HALLOWEEN HORROR: Trailer Park Of Terror (2008)

Trying to escape her trailer trash life, Norma (Nichole Hiltz) has got herself a townie boyfriend, only the local bullies accidentally kill him and so Norma storms off, strikes a deal with The Devil (who bears more than a passing resemblance to Stephen King's Randall Flagg aka The Walkin' Dude aka The Man In Black), returns to the trailer park, kills everyone and burns down the park with herself in it.

Twenty years later a minibus of juvenile delinquents, returning from Bible camp with their chaperone, Pastor Lewis (Matthew Del Negro) crashes in a rain storm and they seek shelter in the seemingly abandoned trailer park.

However, they are greeted by Norma, who offers to put them up for the night and that's when they discover they are in the Trailer Park Of Terror (bwahahahahaha!)

This 90-minute horror starts off promisingly enough, but once the ghost-zombies start to arrive it degenerates into a very by-the-numbers gorefest - with the "final girl" telegraphed from the moment she appears, as the only one of the young reprobates with any degree of personality and charm.

A strange brew, borrowing elements from sources as diverse as splatterpunk and Nightmare On Elm Street (several of the kiddies are offed in ways appropriate to their single character-defining quirks), things further spin out of control with musical numbers (courtesy of an annoying zombie with a guitar - a gimmick that grows old very fast) and a strange demolition derby climax!

By letting the story initially unfold chronologically, thus letting us see the inciting incident that creates the supernatural horror (facts usually discovered in the course of horror film, rather than at the start), I thought Trailer Park Of Terror was going to put a new spin on this kind of "teenagers trapped in the middle of nowhere by flesh-eating monsters" movie.

Sadly it doesn't and even the half-hearted attempt at a twist ending is fumbled. Apparently the movie was based on a comic book series and clearly this ending was a stab at leaving the door open for a sequel.