TERROR AT TENKILLER (1987)
Leslie has been dealing with an abusive stalker of a boyfriend, so it's only natural that her good friend Janna swoop in to help whisk her away to a scenic lake town where a serial killer has been offing young women and is still very much at large. Before the gravity of that particular situation hits them, though, Leslie and Janna will both discuss and get calls from the boyfriend in question, as Janna continues to suggest she leave him for good while Leslie hems and haws about the future of her dismal relationship.
This is the general vibe of TERROR AT TENKILLER, a 1987 slasher directed by Ken Meyer that is both fairly uninteresting and rarely boring. That's completely counter to the pacing and structure of the film, which is the very formula for what one might normally consider to be a totally dull entry in an overpacked genre. Instead, TENKILLER is like a hangout movie without any fun hangouts. It's a slasher with zero mystique. You know who the killer is essentially from frame one, and the conclusion is all but inevitable.
While I would never be bold enough to claim that TENKILLER intentionally bucks any trends or is innovative in any way, it ends up being a Mister Magoo of a success, blindly stumbling its way to the nearest steel girder and way up to the top of an impossibly high building only to have a perfectly placed crane hook lower it safely to the ground on the other side. It's languid at best and repetitive at worst—especially when it comes to how Leslie deals with her boyfriend, who continues to pester her from a distance while she's taking a breather in Oklahoma lookalike locales that are standing in for the actual Tenkiller Ferry Lake.
What TENKILLER lacks in finesse it somehow manages to make up for through sheer determination. Director Ken Meyer and screenwriter Claudia Meyer—the latter being the only one with a couple other credits to their name—use the time that would otherwise be spent weaving some semblance of mystery on a few dodgy kill sequences and at least one that is legitimately inspired. There's a scene in which the killer chops an arm off one of his victims and, to my bleary early morning eyes, it was done to shockingly convincing effect. While I would never recommend a film based on a single lost limb, it's these little moments that end up turning your head when your mind is otherwise occupied by a flimsy domestic drama that has an ostensibly simple solution behind it.
With that in mind, I wouldn't go so far as to say TERROR AT TENKILLER is a lesser-seen slasher gem. There are some awful films out there that I'd rank higher than this one as far as the overall genre is concerned. It is, on the other hand, a film I'd be willing to revisit at some point down the line, and that's more than I can say for a lot of the grisly remains I have leftover at the bottom of my ever-expanding bucket of pure cinematic chum.
















