Blades

Blades (1989)

The Tall Grass country club is gearing up for a big golf tournament and what they don’t need are the bodies that keep showing up on the grounds. Some maniac has sliced the bodies into tiny bits or so they think. But the owner and the local sheriff don’t want to shut the course down and lose the revenue from the high profile event. So they keep making excuses and the players keep dying. Finally the new golf pro, Roy, figures out is that there is a possessed lawnmower that is doing the killing. With the help of his assistant and a strangely prepared local they jump in a van and set out to kill the beast. This includes tossing bails of hay with balloons attached to them so they can track the mower, plastic explosives, gun, and grenades. I did say that the man was prepared didn’t I?

When I first sat down with this one I expected it was going to be some kind of slasher or spoof of a slasher movie. But it became very clear early on that this was going to be a parody of Jaws, only this time on a golf course and with a mower. They even have their own versions of some the scenes in Jaws, woman slapping Roy (get it the main character’s name is Roy) when he let her husband play the course. Though the best by far is when they cut open the bag of the mower just to be sure. You see the size of the blades of the mower they “caught” aren’t big enough to have caused the damage. As if parodying Jaws wasn’t enough they also have a bit lifted from the Terminator and a character named Jason that is always walking around in a Hockey mask.

Making a movie like this is always a double-edged sword. What can be a very funny and clever idea might not hold up over a feature length movie. That is the problem with Blades. While the movie never made me laugh I was sort of amused by it. Many of the comedic bits are staged well and cleverly written. But there are also parts of the movie that drag. Blades is one of those independently made movies that would have benefited from an experienced editor. Keeping this kind of gimmick interesting is hard enough, but when your movie is 98 minutes long you are helping yourself.

Before I finish up I wanted to talk about the gore. You have some body parts and spraying blood. But other then one scene with chopped off legs there isn’t much of anything on screen. With the silly tone of the movie even some silly poorly executed gore would have worked and been fun. Though the effects work done to recreate the dramatic finale from Jaws, only this time with a van on a golf course were fun. And when we finally see the mower it actually is sort of funny and looks good. Just wished they had put that much effort into some latex limbs flying around.

Blades is a slightly amusing movie that might be worth checking out once, but I wouldn’t spend much time or money on it. Luckily I caught it on Netflix streaming, so it only really cost me part of an afternoon. I can’t really recommend Blades.

2 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer