Movies That Suck: Miner's Massacre (Curse of the Forty-Niner) (2002)

Remember Vampegeddon, that low-rent, no budget vampire movie that I ended the first Schlocktober with? If you don't, I'm surprised, and I also envy you for being able to block that thing from your mind. I myself, unfortunately, don't have that luxury, as the idiot who made me aware of it, and aggravated me to death until I finally broke down and watched it, will not let me forget about it, no matter how hard I try (yeah, me reviewing it back in 2019 didn't make him shut up about it one bit; he's still trying to get some label to put it out on Blu-Ray). I bring this up because, in the case of today's item, old Newt Cox strikes again. Unlike Vampegeddon, this wasn't something he became obsessed with, forcing everyone he knows to watch; rather, it was something he bought, watched, realized how bad it is, and put in one of these occasional boxes of items he sends to me. This is how much of a sociopath he is with this sort of thing: within these packages, or as he calls them, "Newtcrates," is a bunch of stuff that he knows I would like, along with one booby prize that he wants to torture me with. And he knows I'll watch it because, when somebody gives me something on DVD or Blu-Ray, no matter how uninteresting or just plain crappy it is to me, I feel the need to watch it at least once. I guess I shouldn't complain too much, because his long-suffering girlfriend, whom he's forced to watch far more crap than I've ever had to (mainly because, unlike her, I'm not right there in person for him to torment), has stopped him from sending me infinitely worse stuff, including a physical copy of Vampegeddon, but it's just not fair. I've supplied him with nothing but quality in the many packages I've sent him over the years, and this is how he repays me. 

I'll admit that I'm going into detail like this in order to pad out the intro, as I have little to say about the movie itself. I'd never even heard of it until I got the very bare bones DVD in one of my Newtcrates in late summer of 2021, and wasn't expecting much from the cover, especially with that awful, "THEY AXED FOR IT," tagline. I was surprised when I started the movie and learned it was directed by the late John Carl Buechler, the makeup effects guy and occasional director, although that didn't instill any confidence that it might be good, either, given his very spotty track record. And even then, I was completely unprepared for how freaking awful this flick is. It is the most uninspired, by-the-numbers slasher movie you could possibly hope to see, with all the tropes and elements: bad acting, characters who are either forgettable or unlikable, an undead villain with a crappy makeup design and uninspired backstory, short, at best, appearances by previously prominent actors who needed a paycheck, and an overwhelming sense of cheapness about it all. Also, even though we have a makeup effects man in the director's chair, the kills, while fairly bloody, are nothing to write home about, and do nothing to dull the pain of sitting through this, despite it not even being that long.

(I would assume that alternate title of Curse of the Forty-Niner is what it's called overseas, like in England, but it seems to be much more common than Miner's Massacre, as that's the one that every rip of the movie I found online uses. In fact, that DVD that Newt sent me is the only one I've seen that uses the latter. In any case, there we are.)

In Suttersville, California, Jared Berman has uncovered a treasure trove of gold inside an old mine-shaft. But, in doing so, he invokes the curse of Jeremiah Stone, a monstrous miner who returns from the dead in order to kill anyone who threatens to take his gold. He kills Jared, but not before he manages to send a letter to his sister, Claire, along with half of an old map and a nugget of gold. Claire and her husband, Nick, head up to Suttersville, and are joined by their friends Axl, his girlfriend Tori, Hayden, and his girlfriend Rox Ann. On the way, Axl and Tori stop by the home of Seth Prichard, an old man who tries to discourage them from heading up to the old, abandoned township, telling Axl about Jeremiah Stone and what an evil man he was. They leave after Prichard manages to sucker Axl into buying a supposed "WANTED" poster of Stone from the 1800's, only for the undead miner to then appear at his house and kill him. After the six of them come together and head to the old town, they meet Eve, a very lovely local girl who becomes friendly with Axl. They also meet Sheriff Frank Murphy, who's friendly enough, although they refrain from telling him why they're up there. Tori, jealous of Eve, as well as just a rather sour person in general, decides to leave, taking the gold nugget with her. On her way out, she's attacked and beheaded by Stone. The others find the house where Jared was staying, but he himself is nowhere to be found. They also find signs of a struggle, as well as the other half of the map. Eve panics and runs off when she realizes they're looking for the gold, warning them that they're going to die. After some searching, they manage to find the mine-shaft and the enormous stockpile of gold within. Meanwhile, Eve goes back home to her Aunt Nelly, who tells her that the others have sealed their fate. Unable to accept this, Eve tries to help them, only to herself fall victim to Stone, who next targets the others as they camp out in the woods near the mine.

John Carl Buechler was definitely a very talented makeup effects man, with him and his company, Magical Media Industries, doing some great work from the 80's on. But as a director, his batting average wasn't so great. I remember kind of liking Cellar Dweller when I saw it and, as with the majority of the franchise, I do have some fun with Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, even though it suffered badly from the MPAA's butchery of the kills and the formula really starting to wear thin; otherwise, I have little-to-no interest in stuff like The Dungeonmaster, Troll, Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College, and Watchers Reborn. I would've also bet money that this flick would've killed Buechler's directing career off for good but, as it turns out, he made a pretty good handful of films afterward, including a 2006 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adaptation that featured Tony Todd in the dual role. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, though, as the micro-budget type of genre films he specialized in aren't exactly picky when it comes to directors. His last film as director, Wizardream, was released two years after he died of prostate cancer.

If I can name one thing that's somewhat unique about our six ill-faited protagonists, it's that the main couple, Claire (Carrie Bradac) and Nick Berman (Sean Hines), are actually a married couple, which you don't often get in slasher flicks. Thus, when they're making out, as well as truly getting it on during the third act, they're skirting around the trope of pre-marital sex equaling death. Other than that, and the fact that they definitely have the healthiest and most genuinely loving relationship out of the group,

which lets you know right off the bat that they're probably going to be the only survivors (and they are), there's not much to say about them, as they are as bland as it gets. Funnily enough, even though Claire's brother, Jared (Shadrach Smith), is killed off at the beginning before he even gets a line of dialogue, he's more significant in that he's the one who unknowingly kicks things off by finding Jeremiah Stone's gold in the mine-shaft and setting his curse in motion. He also sets his sister, brother-in-law, and their friends into Stone's path by sending Claire part of the old map and a gold nugget, prompting them to come up to Suttersville to look for more.

The character who lasts much longer and has a lot more to him than you'd expect is Axl (Steve Wastell). When he's first introduced, driving up to Suttersville with his bitchy girlfriend, Tori, it seems as though he's going to be the goofy, butt-monkey comic relief who'll be killed off very quickly. Besides suffering from Tori's constant verbal and, at some points, physical abuse, he also falls for Old Man Prichard's scam and buys a fake, 19th century WANTED poster of Jeremiah Stone. And when they get to the old township, he realizes he's lost the watch that Tori's mother gave him, which she gives him an earful for and orders him to find. He doesn't find the watch, which he describes as a piece of junk that's always slipping off his wrist, but he instead comes across Eve, who happened to find it herself. Being quite taken with her from the get-go, which immediately sets Tori off, Axl isn't exactly broken up when the latter storms off and leaves in his car. However, Eve eventually runs off as well when she learns what it is they're looking for, relegating him to a fifth wheel among the group. It turns out that Axl also has some military experience, but has to admit that, rather than a commando, as he's claimed, he was just a mail clerk, something that Hayden gives him crap for. When they're camping out that night, he scarfs down a can of beans, which, predictably, gives him the shits, forcing him to pull his pants down in the woods and crap to the point where you almost expect his innards to fall out of his ass (thankfully, you don't see any of this; you just hear it). And when he's done, he gets scared by the sound of someone prowling around nearby and runs off before he has a chance to wipe, meaning that, for the rest of the movie, he has really nasty stains at the bottom of his underwear. During the climax, when they're told that the only way to stop Stone is to give back every piece of his gold, Axl, initially, seems willing to do so, but after a run-in with Stone where he kills Aunt Nelly, he's more intent on just running off. In the end, he's able to hatch up a plan to possibly destroy Stone in the mine-shaft with the gold (some of which he did try to keep), and sacrifices himself to ensure it works.

Tori (Sandra Purpuro), Axl's girlfriend, is nothing but a constantly complaining, abusive shrew who puts down both Axl and the nature of the trip at every opportunity. She doesn't like the idea of being outdoors at all, as she would rather be at some resort, and when she has to use the bathroom on their way up (Axl asks, "Didn't you go at the gas station back there?", and she answers, "Yeah, so what's your point?"), she shrilly orders him to find some place where she can go, adding, "Preferably with toilet paper." After she does her business at Old Man Prichard's house (since all he has is a backed up port-a-potty, she opts to go behind a bush), and becomes aggravated with Axl for buying that fake WANTED poster, she stomps back to the car, screams, "Let's go, already!", and honks the horn at Axl, even as he's walking back to it. She continues bitching all the way up to the old township, at one point even claiming that she's allergic to trees, and nothing Axl says or does is enough to satisfy her or lighten her up. Things come to a head when they reach the town, as Axl loses the watch that Tori's mother gave him and she growls at him to find it, even shoving him in anger. While in the saloon by herself, she freaks out and starts screaming bloody murder when she hears something, only for it to turn out to be a bunch of pigeons after everyone has come running. Between that and seeing Axl with Eve, Tori decides she's had enough and demands that he leave with her. When he refuses and tosses her the keys to emphasize the point, she storms out, angrily slams into Eve's shoulder on her way, and drives off, having taken Claire and Nick's gold nugget with her. She doesn't get far before she runs into Jeremiah Stone, who causes her to crash the car and then beheads her.

As expected, there is an asshole character here, namely Hayden (Rich Majeske), who joins the others up there with his very hot girlfriend, Rox Ann (Elina Madison). They're introduced while they're parked off the road, having sex in Hayden's car, when they're interrupted by Nick when he tries to contact them on their walkie-talkies. During their first real conversation afterward, when Rox Ann accuses him of thinking about nothing but making money, Hayden says, "Well, we all have our missions in life, babe. Mine is to make money; yours is to... take your clothes off. We do what we're good at." Despite how sleazy he is, going as far as to pretend to pay her for her services, Rox Ann sticks with him, and the two of them even have sex again when they reach the old town, this time in a barn... and once again, they're interrupted, this time by Tori freaking out over the pigeons. As expected, with the possibility of gold, Hayden proves to be a really insensitive prick, be it when it seems like something has happened to Jared or when Eve runs off upon learning what it is they're looking for, giving Axl crap for it. When they do find the gold and start bringing it up out of the mine-shaft, Hayden is eager to get it all out of there, while the others opt to take what they have and come back for the rest the next day. His true colors really come out that night when Sheriff Murphy shows up at the campground to check on them, and he's sure that Murphy is out to take the gold for himself. Moreover, he pulls out a gun and all but threatens to shoot anyone who tries to take his share, much to Rox Ann's horror. Speaking of Rox Ann, while she doesn't have much of a character, she does have more of a conscience than Hayden, who immediately accuses her of being in on this conspiracy he cooks up. When they're then attacked by Jeremiah Stone, Rox Ann is killed while trying to get the car for them, while Hayden gets killed as he tries to drive off and abandon the others.

Given how much of a bitch Tori is, it's not surprising that Axl falls for Eve (Alexandra Ford) the minute he meets her. Not only is she hot and flirtatious, but she's also genuinely sweet, as well as naive, as she and her Aunt Nelly live very isolated lives and don't have a lot of human contact. She doesn't sense that they're hiding something from Sheriff Murphy when they first meet him not long after they meet her, but it slowly dawns on her when they take a detour from the camping ground to Jared's abandoned cabin. When Hayden lets it slip that they're looking for the gold, Eve becomes frightened, knowing about Jeremiah Stone's curse, and frantically tells them that they're going to die, before running off. She heads back to her and Aunt Nelly's home, where Nelly tells her that there's nothing she can do to help them. Unwilling to accept this, Eve runs back to the site and ends up getting killed by Stone at Jared's cabin.

While the more seasoned actors here, whom I'm about to get to, do what they can with their thankless roles, the performances from those playing the protagonists (I refuse to call them "kids," as both the adults and even Eve herself refer to them, as they're all in their 20's, at least), not surprisingly, are quite bad. To be fair, Steve Wastell and Sandra Purpuro are decent in their respective roles, even if Wastell does have a tendency to get really hammy as Axl, but the others? Woof! Some of the dialogue they have to say doesn't

help, but their delivery tends to range from bland to painfully forced, and there are several instances of bad ADR throughout, most blatantly when Sheriff Murphy advises them to stay away from the mine-shaft and Hayden asks, "Why?" (I could be wrong but it didn't even sound like Rich Majeske.) When they find Jared's cabin abandoned, Carrie Bradac trying to make Claire come across as worried about her brother, hands the map over to Nick, saying, "Here, you deal with this," then adds, "Maybe we should call

that sheriff. Why would Jared go anywhere without the map?" And after Eve runs off in a panic, Rox Ann suggests, "Maybe we should listen to her," only for Hayden to chime in with a badly delivered, "What, are you crazy?" Speaking of Rox Ann and Hayden, when they've taken the gold out of the mine, and everyone aside from Hayden decides to come back for the rest the next day, the former has this gem: "That gold's been there for a really long time. It's not like it's goin' anywhere." Hayden complains, "I just

wanna go on record: I am not happy about this," and Rox Ann adds, "Will you relax? What could possibly go wrong now?", in the cheesiest, most air-headed, naive tone imaginable. She doesn't get much better when she calls Hayden out on how crazy he's getting about the gold that night. And during the final confrontation with Stone, Claire runs into the mine-shaft and tells him, "Hey, asshole. Go to hell," in a very indifferent voice before lighting him up with a flare-gun. (Also, note how bored and bemused she looks before she shoots.)

As Aunt Nelly, Karen Black is one of the several notable actors they managed to get in here to try to give the film a touch of class. Like always, Black does what she can, playing Nelly as superstitious and cynical, writing off the main group as a bunch of greedy, sinful people who are going to get what they deserve. But when Eve runs off to help, Nelly is worried enough to head over to Caleb, a friend of hers, and get him to contact Sheriff Murphy. She's too late to save Eve, but when Stone has killed all but Nick, Claire, and Axl, Nelly shows up as they're being chased and gets them to follow her back to her house. There, she makes them understand what they've done, telling them the story of Stone, what an evil man he was even in life, and the curse he placed on his gold. She also tells them how to stop him, by taking all of the gold back to the mine and then burning him there with it. Immediately after she tells them this, Stone bursts into her cabin and smashes an oil lantern that she's holding, setting her ablaze.

Caleb is played by Martin Kove, who appears in that one scene when Nelly shows up at his home to ask him for help finding Eve. While he's more interested in getting it on with his lover, Bertie (Skye Myers), Caleb is sensitive to Nelly's plight, unlike Bertie, who continually suggests that Eve ran off because she can't stand being around her. He reassures her that Eve isn't in any danger and that she'll come back eventually. But when Nelly tells him that this involves the curse of Jeremiah Stone, he realizes how serious it is and

gently takes Nelly inside, intending to call the sheriff. Speaking of Sheriff Frank Murphy (John Phillip Law), despite Hayden being convinced that he's plotting to steal the gold out from under them, he's actually a very easygoing, stand-up guy, both when they first meet him in the old town and when he shows up at the campsite and literally scares the shit out of Axl. Being friendly with both Eve and Aunt Nelly, the latter of whom he describes as, "A superstitious type. Sometimes, it gets the best of her. But she's got a good heart," he goes out to the campsite to see if Eve is with the others. Learning that she isn't, he decides that she went back to Nelly's home and leaves. He doesn't show up again until the very end, when he picks up Nick and Claire... and is the unwitting cause of a very lame, possible sequel-bait jump-scare.

Finally, Richard Lynch appears early on as Old Man Prichard, whose house Axl and Tori stop at so the latter can use the restroom. Initially claiming that his place is private property, only to then realize he didn't put any signs up, he allows Tori to use his "facility," which turns out to be a backed-up port-a-potty, prompting her to find a bush to squat behind instead. While she's doing her business, Prichard talks with Axl, telling him about Jeremiah Stone, saying, "That rat bastard was so mean that the hell itself didn't even want him. That's the gospel truth," and shows him a WANTED poster that he claims has been in his family for generations. However, he sells it for $40, and calls Axl a "stupid moron" when he's out of earshot, as he has dozens of those posters printed up inside his house. After calling a friend of his who's also selling said posters to rub it in his face, Prichard starts downing some moonshine, only to get a visit from the resurrected Stone. Clearly not happy about Prichard profiting off his image and legend (and also possibly because he heard Prichard call him a, "Scum-sucking, shit-heel son of a bitch," right before he walked in), Stone takes the pick-axe to him, then replaces his missing right ring finger with Prichard's own.

It's never a good sign when a film or TV show has no Trivia section on its IMDB page, and that is the case here. Moreover, the budget is listed as "Unknown" on the Wikipedia page but, while it was shot on various ranches up in California, as opposed to somewhere less expensive, like Canada, I doubt the budget cracked $1 million, or even $500,000. The film just looks cheap, with an unseemly orange color palette to the daytime scenes, whereas the nighttime ones are given this blue look that's likely meant to come off as atmospheric, when it isn't in the slightest; it also

makes things a bit hard to see. And not surprisingly, there's at least one moment that I'm sure was shot day-for-night. There are also some very cheap editing tricks and dissolves, making this feel all the more like a Sci-Fi Channel original; the digital effects, which, thankfully, are used sparingly, look like something out of an early 2000's computer game; and even the credits, which are superimposed over a background made up of the old map and made to look hellish and fiery, are poorly done, with the contrast making them hard to read. As for John Carl Buechler's actual

direction, it's nothing amazing, as he had a bad habit of telegraphing every death scene or attempt at a scare, but there are, admittedly, some competent moments here and there. When Stone kills Jared at the beginning of the movie, it starts on a wide exterior of the latter's cabin, as he goes outside and relieves himself, then walks back in, only for Stone to bring his hook and chain up into frame, revealing that we're seeing his POV. This shot is maintained as he walks on towards the cabin, heads through the doorway, and

comes up behind Jared, who turns around and sees him right before he's attacked. Also, when Stone kills Eve, it transitions from a shot of her blood dripping into a tub to one of the full moon. And when he appears at the campsite, the shots of him walking out of the fog in silhouette in the moonlight is kind of cool, albeit cliche (and it doesn't make the character any more badass, let me tell you).

As for the settings and locations, they could've been used effectively, given how isolated and out of their comfort zone the characters are, but aside from some roads that we're told are dicey to drive at night, nothing is done with it. Thus, these places, which mostly consist of the woods around the township of Suttersville and the mine-shaft, are just bland and make the film come off as all the more cheap. Speaking of the town, it's kind of cool, looking like a classic Old West ghost-town, with a saloon and a barn, but it's so obviously a movie set and little is

done with its interiors. In fact, the movie might've been more interesting if much of it was set there. The mine-shaft fares even worse, as it consists of little more than a narrow tunnel leading into a fairly small room that, again, is clearly a set rather than an actual location. The same goes for the part of the mine where Stone resurrects, which has an altar lined with skulls housing candles, a pick-axe on its side, and a pentagram on the wall behind it. Not that I expected them to film in an actual abandoned mine, but they could've lit and dressed these sets in a more

convincing manner. And though we do get a brief flashback to the 1800's, it's out in the woods near the mine, so all you have to go by, aside from the caption, are the costumes and hairstyles. I do, however, kind of like the isolated, bare bones houses and cabins we see, like Aunt Nelly's lakeside shack, Caleb's large one in the middle of the woods, and the small stone house that Jared is staying in at the beginning, as well as Prichard's big but fairly rough-looking house early

on. Not only do I just like these types of locations in general, and wish they had been used in the movie more, but they remind me of places, as well as people, you can find living around here, in East Tennessee (that said, though, I don't know why, no matter what part of the country it's taking place in, backwoods settings like this always feel like the Deep South in movies).

Far from a dead serious affair, the film tries to have a sense of humor about it but, while Karen Black's delirious performance as Aunt Nelly is certainly funny at points, as is Richard Lynch's deadpan delivery as Old Man Prichard, much of the humor doesn't land. Axl is the primary source of the comedy, be it how, during the first act, he's being all silly and overly enthusiastic in a desperate attempt to get Tori out of her perpetually sour mood, or when he's grumbling about what a bitch she is behind her back ("Women. Can't live with 'em... can't kill 'em,"), and

while Steve Wastell is kind of able to make it work, a lot of it is still that kind of humor that tries so hard that it becomes cringey. Some of the "supposed" attempts at humor are just downright dumb, like when Eve runs out on them and Axl comments, "Must be... cabin fever?", or that awful dialogue that Rox Ann has when they're getting the gold out that I mentioned earlier, which is so bad that it makes you wonder if it was intentional. There's also a comedic montage of the characters, or rather, the men, walking around the woods, unable to find the mine, despite having the

map. This is when Axl has to admit that he was a mail clerk in the army rather than a commando. And then, there's the extended bit of potty humor when Axl, after downing a can of beans, only to get the runs, dashes off away from the campsite with some toilet paper, squats and pulls down his pants, and lets it rip. Again, you don't see anything, but you do hear his stomach gurgling and the lovely sound of his crap hitting the ground behind him. The film tries to make it funnier by showing that he's stuck out there doing

this while the couples are getting it on elsewhere, and it cuts back to him as he desperately tries to get every last bit out, moaning, "Come on! I know you're in there!... Please, please...!" (Okay, I'll admit, I did kind of laugh at that, as I think we've all been there.) Sure enough, you hear more come splashing out, but before Axl can get around to wiping himself, he has the misfortune of getting scared and running when he hears someone prowling around nearby. It turns out to be Sheriff Murphy, who wastes no time in trolling him about it, telling him to clean the mess up and advising the others to watch where they step up until then.

Think of the most basic slasher movie villain you've seen, in the most bottom-of-the-barrel entries in this genre, and I guarantee they'll probably have something about them that makes them more inspired than Jeremiah Stone. Everything about this guy makes it seem like they were really trying to make him come off as a badass, evil villain, as we're told from the get-go that he was a mean, sadistic, brutal son of a bitch in life, with Prichard telling Axl he was not only a killer, a claim-jumper, and a rapist, as it says on the WANTED poster, but also a cannibal who devoured his own wife and child. During the third act, Nelly tells Nick, Claire, and Axl everything there is to know about him. It turns out that Stone was part of the infamous Donner party and then, during the Gold Rush, he took to flat-out murder, with Nelly saying he killed three counties' worth of people. In 1851, he was cornered by the sheriff and a posse after taking hostage the daughter of Reverend Sutter, the town's namesake. This leads into the flashback, where you see him taunt those holding him at gunpoint, threatening to kill her, and also suggests to Sutter that he's raped her. Ultimately, he kills her with his pick-axe, prompting the others to shoot him down. But, even though they blast him repeatedly with rifles and revolvers, Stone, after momentarily collapsing to his knees, stands right back up after several screaming souls come flying in and enter his body. Having apparently sold his own soul to the devil, which he also alluded to while taunting Sutter, he bites off his finger and declares, "I curse... anyone... who finds my gold. The devil will take his due." He then runs and jumps into the mine-shaft, laughing maniacally.

All of those details about Stone are nothing you haven't heard in the descriptions of countless other villains, movie or otherwise, and it makes him feel so generic and uninspired. I will say that, during the flashback to 1851, when he's played by Vernon Wells (he's definitely years removed from when he appeared in movies with Mel Gibson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, isn't he?; he, Martin Kove, and John Phillip Law are actually listed as producers on this), Stone is somewhat memorable, due to how over-the-

top Wells is in his performance, chewing the scenery as he yells at the lynch mob, threatens to kill the reverend's daughter, and acts really scummy towards her, before killing her and laughing evilly. But for the rest of the movie, when he's undead (Brad H. Arden), he's a boring, voiceless, slow-walking slasher who only uses hooks and a pick-axe to kill people, and doesn't even get all that creative with his kills. His makeup design, which they hide for the first half of the movie (and which the DVD cover totally spoils),

is nothing special and looks rather cheap in and of itself. And during the third act, they seem like they try to give him an iconic look/weapon by having his right arm get chopped off, only for him to break the pick-axe in half and jam the piece of handle with the blade into the stump. Not only does that have nothing on Candyman's hook or Ash's chainsaw hand, but I would even say that the hook that Ben Willis uses in the I Know What You Did Last Summer movies, both when he actually holds it and when it replaces his missing hand, is more memorable. 

As I've said, Miner's Massacre is such a shitty excuse for a slasher movie that even the kills and makeup effects are ho-hum and uncreative. The first death, that of Jared, consists of him getting stabbed in the back with a chain and hook, being hung from the ceiling, and getting sliced, with the film cutting to a little spurt of blood dropping into a tub that Stone puts beneath him. Old Man Prichard's death is similarly muted, as it shows Stone swing his pick-axe, then cuts to a shot of the wall and one of those fake WANTED posters, with Prichard's blood splashing

across it, followed by Stone taking away his apparently severed hand. Tori gets ripped out of the wrecked car and is beheaded offscreen. The film does do something interesting in how it cuts to a shot of her face as she expires and pulls back to reveal that we're looking at her severed head, and the way they pulled it off by actually using Sandra Purpuro rather than a fake head is one of the better visual effects, but it's still nothing to write home about. Eve's death is very similar to Jared's, only much bloodier: after she returns to his small house, she finds a head boiling in

a pot (I'm guessing it's supposed to be Tori's but it doesn't look like her, or anyone else Stone has killed at this point; plus, it's really fake-looking) and Stone grabs her by the neck, slams her against the wall, puts a tub underneath her, stabs her in the center of her torso, and the blood collects in the tub. The best deaths are probably those of Rox Ann and Hayden. When Stone attacks the group at the campsite, Rox Ann gets into the car and tries to start it, only for Stone to throw a shovel like a javelin, sending it

through the windshield and impaling her through the throat. Not too long afterward, Hayden dies in a fiery explosion (the film's biggest stunt by far) when, while trying to escape, Stone jumps on his car's hood, grabs at the steering wheel, only to tumble off and for Hayden to crash into the back of a parked pickup truck. Not only is the stunt impressive, as the car both blows up and bounces off the side of the truck as it does so, but Hayden staggers out of the burning wreck, engulfed in flames, and collapses to the

ground when both the pickup and his car explode behind him. Aunt Nelly dies in a similar manner, when Stone smashes an oil lantern that she's holding and she's immediately immolated. She staggers around, screaming, before heading outside and jumping in the lake. And Axl, after getting stabbed in the shoulder, stays behind in the mine-shaft to ensure that Stone is destroyed and gets blown up with him.

As for Stone himself, he takes some abuse over the course of the movie, with one instance of it being self-inflicted when, during the flashback, after he murders Revered Sutter's daughter and the posse have opened fire on him, only for him to immediately reanimate, he bites off his own finger and curses anybody who finds his gold, as blood spews out of his mouth. During story proper, he gets shot a bunch of times by Hayden, gets his right arm chopped off by a meat cleaver, which is where he jams in his broken pick-axe, and is, in the end, set aflame and blown up, and even that doesn't put him down completely.

When the movie starts up, the first thing you see is a very poor CGI desert landscape, with an equally poor-looking figure standing in the center. This turns out to just be the logo for the production company, Wanted Entertainment, but it still serves as something of a prelude to the really bad, computer game-level digital effects you see throughout the film (including the main title). The worst offender is Stone's resurrection at the very beginning, where these white, floating particles, which I guess is meant to represent his soul, come flying in and merge with his skeleton, gradually

covering it in dirt in the process. After a few seconds of stillness and silence, Stone resurrects, in a scene that's like a bad ripoff of both Jason Voorhees' awakening in Friday the 13th Part VI and Freddy Krueger's in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: you see a close-up of Stone's eye snapping open and him sitting straight up, with obvious CG smoke drifting off him, and he removes his hat from the dirt, as Freddy also did. These floating, screaming souls that sometimes enter Stone's body or, like during the climax, seem to

be a way for him to teleport around, are also awful-looking, as is a brief visual of Stone's eyes being completely white when he's reanimated by them during the flashback and a moment where a skull is superimposed over his face before jumps down into the mine-shaft, laughing maniacally. And there are some digital fire and explosion effects during the climax, which actually look a bit better than the others I've described. (This somehow won an awards for its effects at something called ScreamFest. Must not have been much, if any, competition, or it was a pity award.)

Even though it's, thankfully, only 82 minutes long (with credits, are like four minutes in and of themselves), Miner's Massacre is an absolute slog to sit through. Nearly the first hour is spent either watching those telegraphed, ho-hum death scenes or these characters whom you don't care about roaming around the township, the woods near the mine-shaft, or the campsite. Once Stone finally comes after those who've actually taken his gold, you'd hope that the pace would pick up a bit but it actually doesn't get that much more exciting, even with the stunt where he

causes Hayden to crash and burn alive (the somewhat blurry nature of the nighttime cinematography proves to be a real problem here as well). Then, after Aunt Nelly gets the survivors to come to her home, everything stops for nearly ten minutes, as she explains to them who exactly Stone is, leading to the flashback to 1851, and how to stop him. That's when he busts into the house, kills Nelly by setting her ablaze, and almost kills Claire, leading Nick and Axl to slice his arm off, after which the three of run for it. Taking with them the flare gun and dynamite that

Nelly gave them to destroy Stone, they set up a trap in the mine-shaft, as Axl comes up with a way to detonate the dynamite using their walkie-talkies. But, before they can get out, Stone suddenly appears in the room with them and attacks with his newly made pick-hand. It's a pitiful struggle, with Stone, at point, getting his pick stuck in a barrel, as Nick and Axl dodge his attacks and feebly strike him. They yell for Claire, who was outside, keeping watch, to detonate the dynamite; instead, she opts to crawl through the

tunnel after them (even though she hears the commotion going on over her walkie-talkie, she stupidly asks, "Nick? Axl? What's happening?"). Just when Stone manages to incapacitate them both and is about to kill them, Claire runs in and shoots him with the flare gun, lighting him up. As he stumbles about, threatening to set off the dynamite, Claire and Nick run out, while Axl, badly wounded, opts to stay behind and make sure that Stone does get blown up. A big explosion blasts out of the mine-shaft and into the night sky, as Nick and Claire take cover on the ground.

Finally, there's the actual ending. The next morning, Nick and Claire are still sitting over by the blown up mine-shaft, when Claire realizes she still has some of the gold in her fanny-pack. They quickly throw it away, when Sheriff Murphy shows up. He lets them in his truck, but instead of just climbing in with them and driving off, he walks over to the destroyed mine-shaft and checks it out. He spots the fanny-pack and picks it up, asking them, "Did you forget your pack?" And on cue, Stone erupts out of the rubble with a roar, as Nick screams, "No!" I don't know if they ended it like this because it's just expected or because they actually thought they'd get a sequel but, either way, lamey-o.

The music score is by Pierpaolo Tiano, whose IMDB page lists seventeen films and TV shows to his credit, which includes a handful of shorts (which are the highest-rated titles he scored) and some TV-movies that are ranked as low on that site as Miner's Massacre itself. Regardless, the score is as poor as the movie, coming off as terribly generic and not at all memorable, and it's augmented by a number of forgettable, bottom-of-the-barrel songs by no-name artists on the soundtrack, like one that plays when they're searching for the mine, another when the couples are having a good time at the campsite, and this really bad heavy metal song that plays over the ending credits. I haven't a clue what any of these songs are called or who performed, as this movie is also missing a soundtrack listing section on its IMDB page, and I don't care enough to try to find out, even if they are listed at the end of the credits.

Whether it's Miner's Massacre or Curse of the Forty-Niner, this thing is not worth 82 minutes of your time. It's a woefully cheap, badly acted, dime-a-dozen slasher flick with few characters you can get invested in or even like, a villain who is thoroughly uninspired in both his backstory and design, locations and settings that it doesn't use to their full advantage, attempts at humor that are none too funny, death scenes that, while fairly gory in some cases, aren't that memorable, horrendous digital effects, a forgettable music score and soundtrack, and is just a slog to sit through. You may get some enjoyment out of the more notable actors who appear here or some of the location work, or may just be interested knowing it was directed by John Carl Buechler, but, trust me, you're better off watching or doing almost anything else. Except Vampegeddon, that is. Don't watch that either. (Fuck you, Newt.)