Miner Massacre Review

[Miner Massacre] (Plot:After getting a lead on some lost gold, a group of teens set out to find the lost treasure which is in an old mine. Unfortunately, the treasure originally belonged to an evil deceased miner, and hes none to happy about these kids messing with HIS riches. So unhappy in fact, he returns from the dead to stake his claim on the gold...in blood.) (Cast: Karen Black John Phillip Law, Richard Lynch, Vernon Wells, Martin Kove, Jeff Conaway, Brad H. Ardin, Michael J. Elwell, Sean Hines, Carrie Bradac, Stephen Wastell, Sangie, Rick Majeske, Elina Madison, Alexandra Ford,) (My Thoughts:I actually remember hearing about a film entitled "Curse of the Forty Niner", being released sometime in the future. It was only once though, and it dropped from my memory soon after. Then I see this film premiering on one of the Showtime channels, entitled "Miner Massacre" (working title was Curse of the Forty Niner and was changed). As a horror fan, you try to watch every horror flick you can, so I figured, what the hell, sounded decent enough. After it was all said and done though, the film had some entertainment value, but still falls into that (DTV B movie thats too stupid for words category).) (My Review:The film starts off with some poor nameless s.o.b who found Jeremiah Stones (the killer miners real name) gold, and returned to the mine to try and snag some of it. Hes of course killed by Stone in order to protect his claim. However, the man mailed his sister a small piece of the gold, with a note telling her to come to the town of Stuttersville (typical cliche smalltown name huh?) and help him dig for more of it. After Claire recieves the gold nugget with the map, our band of clueless teens (Claire included) drive off to the little town of Stuttersville to dig for gold. The mine is located in an abandoned part of the town, which makes it much easier for people to drop dead at the hands of our angry miner friend without anyone having a clue as to what exactly is going on. See, Jeremiah Stone before he was killed, put a curse upon his claim, that whoever found it, would trigger him to rise from his grave, and he would then spill the blood of those pesky claimjumpers. A bunch of dialogue, and one couple gettin it on take up around 15 minutes before the group arrives at the ghost town. A girl named Eve shows up soon after they arrive ( Eve is the cliche random person tossed into the middle of a horror movie to fool us the viewers into thinking him or her might be the killer). Eve starts to get a little too cozy with one dude, and her presence makes his girlfriend jealous, so she hops in her car and bails. Not a good idea since moments later, she crashes her ride when a guy with a pick axe (our miner killer guy) runs into the path of her vehicle. A few seconds later she meets a gruesome fate. Problem is, she had the gold nugget. Now that shes missing, the kids are sidetracked trying to find her. Eve our random mysterious smalltown girl who just happened to pop up, runs off after learning why the kids came there, which was to find the gold of Jeremiah Stone. She spills the story about why the new kids in town to her mom (played by Karen black) when she arrives back home (actually a rickitty old cabin in the backwoods). Her mom warns her to stay away from those kids, but for some dumb reason, Eve feels she must warn them they're in danger, so off she goes once again, back to the town. However, she never finds the kids again thanks to our miner friend(Guess that takes care of any theories she may have been the one doing these dasterdly deeds). 2 More people are picked off in lame death scenes, and the film pretty much breaks down into the usual scooby dooish type chase scenes where the killer despite managing to head the kids off in whatever direction they're running in, can't seem to manage to catch them. Theres a flashback scene which shows us how Stone was killed, and at what point in time he cursed his golden claim. The last 2 kids run into Eves mom when she heads out there to find her daughter who never returned home. The miner manages to find the kids, but they manage to escape. In all the commotion, Karen Blacks character winds up on fire when a carry light is knocked over. To save herself she leaps into the lake(Of course in real life, it's not that easy to get to the front door, out the door, and run to the side of your house and leap into the lake while you're on fire, but hey whos keeping score here). The last two kids after some more running manage to figure out a way to destroy the evil miner, which leads to your typical slasher/b movie ending which is even lamer than most others are.) (Pros-Other than the hot chicks, unique killer, and 1 decent kill, none.) (Cons:You could pretty much see every death coming. This movie follows the standard slasher movie formula to a *T*. The dialogue was pretty awful, and the kills were mostly uncreative.) (Overall:Typical B movie slasher fare, not even Karen Black could save this flick. Worth a view if you're bored or nothing else happens to be on TV at the time.)