Jockstrap Slaughterhouse

Today, I’m going to be fulfilling a request from one of my gracious Patreon patrons, and talking about Jockstrap Slaughterhouse.

The plot of Jockstrap Slaughterhouse is summarized on IMDb as follows:

An evil football player terrorizes a group of nerds in this bloody throwback to 80’s slasher flicks.

Jockstrap Slaughterhouse was written, directed, produced, shot, and edited by Leopold Vincent Medley, who has a handful of independent short films and features to his credit going back to 2011.

As with most small independent projects helmed by weekend warriors, Jockstrap Slaughterhouse clearly faced the natural limitations that come with working on a low budget. That said, the blood that is shown on screen looks quite good. However, its appearance is sporadic: there are moments where blood should absolutely be present when it isn’t, like in the (theoretically) bloody denouement. There also isn’t much in the way of makeup work, which could have gone a long way for the production: the villain is in an obvious Halloween mask, and he could have looked a lot better with a little bit of makeup work (that wouldn’t have broken the bank).

Jockstrap suffers from a handful of issues that can easily be chalked up to inexperience. For instance, there is a lot of distractingly shaky handheld camera work where a tripod would have made a whole lot more sense. Honestly, that’s just a thing that happens, and is typically rectified by just having multiple takes to choose from. Watching over the footage at the time could have helped the production avoid having to deal with unsatisfactory, wobbly footage as well, though the shakes aren’t always obvious until an image is blown up.

While there are a number of technical issues with the film, the thing that hurt the film the most from my perspective was the writing. First off, a lot of the attempted humor fails to come across as intended. Imitating and mocking the shallow characterizations that defined 1980s horror movies is tricky business. If you do it wrong, you look, at best, like a lazy writer playing into the stereotypes that you had intended to satirize. At worst, you like an asshole punching down at marginalized groups.

On top of the issues with the comedy writing, there seem to be some structural issues with the screenplay: there were a number of times while watching the film that it didn’t seem to have a blueprint. The screenplay, on top of providing dialogue for the characters, should be a pacing tool, which bolsters the natural act structure of the story. In Jockstrap, there doesn’t seem to be a logical sequence of events. For most of the run-time, characters are just getting picked off at random by the killer. Rarely do these deaths have any consequences: characters never go to the police, come up with a plan, or even evacuate the home that they know the killer has free access to. This sort of lack of logical progression in a story results in a diminished investment on the part of the audience: if the characters don’t behave or think like people would, then how is an audience to identify with them? On top of that, if there are no consequences for actions, and the characters aren’t capable of making logical decisions, then there isn’t much tissue left to connect scenes to each other. When scenes aren’t connected to one another, then your movie doesn’t have any flow, and your audience will inevitably get bored.

On a positive note,  I will say that Jockstrap effectively uses a few local landmarks to try to keep the visuals interesting. Making the most of your surroundings and keeping an eye open for distinct locations can lead to some cool results. In the case of Houston, it is a city that isn’t often seen on screen, so there should be a lot of open possibilities.

Something that specifically stuck out to me about Jockstrap is that it attempted a couple of montages and a chase sequence. These are both complicated sorts of sequences that require adept editing to come off right. Honestly, while they all left a lot to be desired, but there were some flashes of decency in the chase. The best thing I can recommend to the team is to attempt some earnest imitation: pick some chase sequences and montages that you know that you like, then watch them a whole lot. Break them down, and think about what makes them good. Experiment with techniques like match cuts that can help make sequences more fluid, and see what you can do based on your observations.

Overall, Jockstrap Slaughterhouse is clearly an early effort from a group of filmmakers with some drive. There is a lot of polishing to do, but having the energy and motivation to create is always the first and hardest step in the process of creation.