

1.  After another night in the woods, Heather and Mike wake up and Josh is gone.  Probably targeted first for his crimes against fashion.

2.  Camp night 5 and they hear Josh yelling off in the distance.  It sounds like he’s being tortured but he’s shit out of luck if he thinks these two are going to save him.

3.  Fedex delivers a bundle of sticks to their tent flap and in the middle are some severed fingers and teeth.

4.  Heather makes an apology video for being a raging know-it-all bitch, failing her orienteering class, and getting everyone into this mess in the first place.

In the tent, Mike and Heather are woken up yet again by Josh’s screams for help.  They decide this time to pursue the screams but hello, dumbasses, Josh’s screams are probably not going to sound so coherent when dude is missing all his chompers.  Whatever.

They take off to find him and happen upon the creepiest house ever discovered in the woods.  This is the third Horrorgasm where exploring the woods at night is going to result in some serious shit going down.  Fuck camping.  I’ll make my goddamn smores in the microwave.

They go in and start walking around looking for Josh.  Meanwhile, the houses walls are covered in tiny bloody handprints and pagan symbols.

Josh’s yelling draws Mike and Heather upstairs but as he is a master of disguise, he throws his voice drawing them back downstairs and into the basement.  Mike runs down there whimpering for Josh and is knocked out, camera falling to the floor.  Heather screams some more and finally makes her  way down to the basement as well, only to discover this.

Well, Heather’s knocked out too and since these three were never found again, I can only hope they are dead.  At least Heather.  She is one annoying bitch.