Blood Hook (1986)

• Year: 1986
• Released: 03 Apr 1987
• Country: United States
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090750/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/blood_hook
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: R
• Genre: Comedy, Horror
• Runtime: 92 min
• Writer: Larry Edgerton, John Galligan, David Herbert
• Director: Jim Mallon
• Cast: Mark Jacobs, Lisa Jane Todd, Patrick Danz
• Keywords: murder, slasher, gore, spoof, lake,

	4.2/10
	20% – Audience

Blood Hook Storyline

It’s time for the annual “Muskie Madness” fishing contest, and the lake is packed with hopeful fishermen. It soon becomes apparent, however, that a psychotic serial killer has also decided to join the festivities. Although the police have determined that the killer is claiming his victims by landing them with giant fishhooks, no clear suspects can be found since everyone is using the exact same hook! What is the killer’s goal? And more importantly, can the murders be stopped?

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Blood Hook Movie Reviews

Low budget regional slasher

BLOOD HOOK is a low budget and low effort slasher film shot in Wisconsin, of all places. The original title was MUSKIE MADNESS, but given that I and few other viewers are likely to know what a muskie is, Troma picked up the film and released it with the more generic slasher title BLOOD HOOK.

And this is definitely a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) type of movie. It’s about a mystery killer who butchers people with a giant fish hook, pulling them into the water where they subsequently drown. It has a little Friday the 13th vibe going on, although most of the time it’s cheesily inept rather than effective; the acting is very poor and the bog standard direction not much better.

It’s also a relatively bloodless movie given the title, with a couple of notable exceptions towards the end. The first is a bit involving a hook through someone’s mouth which has some excellent effects; the second is a close-up shot of some bloated corpses coming out of the water which is cheap and yet oddly gross and stomach-turning. BLOOD HOOK can hardly be considered a low budget gem – it’s of the same quality as something comparable like MEMORIAL VALLEY MASSACRE – but slasher fans might get a kick or two out of it.

Quirky and entertaining

A crazed killer goes on a bloodthirsty spree during an annual muskie fishing contest in a quiet small lakeside rural community. Director Jim Mallon offers a flavorsome evocation of the quaint Wisconsin backwoods setting and the various eccentric locals who populate the region, generates some real tension in the last third, ably crafts an engaging tongue-in-cheek tone (the scenes with the maniac using a huge hook and fishing rod to literally reel in his victims are simply hysterical), and delivers a few nice bits of gore. The idiosyncratic script by Larry Edgarton and John Galligan milk the muskie madness event for all its worth, with the colorful oddball characters and often outrageous dialogue providing a wealth of gut-busting goofy humor. Moreover, the game no-name cast have a ball with the wacky material: Mark Jacobs makes for a likable reluctant hero as the troubled Peter, Don Winters does well as amiable storekeeper Leroy, and Paul Drake really cranks it up with rip-snorting panache as the ill-tempered Wayne, plus there are sturdy contributions from Patrick Danz as obnoxious hipster Rodney, Christopher Whiting as the grumpy Finner, Bill Lowrie as wacko Vietnam veteran Evelyn, Sandy Meuwissen as friendly hostess Bev D., Dale Dunham as arrogant champion fisherman Denny, and Paul Heckman as the no-nonsense sheriff. Kudos are also in order for Marsha Kahm’s bright cinematography and the nifty hum’n’shiver synthesizer score by Thomas A. Naunas. Good campy fun.

Hook, line and stinker!

A bunch of obnoxious out-of-towners at a Wisconsin fishing competition become catch of the day when a local war-veteran with a metal plate in his cranium is sent kill crazy by the combined frequencies of bad rock music and cicadas (!?!!?!). By casting a triple-hooked doohickey (I think that’s the correct fishing term) with superhuman accuracy, the maniac skilfully ‘lands’ each victim before stringing their corpses together, ready for grinding up to feed to his minnows.

With such a nasty method of dispatching victims, Blood Hook should be a wonderfully gory film, featuring plenty of gruesome make-up effects as the hooks tear at the victims’ skin; however, the death scenes actually prove frustratingly tame, the hooks never shown puncturing the flesh, the actors simply smearing blood on their skin as they pretend (unconvincingly) to be pulled to their death. The only time we witness anything slightly graphic—the addition of a fresh corpse to the catch line—the effects are woefully unconvincing.

With such pathetic gore, plus horrible characters, terrible dialogue, only the briefest smattering of nudity, a terribly uneven tone that makes one wonder whether this is supposed to be a comedy or a horror, and an inconclusive ending in which the killer appears to escape (unless I have matters confused, which is quite possible since I was really struggling to stay awake by the end), Blood Hook is a total waste of time—much like the inexplicably popular pastime of fishing!