Some part of me has had a soft spot for musicals ever since Rocky Horror taught me at the tender age of 13 that they didn't have to suck. Just because your cast dances around and sings songs the entire time doesn't mean that they have to do so in blinding sequins or striped ice cream man suits. Granted, this no doubt hurts my God o' Death cred in the eyes of some of our more macho readers who still operate under the stigma that musicals=butt piracy, but those readers' sisters and mothers will gladly tell them differently from the stained and disheveled sheets of their beds. I've already seen one musical take place in a summer camp setting, but instead of relying on the neo-classical standard of a masked mutilator of supple teen counselor meat, Nudist Colony of the Dead opted for the old “undead hippies out for revenge on the religious right with a Poltergeist twist” theme. As such, Camp Blood: the Musical manages to carve out a place for itself in the “summer camp serial killer” niche so often overlooked by musical theater.

Originally established by conservationist Sir Walter Blood as a home for wayward boys, kiddie communal summer getaway Camp Blood is preparing for its latest season of occupants. The counselors have arrived and they're what you'd expect from any generic slasher fare, hence why they're here. There's the hapless nerd, the bad boy drug slinger, the bitchy blond who tastes like everybody else, the introverted goth chick, the naïve jock (with knee-high tube socks, big red sweatband, and belly shirt...), and the naïve jock's equally naïve virgin girlfriend. They booze up, they go sinus skiing, they form the two-backed beast, and they don't concern themselves too much with why they can't seem to find the head councilor... because he was stabbed in the gut in the opening while investigating a broken jar in the camp kitchen... the oddly foggy, bathed in red light, cat flinging kitchen... of doom... I mean, OF DOOM!

As you can guess, our bordering-on-tone deaf cast exits stage left permanent like as a nondescript gent in overalls and a ski mask goes about doing them in one-by-one. An oral oaring here, an eyeball knifing there, here a strangulation, there a suffocation, and a two-for-one fellatio skull impalement for the kiddies! Who is the killer and why does he kill? Will anybody be left to sing the epilogue?! Tap your toes down to Camp Blood and find out.

One of the problems I had with Nudist Colony of the Dead and even Poultrygeist was that, even though the songs were entertaining and funny, after a while they became tedious. After their first hours, I felt the enjoyment sucked out of me every time a new musical number would start up. Not “hot horny middle-aged single soccer mom next door” sucking either, but more like “someone put a leech on my scrotum when I wasn't looking” sucking. As anyone who's ever had a bad experience swimming in an unmaintained pond will tell you, that's not something you want. Ladies? Use your imaginations... or, if you want to be able to get to sleep tonight, don't. Camp Blood manages to avoid the danger of giving their audience taint parasites though, thanks to the modest 32 minute running time. But, as proof of my Evil Dead Bride's frequent accusations that I'm never happy, by the time the end credits rolled I found myself wanting more. The grass is always greener anywhere but where my feet are.

An odd mash-up of outdoor story scenes and sound stage song & dance, it's almost a surreal production. With “just bad enough to be good” performances, no-budget killings, and what I'm assuming are intentional gaffes in continuity, there's so much potential for this to become a traveling show. Even if you can't wrangle an original cast to carry it from city-to-city, the caricature characters could be played by anybody with 6th grade drama club experience and some high school chorus cred! That's not to say that this cast has no talent of their own, I'm just saying that if you held a casting call for these parts, you'd have a large pool to choose from. Again, I'd like to see the runtime padded just enough that paying goers would feel their time had been sufficiently killed to justify the price of admission. Put together a couple more songs, maybe tack in another character or two to give the props crew another bucket of blood to work with, and you'd have something slasher movie fans would brave the light of day to come out and see! Shit, give Fangoria a call and see if you could make it part of their “Weekend of Horrors” conventions. This is the kind of coolness that would be better experienced firsthand... not that watching it on a TV screen is so bad, mind you. Besides, remember what Spaceballs taught us: the real money is in the merchandising. T-shirts, posters, soundtracks, DVDs, autographed cast-worn undergarments!

Bottom line? Camp Blood is good. If you've got a half hour between shifts at the abattoir and just don't have the time to watch a hack 'n' slash feature, it'll scratch your itch. It lacks the production values and time tested immortality of something like Evil Dead the Musical or Rocky Horror, but like I said, it has all the potential there to become a cult classic show. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go work on the choreography for the break dance duel scene between Herbert West and a headless Dr. Hill in my destined-to-be-a-classic off-Broadway musical, “Re-Animator? I Hardly Know Her!”.