A typically enthralling scene from Terror at Tenkiller

When I was growing up, I lived twice in Oklahoma.  In July of 1992, my family moved from Carlsbad, New Mexico to Ardmore, Oklahoma.  We lived in Ardmore until January and then we moved to Texarkana.  3 years later, we would return to Oklahoma when we moved from Longmont, Colorado to Tulsa.  We called Tulsa home for five months before my Dad got a new job working in Shreveport, Louisiana and we moved yet again.

Now that I live in Texas, I’m almost legally obligated to give Oklahoma a hard time but actually, it’s a pretty nice state.  There’s a lot pretty scenery and, even more importantly, Oklahoma is home to some of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet.  Add to that, I often feel that I owe my fascinating with the horror genre to Oklahoma.  When we were living in Ardmore, there was an abandoned barn near our house and a group of mean older sisters and cousins of mine told me that there were monsters living inside of that barn.  That inspired the very first nightmare that I ever had and, all these years later, I’m still scared of barns.

When I sat down to write a review of a film that was made in my former homestate, I ran into a problem that I really hadn’t planned for.  There just aren’t that many movies that were filmed entirely on location in Oklahoma.  At first, I thought I might go with either The Outsiders or Rumble Fish, since both of those films were shot in and around Tulsa but I really can’t say that I was enthusiastic about the prospect of sitting through and reviewing either one of those.  Fortunately, I had the bright idea to check with Wikipedia and that’s when I first came across Terror at Tenkiller, an independent slasher film from 1987.

“Ah!” I thought, “a horror film, which will tie in nicely with my memories of that scary barn!”

Even better, I quickly discovered that some generous soul had previously downloaded the film to YouTube.

“Yay!”  I thought, as I sat down to watch Terror at Tenkiller, “This may be bad but at least I won’t have to sit through The Outsiders!”

Anyway, Terror at Tenkiller is really, really bad.  The acting is terrible, the film reveals the identity of the killer within the first few minutes and then actually has the nerve to brag about the fact that the killer is basically motiveless, all of the dialogue was rather clumsily dubbed into the film, and the film is so ineptly lit that you often can’t even tell what’s happening on screen.  Yes, it’s a pretty bad film alright but I still have to admit that I enjoyed watching it.

What can I say?  When it comes to my movies, much like my men, it’s impossible for me not to find something to enjoy about them.  Even more importantly, I have a weakness for low-budget regional horror films.  First off, the film takes place at Lake Tenkiller, which is absolutely gorgeous and, whether he was simply trying to pad out a thin story or not, director Ken Meyer wisely includes a lot of footage of the surrounding countryside.  Secondly, the film is full of people who were obviously locals.  What they lacked in acting talent, they made up for authenticity.  I’ve had to sit through a lot of bad films that have featured a lot of professional actors trying their best to sound like they’re from my part of the world but, in the end, simply sounding like they’ve never even seen the Mason-Dixon Line, let along traveled below it.  If I’m going to watch a bad movie, I’d rather watch a bad movie that gets the accents right as opposed to one where everyone sounds like they just failed their dialect midterm at the Actors Studio.

Finally, I think the argument can be made that the low-budget and the stiff acting and the random volume level of the dubbing actually works to this film’s advantage.  If nothing else, these so-called flaws gives Terror at Tenkiller an undeniably dream-like feel.  The surrealism of Terror at Tenkiller may be unintentional but does that make it any less effective?

Anyway, you can make up your own mind by watching below.  The film itself is only 87 minutes long but the upload on YouTube has been divided into 6 different parts, each one of which lasts about 14 minutes.  In the interest of space, I’m only embedding part one but, at the end of the video, you should be able to find links for the other five parts.  If you’re at work, be warned.  This film does contain some very brief nudity and you probably shouldn’t be watching movies at work anyway.