I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer (2009)

15th Jul 09





Plot
A victim of bullying at a cricket match turns avenging serial killer years later. Insert random cricket gag here.

Review
It's the tried and tested formula we've seen so often before. A kid gets so heavily traumatised from a child hood event (Prom Night, Class Reunion, Freak Out) that he turns in to a serial killer in later life and tracks those down who 'did this to him'. This time, however, things are much different. The child hood event in question wasn't a falling out of a window incident, or a dare that went to far, or anything like that, this time it's a cricket match. And the bulliers who started the whole thing are Australian. That doesn't happen every day, now does it?

Anyway, it all starts with a couple of Ozzie cricketers getting murdered, and a couple of typically Ozzie coppers (a buxom Sheila, a hard drinking arrogant Bruce) heading the investigation. One thing leads to another and they trace the events back to a childhood cricket match where one kid in particular was bullied terribly by the rest of the gang. So, with that link firmly made, the coppers round up everyone from that match and ship them out to a deserted farmhoused in the middle of nowhere for a couple of good reasons. Firstly, with all the cast in one place that's very easy and cheap to film, and secondly, if the killer happens to know where said location is he can bump them off quite conveniently. What do you know?

So who will survive? Who will die? How will they die in a cricket related way (sharpened stumps? cricket balls with nails in?) and, hang on, how come the killer knows where they are anyway? Is there a twist on the horizon?

I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer is a relatively fun little Ozzie slasher flick, that zips along, never takes itself even the least bit seriously and all in all is a good effort by a bunch of amateur film makers. Okay, so the characters aren't the types you warm to straight away, and some of the scenes are really rather odd (the haircut and the S&M scene outside spring to mind) but the gore is fun and the story structure is classic so it's hard not to like. And okay, it's not the sort of film that blows you away, more the kind of film that makes you smile for as much as what they're trying to do than what they actually achieve, but it is entertaining nonetheless. And special nod should go to Stacey Edmonds, who has time to co-direct and star in this low-budget baby, which is a very tricky thing to pull off. So much so that she didn't even have time to film her own shower scene.

And there's a whole paragraph right there. Former Miss Nude Australia, Arianna Starr, is the body double for the completely pointless and massively gratuitous shower scene and, my God, it has to be seen to be believed. Yup, I know we're used to gratuitous nudity in this beloved genre of ours (could we live without it?) but this takes the absolute biscuit. Think the shower scene in Dressed To Kill, or the one in Edge Of Hell but without Jon Mikl Thor just the chick, add double the shamelessness, and you're close. And to add to the joy, in a move which forces at least half a star to be added to this movie's rating, the film makers have included the 3 minute uncut shower sequence on the DVD, ironically posting on imdb that if you've downloaded this film illegally you my want to buy the original because of this highly watchable of extras. Now there's a twist.

Posted by
Jim



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