Nuts and Bolts:  Step inside the mind of Leslie Vernon as he walks you through a tutorial on how to become a big-time serial killer in six easy steps. Yes, even YOU can do it!

Summary: This is the story of an eager, up-and-coming serial killer named Leslie Vernon. Leslie lives in the small, suburban town of Glen Echo and his life’s goal is to become a master in the art of fear, just like his more infamous contemporaries, Jay “Silly Face” Voorhees, Fred “That’ll never heal if you don’t stop picking at it” Krueger and Mike “Shatner Rulz” Myers.

Now to document his meteoric rise to power, Leslie has enlisted the aid of grad student documentarian Taylor Gentry and her two cameramen, Doug and Todd. Or is it Todd and Doug? Doesn’t really matter, you don’t get to see too much of these guys anyway. Taylor has a one-on-one interview with Vernon, who affably details the tricks of the trade. He also illustrates the numerous pitfalls that come with his chosen trade, as well the rules and code of ethics that every serial killer worth his salt must abide by. 

Leslie brings the crew to the home of his mentor, Eugene, and his wife Jamie. Eugene is an elderly man and a retired serial killer. He adds some insight into the evolution of the industry and comments on how today’s serial killers have a much tougher go at it then the older generations. This guy is just a big ole, happy, friendly, Santa Claus of a man. He’s the kind of father that every young boy should have. Oh, the things I could’ve learned had I but apprenticed under Eugene’s tutelage. Tell ya one thing, I sure as hell wouldn’t have made half the mistakes I’ve made in my life if I had someone to show me the ropes. I mean… who knew that a body might actually survive a sucking chest wound? Weird.

Leslie shows Taylor his primary target, his “survivor girl”, Kelly Curtis. Kelly is a young, blond-haired, “virginal” woman who works at a diner, which by definition of her archetype, makes her completely uninteresting to the audience, but for some reason she captivates the obsessive attention of the main antagonist. She’s made even less interesting by the fact that she doesn’t even show her tits. Leslie’s intent is for Kelly to be the one member of her peer-group to survive his carefully prepared massacre, and quite possibly, be the one who will ultimately defeat him. Leslie convinces Taylor to assist him in a “fly-by” scare outside of the diner where Kelly works.

Later, he details his “red herring” strategy, which involves killing someone who only has marginal contact with his prime target, but is not someone whom Kelly is intimately close to. This is a pretty good plan, and one that I personally have never thought of before. I’m kind of a “Kill everybody in the room and let the mortician sort ‘em out” sort of guy. I’ll have to write this one down for future reference. For the red herring target, Leslie chooses Mrs. Collinwood, the wrinkly, old librarian from the Glen Echo Library. Kelly spends a lot of time here, though I’m not sure why, since I’m fairly certain that she doesn’t know how to read. Maybe she’s like me, and enjoys perusing old issues of National Geographic in the hopes of finding pictures of nekkid African tribal chicks with the hockey pucks in their earlobes and the long, sagging boobs.

Anywho, Les surreptitiously leaves a doctored news article within Kelly’s reach, which implicates some fictitious great uncle of hers, Mark Daniel Curtis, in the rape of his (not really) mother, Molly Vernon. Kelly is very dumb. She doesn’t realize that she doesn’t actually have a great uncle, but that doesn’t stop her from asking Mrs. Collinwood’s assistance on researching the thirty-year-old newspaper article. The creepy-ass hobbit busts out with the Microfiche and illuminates us all as to the legend of Leslie Vernon. I realize that most people reading this probably have no frickin’ clue what a microfiche is, and to be honest… I just don’t have the energy to explain it to ya. Sorry. Look it up on Wikipedia.

Donning his torn-up overalls and green fright-mask, Leslie is ready to slaughter Mrs. Collinwood right before Kelly’s eyes. Suddenly, a weird old dude with an awesome beard busts up into the library shouting Leslie’s name and waving a gun. Screaming, “No more. It ends here!”, he fires off a couple of shots and Leslie takes one to the shoulder. Creepy midget librarian drops like a sack of wet dog shit and Kelly runs off screaming. Leslie and Taylor’s crew manage to escape the library without further incident. This is good. With nobody else around, all of the National Geographics are mine! Bwaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!! Sorry. Back to the review.

Leslie then explains to Taylor that the old man was Doc Halloran, his former therapist. Because, you know… therapists usually go ape-shit and begin cracking off with a .38 at the drop of a dime. Leslie is in fact overjoyed at this sudden turn of events, and cites that Halloran is his “Ahab”, a representation of all that is good in the world, and one who serves as a primary counter-balance to all of Leslie’s efforts. Apparently, it is the purview of all serial killers to earn themselves an “Ahab”.

Taylor however, is not as elated by the experience as Leslie is. Taking some time alone with her crew, she begins to suspect that Leslie is not playing a trick on her with all of his psycho-killer talk and may actually prove to be a threat to Kelly. She goes to the diner to warn her, but runs into Doc Halloran and his awesome beard. Halloran does his crazy-talk thing and tells Taylor that Leslie lied to her about his background. His real name is Leslie Mancuso and he’s really from Reno, Nevada. He tries to warn her to stay away from him, but Taylor and her crew leave the diner in a hurry.

Outside the diner, Leslie is waiting for them and discovers that Taylor intended on warning Kelly. Angrily, he slams Taylor against the side of her Volkswagen van and yells at her in a firm, yet threatening manner. Serves the bitch right, ya ask me! First off, she’s a loser because she drives an old-ass Volkswagen van, but more importantly, she sucks because she was going to run out on Les at the first sign of trouble. Here the guy invites you into his home, introduces you to his closest friends, invites you to engage in some “wacky hijinks” and what do you do? You turn on him, you selfish knob! Hell, he even let you pet his goddamn pet turtles for fuck’s sake! I don’t trust this bitch. I suspect that she will do this again later in the film.

Taylor fires back, accusing him of lying to her. Typical. Can’t defend your own stance, so you gotta turn the argument around, don’t ya? Oooh… this bitch needs a killing. If I ever get a pet turtle, I ain’t lettin’ this skank anywheres near it. Leslie finally admits that he was dishonest about his identity and that he chose the Vernon family name in order to immerse himself into the town’s local lore. Fuck that! You don’t have to defend yourself to her, Les! Beat this bitch down, man! We got your back.

My god. I just now realized that I am actually talking to the characters in my own review. I have just ascended to a whole new level of loony. Yay me.

After much planning, Leslie details his ultimate plot. Local legend  posits that the long-abandoned Vernon farmhouse is haunted by the spirit of the late Molly Vernon. It has become a tradition for young students to see who is brave enough to spend an entire evening in the house.

Aware of when this event is taking place, Leslie surveys the house at length, making sure that his strategy for slaughtering Kelly and her friends will not yield any dangerous surprises for him. He shows Taylor how he has bolted all of the windows, rerouted the power box, replaced fresh flashlight batteries with dead ones and sabotaged any possible weapon that might be used against him. He has even pre-cut window-side tree limbs, in case any of his would-be victims should try to evacuate by climbing out of a second-story window. He intends his final showdown with Kelly to take place in an adjacent building which includes a produce grinder.

That evening, Taylor, Doug and Todd accompany Leslie Vernon to the farmhouse while the party is taking place. Taylor still thinks that Leslie isn’t serious about committing wholesale slaughter, but she soon discovers how wrong she is as Leslie murders two of the revelers with his sickle. Let that be a lesson to you, pig-slut! If someone actually has the balls to come out and tell you that they are an axe-wielding psychopath, it might be prudent for you to, I dunno… fucking believe them!

Once realizing that this is actually happening, Taylor and her crew flee the house. Sensing her betrayal (loathsome whore), Leslie comes outside and warns them against disrupting his plans. He goes back inside to kill the rest of the partiers.

Taylor cannot sit by and allow this senseless slaughter to continue. All three go back inside to warn Kelly about what is taking place. Leslie is elsewhere in the house and the rest of the guests have yet to realize that they are being stalked. Taylor bursts into a room where she finds Kelly having wild sex with her boyfriend. It is clear to her now that Kelly is not nearly as innocent and virginal as Taylor had been led to believe. This chick suddenly became more interesting to me.

Vernon meanwhile, kills two stoner kids who had the misfortune to wander out near the tool shed. He kills the first stoner by slicing his head in two with his sickle and kills the second one by extracting his heart with a fence post digger. Death by fence post digger is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life. After I’m done writing this, I’m going to go out into the garage and affectionately hug my fence post digger. Maybe I’ll even scrapes some of that rust off of it, or give it a new paint job.

Yeah, I’m definitely going off the deep end.

 Inside the main house, the others begin to realize what is going on and that their lives are in danger. Taylor finally comes to the realization that she was always intended to be Leslie’s “survivor girl”, and not Kelly. Vernon had worked Taylor, Doug and Todd into their plot as well. Kelly tries to escape by smashing out an upstairs window. Taylor tries to warn her about the pre-cut tree branches, but she is too late, and Kelly falls to her death.

The crew race outside to escape Leslie Vernon, and Doug decides to run off on his own. When he spies Leslie, he baits him to follow him, thus enabling the others time to escape. Leslie catches up to him in the middle of the vineyard and breaks his neck.

By this point, Doc Halloran and his awesome beard arrive at the scene and faces Leslie Vernon inside the barn. Leslie draws in close, and stabs him in the shoulder with his sickle. Don’t worry. The beard survives. Todd tries to stop him, but Vernon violently slams him into a support beam.

It comes to the point where the only ones left are Taylor and Vernon. As Vernon predicted, Taylor evolves into the “survivor girl” archetype and openly challenges Leslie to stop her. The two face each other in the apple vineyard barn and Taylor succeeds in killing Leslie by crushing his head with an apple crusher thingie. Afterward, she douses the barn with gasoline and lights it up.

Taylor runs outside and is happy to discover that Todd, Doc Halloran and his awesome beard are still alive. As they watch the flames consume the barn, Todd openly asks, “What was he?” to which Halloran responds, “Just a man. He was just a man.”

 You think that’s the end? Well it’s not! It’s not the end! As the end credits roll, we see footage from a security camera at the morgue a few hours later. Do morgues really have security cameras? I didn’t know that. I’ll have to be more careful the next time I… uhh… never mind. Anyway, while the mortician preps his instruments, the body of Leslie Vernon rises from the table behind him and sits upward. Yeah, that’s right! In your face, Taylor!

Acting/Dialogue: I do believe that the sciences of Eugenics, Biogenetics and Stem cell research has advanced enough by this point that we will soon see man-on-man procreation. In fact… it may have already begun. I am reasonably certain that lead actor Nathan Baesel (Leslie Vernon) is the love-child of Ben Stiller and Jamie Kennedy (with a little Jim Carey semen thrown in for extra flavor). How does this speak to Baesel’s acting ability? Not a bit. He just reminds me of those three guys. Baesel nails the part in terms of a guy who regards the act of serial murder as a genuine, legitimate hobby. By playing it straight, he infuses the role with an eerily comedic vibe. The performance is natural enough that both interviewer, Taylor Gentry, and the audience begin to forget exactly what kind of tradecraft this guy engages in. 

Zelda Rubinstein plays the part of Mrs. Collinwood, the librarian. Rubinstein is best known as the wrinkly, creepy-as-all-hell, Oompa Loompa psychic from Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist. And even though she was seventy-three at the time of Behind the Mask, her lumpy little 4’3” ass is just as dominating and nerve-wracking here as was back in 1982. Her part, though minimal, is rather pivotal and she provides some exposition to help further the storyline.

Robert “Freddy Krueger” Englund plays the part of Doc Halloran. Although the character’s name is derived from The Shining, Englund’s role is actually patterned after the Sam Loomis character (played by the late Donald Pleasance) from the Halloween franchise. Englund’s always fun to watch, but I don’t think I would be paying him a disservice if I used the phrase “phoning it in” to describe his performance. Hey, everybody needs a paycheck.

The rest of the cast are forgettable. Seriously. You’ll never see another one of them ever again. Truly. I ain’t shittin’ ya.

The dialogue in Behind the Mask is quite smart actually and you can tell that the writers put a lot of creativity into it. Now the would-be victims don’t really say anything inspirational and their dialogue consists of little more than the traditional exclamations and rhetorical queries one would expect to find from this lot. The exchanges between Leslie and his mentor Eugene however, are quite well done and extremely entertaining.

Gore: Meh. Nothing particularly innovative here. We got yer standard sickle slashings, throat slittings and gut rippers. Not bad, but nothing to write the parents about. Not enough to warrant an R rating, that’s for damn sure. Stoopid MPAA.

Guilty Pleasures: You get one close-up shot of a really sweet rack. Even the other characters admit that this is pretty gratuitous, but hell, gratuity is a necessary part of everyday life.   

The Good: Well slap my ass with a urine-soaked towlie, a movie that doesn’t suck! These seem to be harder and harder to come by these days. Now as you may have guessed, Behind the Mask makes use of the “mockumentary” formula, a storytelling device that has not quite yet been beaten to death like the much-lamented proverbial dead horse. It’s certainly been used before however, and the horror film genre has presented this format in the shapes of the ostentatiously overrated Blair Witch Project, the awesomely amazing Cloverfield and the moderately mediocre Quarantine (alliterations rule). 

What makes this movie stand out above its peers is that it gives us insight into the psycho-killer’s mind, from the actual killer’s perspective. In a way, Behind the Mask is a sort of primer for up and coming axe-wielding maniacs. It breaks down the process for us into simple steps and shows us the do’s and don’ts of psycho-stalking. There are some really great tips in here, and you would be hard-pressed to find a better step-by-step tutorial from any other resource. I actually learned a lot watching this, and I realized what elements of my process are effective and which techniques I need to brush up on.

The beauty of this flick is its approach to the trade. There is such an air of normalcy floating between the characters that you almost forget that you are watching a biography about a psychopath. It’s a refreshing comedic spin to one of the most overused subgenres in all of Horror. The best scenes are when Leslie takes Taylor and her crew to visit the retired serial killer, Eugene, and his wife. I love how the older couple are beaming with giddy pride over Leslie’s commitment and accomplishments, particularly when they learn that he has acquired himself an “Ahab”. I have to admit, I was sniffling and tearfully cheering the ole boy on myself, wishing that I could just reach inside the television set and give him a big ole hug. They grow up so fast. Go get ‘em, Les.

The resolution to this movie proves satisfying because no matter who you are rooting for, you end up with a win. Taylor wins by not only surviving the film, but also by defeating the villain and presumably walking away from the experience a stronger person. It’s important to note that she defeats Vernon without resorting to the use of a phallic symbol as postulated by the psychological innuendo of the “Final Girl” formula. And even though he dies, Leslie also wins because he gets exactly what he wanted out of all this. His final words are testament to the fact that it was his intention to die by Taylor’s hands. 

Now, there’s an amusing observation from this film that I would like to address. Leslie Vernon explains the psychology behind the “Survivor Girl” mystique. Basically, it runs down like this. The innocent, virginal girl in a slasher flick, usually saddled with a unisex name (like Taylor), can only defeat the villain once she sheds those elements of her femininity and embraces the more violent, revenge-driven, machismo passions typically associated with the male psyche. In addition, she can only defeat the villain by empowering herself with a phallic symbol of some kind. It’s important to note, that this is an actual working theory developed by author Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Let me reiterate the sentiment so that we’re all on the same page. Chicks in horror films can only win if they strike back with cock. That’s what Clover is saying. Seriously. Personally, I don’t buy it. Sounds more to me like the wishful thinking of some lonely, sexually unsatisfied pent-up hippie with too many degrees on her wall and not enough common sense. I’ve heard just about every possible criticism one could level at the slasher genre, and this one by far, takes the friggin’ cake. Cake, by the way, in addition to being a yummy treat, is in no way shaped like a phallus. Unless you’re talking about Ding Dongs. Or Ho Hos. Both of which have amusing yet ironically sexual sounding names.

Come on, think about it. These women don’t pick up weapons because it reminds them of dong! They use phallic-shaped weapons because they are practical, efficient and easy to use without upsetting your center of gravity. A machete is light in weight and gives you ample reach. A knife is ideal for close quarter combat so you can get the job done right. What the hell do you expect these chicks to use against their assailants, a fucking beach ball?

All told, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is a unique and innovative repackaging of a classic formula whose tongue-in-cheek attitude will keep your interest throughout the entirety of the film. And for those of you looking to break into the biz, I think you’ll agree that this movie provides you with all the information you will ever need to effectively start your career as a professional slasher.

And Robert Englund’s beard is awesome.

The Bad: The biggest misstep with Behind the Mask lies within its predictability. Leslie Vernon is presented as an extremely bright individual with unquestioning devotion towards his trade. By the second act, it is obvious that he has accounted for every possible scenario and contingency, thus begging the question: Why would he allow a camera crew access to his operation without consideration for their shocking, yet inevitable betrayal?

Once the viewer affirms that Vernon is in point of fact not a moron and would definitely have planned for the camera crew’s betrayal, it becomes fairly obvious that Taylor is the intended target, and not Kelly. From there, it’s just a matter of waiting for the big reveal.

I also find it difficult to buy Les Vernon as a scary dude. Sure, his mask is pretty frikkin’ cool, and a sickle is a sweet-ass weapon, but his scrawny frame and cheesy farmer’s overalls really takes the piss out of it. Seriously, why is this guy so damned hard to kill? Yeah, he’s pretty fuckin’ smart, but come on. A retarded tree ape could whoop Leslie Vernon’s ass no problem.

Great Lines:

“You have no idea how much cardio I have to do. It’s ridiculous. Well… you’ve gotta be able to run like a freakin’ gazelle without getting winded. Plus, there’s that whole thing of making it look like you’re walking, while everybody else is running their asses off! And I gotta stay with ‘em! It’s tough, man. It’s tough.” – Leslie Vernon

 “I only keep pets I can eat. ” – Leslie Vernon

 “It’s not as easy as you think. Everybody thinks we just wake up one morning and start obsessing about a girl and start stalking her, killing everybody that gets in the way. ” – Leslie Vernon

 “How do the swallows find Capistrano? I don’t know. ” – Leslie Vernon

“I'll tell you, never hang out with a virgin. You got a virgin in your crew, either get somebody in her pants or get the hell away from her. ” – Jamie

"A lot of what we use is CGI." – Leslie Vernon

Overall Rating: 7 out of 10 severed heads

Review published on March 11th,, 2009