The year was 1999. The show was Mystery Science Theater 3000. Their movie of choice this time, “Soultaker”. It was a movie written by a woman, with her in the starring role. But the real stars of the move were Joe Estevez and Robert Z’Dar. Don’t believe me check it out. Flash forward twelve years and I would almost consider this the spiritual successor to that monumental film.
The Rockville Slayer starts off with four kids on a parking trip in the middle of nowhere. After the big game two of the star players (apparently) are looking to hook up with a couple of girls and… blow off some steam. As they get a little be more intimate, and that’s naturally when things go wrong. How wrong? Like they all get brutally murdered.
The Rockville Slayer really has a convoluted plot. At it’s core it’s about solving the murders of these kids, however the writers try to spice things up with another story running parallel to this main one. It’s handled so ham-fisted that it comes off completely ridiculous. Apparently one of the kids murdered had an older brother who was really only his half-brother. See good old dad had an affair right before he got married, with an insane woman. Sigh, really, it’s so dumb and overly thought out that it just doesn’t matter.
Robert Z’Dar’s face looks like a catcher’s mit. Thankfully seeing as how he is really only in the movie for the last thirty minutes or so, you don’t have to suffer through looking at him. Joe Estevez is still trying to get out of the shadow of his brother Martin Sheen, and will never be able to do so, especially with movies like this AND Soultaker. Z’Dar plays an abusive boyfriend in a relationship with the crazy woman. Joe Estevez plays the Sheriff of Rockville. I would hesitate to say that Z’Dar plays his role a bit better, because deep down, I see him being a loon anyway.
This movie is one of those that falls prey to trying to be an overly serious movie, with a plausible plot, that doesn’t have the acting chops to back it up. The Dad in the movie is laughably bad, like seriously he cannot act his way out of a wet paper bag with script in hand. The main character is played by a guy who’s credited name is “Circus” and the Detective tries to inject emotion into scenes that don’t deserve it. I counted no less than SEVEN instances of the “dramatic eye glasses removal” moments in the movie. One of the earlier ones was another detective that was never seen wearing glasses again.
There really is no reason to seek this movie out, unless you want to create your own MST3K movie moment. I will say this though, there were lots of accidental comedic scenes, so I guess that’s something. Watching pretty much every actor phone in their lines is pretty good for a laugh. The only real reason that I had this in my queue was that I grew up in a little town called Rockville, and I just thought, “why not”. Unless you have some strange connection to the name like I did, or you really like watching a man with a GIANT face act, it’s not worthy of you time.
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