Welcome to the Kill Count, where we tally up the victims in all our favorite horror movies.
I'm James A. Janisse and today, we're starting another big franchise - cause I'm looking
at Wrong Turn, released in 2003. Wrong Turn is a bloody slasher that spawned 5 increasingly
bloody - and booby - sequels, with the latest released in 2014. There should be a reboot
coming out soon, though, since they finished filming it last winter. The Wrong Turn films, which
follow a group of messed-up cannibals in the mountains of West Virginia, flourished in
the age of Saw and Final Destination, and boy does it show!
Most of these movies focus on the blood and guts spewing from casts of bland, mean-spirited characters.
The settings swap places, the filming quality varies, and the only consistent
character is a single cannibalistic killer, the high-pitched squealing Three Finger
*high pitched squealing laughter*
I hope y'all are ready for one long summer barbecue, cause this people-eatin series is
gonna take us to the end of July. Though I do have something lined up for the more
squeamish among you, too - just give me a few weeks to get it ready, you're gonna love it.
The first Wrong Turn, much like the first Saw and Final Destination, is not nearly as
gory as its torture porny sequels. It's also much simpler than some of the later films
- all we have here, storywise, is a group of college kids getting stranded in rural
West Virginia, and subsequently hunted by cannibal mountain mutants. Though the kills
aren't as graphic as what we'll see later in the franchise, this is still a mighty bloody
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How many college kids will become calories for these cannibals? Let's find out and get to the kills.
The movie begins in the Mountain State - which, by the way, pretty boring nickname, West Virginia!
Rich and Halley, a handsome fit couple, are climbing one of these West Virginian mountains
to get a good gander at all that unspoiled nature. As Halley struggles to finish the climb,
Rich is killed offscreen. His body does a little peekaboo and drips some blood
onto Halley before its yeeted off the cliff by the unseen killer.
Halley eventually falls and lands right next to Rich's body. She almost makes it back to
their SUV, but she's tripped by razor wire and killed offscreen after her body is dragged away.
The opening credits show us that lately, a whole bunch of crimes have been
committed by mountain men who are deformed from inbreeding, a common trope when it comes
to Appalachia that I'm sure those fine folks are just fuckin' thrilled about.
It's on an Appalachian highway that hunky med student Chris Flynn, played by Desmond
Harrington, gets caught in standstill traffic. Since he has an important appointment to get to,
he turns around hoping to find another way. Careful dude, you're drivin off the grid
now - though thankfully, that Nokia can double as a blunt instrument if need be.
He gets to a gas station tended by a one toothed, Pepto Bismol-chuggin dirty mayn, and sees
on a map there might be a way around the traffic jam - Bear Mountain road, which the attendant says is dirt.
"'Fraid they ain't got 'round to pavin' it yet."
That's no deterrence for Chris, who rides his Mustang to a fork in the road and turns left for Bear Mountain.
Racing through the woods, Chris jams out to Queens of the Stone Age's debut album -
which, like, is a good album and all but this is 2003. Rated R and Songs for the Deaf are out,
what are you doing, dude?
A dead deer on the side of the road distracts Chris from these
Feel Good Hits of the Summer, and he crashes his car into the back of a Range Rover.
The owners come out of the woodworks to see what happened to their SUV, which was sitting
in the middle of the road because their tires blew out after they drove over some razor wire.
And as Jessie here just discovered, that wire wasn't there by accident.
"I just found this tied to a tree back there, somebody did this."
Jessie decides to take a group including Chris to go look for help, leaving horny couple
Evan and Francine behind at the Range No Longer-Rover. Evan's played by Kevin Zegers, smack dab between
his quadrilogy of Air Bud films and his role in the Dawn of the Dead remake, while Francine
is played by Lindy Booth, who was also in the Dawn of the Dead remake, as well as the
Bon Jovi-costarring Cry Wolf, which Chelsea and I covered on the podcast a couple years ago.
"Bon Jovi.... gets...."
*singing* "SHOT THROUGH THE HEART, AND YOU'RE TO BLAME!"
*sick guitar riffs*
"I'm not making it up, that is actually what happens."
The two of them get high and stare at the world through yellow-tinted safety goggles
until they decide to do something a bit more fun
"Now get them trousers off boy, don't be a sissy!"
Damn, is she Riley gonna
Grant him a blowjob in the middle of the woods? Talk about roadside service.
Later on, they look through Chris's car, and as Francine disrespects Josh Homme,
Evan wanders into the woods to get killed. It happens offscreen, but he's probably dead
by time Francine finds his ear on the ground. The dramatic push-ins are a good sign of death, ya know?
Francine's not far behind on the Kill Count, since she backs into a towering figure,
who slips some razor wire around her head and garrots her through the mouth with it.
Chris properly introduces himself to Scott, an affable tall glass of baritone played by
Jeremy Sisto, who has lifelong goodwill with me thanks to Suburgatory. Scott's engaged
to Sporty Spice Carly, played by Emmanuelle Chriqui, and he has very strong opinions about
James Brown-esque singers for their wedding band
"Y'know, a faux James Brown is- is- is really... quite intolerable."
Chris also gets acquainted with the no- nonsense Jessie, who is of course played by Eliza Dusku,
still riding all that star power brought on by Bring It On.
They travel past dead ends and through the wilderness until they find an old cabin,
a discovery they celebrate with some Jay-Z
"Can I get a 'whoop whoop'!"
But ain't no one here
to bounce with em - this place is as dead as all the rusting vehicles out on the lawn.
Chris decides to chance an unlawful entrance in hopes of finding a phone to use.
Inside, they find way too many car keys for one household to need. And way too many sunglasses.
And way too many jaws! One family don't need all them jaws, I don't care how big it is.
Nah, it's pretty clear pretty soon that the people who live here are hungry hungry cannibals,
and are also the ones who wrapped all that razor wire around their tires. And in case
you wanted more bad news, looks like the cannibals are here, arriving in a tow truck and adding
the Range Rover to their treasure field of vehicles.
With the back door blocked off, the kids are forced to hide from the mountain men as they
come inside, and try not to freak out too much when they see Francine's dead body.
Uh oh, Chris, might wanna Dodger blood that's comin right for ya. Chris and Jessie stay
silent as the killers get to work on Francine's body, taking a huge saw and cutting it to pieces.
Also watching this dismemberment, through a kind of crazy keyhole shot, is Carly and Scott.
Stay quiet now, y'all!
They do! Long enough for the cannibals to take a snooze - even though they've only quartered
one quarter of that Francine corpse. That kind of work ethic will get you nowhere, ya sleepy bastards.
It allows all of the kids to come out from hiding, but as they're leaving this cabin of trauma,
the door spring nearly ruins their sneaking. Chris sacrifices his hand flesh to keep it from making noise,
but he's ultimately unable to keep the mountain men from waking
*scary noise*
They all run, uh, up the mountain, I guess, as the cannibals take off in their tow truck.
Really like the zoom shot here as they hoot and holler their hunt on. The survivors run
through the woods until they find themselves at another field of broken vehicles, showing
the vast extent of this cannibal family's crime spree. Speaking of the mass murderers,
here they are now - Saw Tooth, One Eye, and the littlest feller, Three Finger.
Wrong Turn was written by Alan B. McElroy, who also wrote Halloween 4 - which is why
I got to meet him in 2018, when Halloween Horror Nights had a solid Halloween 4 maze.
His cannibal mountain men characters really grabbed Stan Winston's attention, who produced
this film with a special eye towards the killers
"I let everyone know it was gonna be very important to me that we create
the most memorable, and horrific and real inbred mountain men that anyone has ever seen."
Stan Winston was, of course, a make-up effects legend, responsible for
the Terminator, the Predator, Edward Scissorhands, and the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.
The mountain men, though, were mostly designed by WInston's protege Shane Mahan, who based
the characters's deformities on medical references to ensure accuracy. And the effects artists
weren't the only ones taking the characters seriously. Actor Ted Clark gave One Eye a
child-like portrayal, while the late Garry Robbins, a Canadian pro-wrestler, played Sawtooth
with lumbering menace. Julian Richings gave all his manic energy to Three-Finger, which
is hilarious when you see how pleasant the British-Canadian is behind scenes
"Hello! Nice to meet you."
Richings also had a small part as a vagrant in Saw 4,
"The fuck are you looking at? Huh??"
and was seen on the Kill Count for the WItch, where he banished Thomasons's family from town.
The trio of torture cannibals leave their truck running as they hunt, so Scott devises
a way for the kids to commandeere it - one person will lead the killers in the wrong
direction while the others run to the truck. Huh, that sounds like a classic military maneuver.
"It's a classic military maneuver."
Thought so.
Chris volunteers as tribute but the plan quickly fails when he takes a bullet to the leg.
Scott is inspired to save the classic military maneuver, giving the mountain men a new chase that really
excites Three Finger
*high pitched shriek laugh*
As the killers pursue Scott, the ladies help Chris up and take him over to the truck, where
Evan's body spills out, confirming that he is, in fact, dead. They take the vehicle and
drive down the road until they get close to Scott, who they see running through the woods.
They don't see Saw Tooth hunting Scott, loading up arrows like an Uruk-Hai.
Scott's near-salvation is stopped when he gets full-on Boromired, filled with arrows
all up in his back that drop him to the ground dead. Sorry, Carly. But uh, y'all should probably
get the fuck out of there nyow. It's too late for Scott, whose body is dragged away by Saw
Tooth and One Eye as Three Finger gallops along.
Carly's in hysterics as the remaining trio find their new motorized transportation stopped
by a fallen tree and some road mud. That forces them to continue on foot, which may prove
to be dangerous given all these bear traps and such. Damn, cannibal hunters, you all
sorts of dangerous, huh?
The kids come across a watchtower, which might just have a phone or radio inside. They make
the long ascent, partially in front of a woefully 2003 green screen, and climb up through the
hatch into the tower. Oh shit, this reminds me of that Firewatch game. Any y'all play that?
Good game.
They find a first aid kit and some industrial sized glowsticks, but the real prize discovery
is an old radio. As they try to figure out how to work it, they see the cannibals approaching
down below with torches. The killers are just about to keep on walking by when the radio
comes to life and alerts them to the kids's location.
As Three Finger climbs up the ladder, the kids baricade the hatch and do a very piss poor
job of relaying their location
"I don't know my position, just help us!"
The final kibosh is put on the radio plan when
it's yanked from their hands, I guess from the wires going down below. Unable to get in,
the killers decide to smoke the survivors out, and set the watchtower on fire.
The kids realize that their best course of action is to jump 20 feet into the tree branches
below, and like many a flying squirrel, that's exactly what they do - after Chris comes Carly,
and then finally Jessie, who does an elbow drop looking fall and lands square on her side,
fucking ouch.
As Three Finger once again begins an ascent to get em, the kids start creepin through
the canopy. Carly gets slowed down by flying arrows, though, and is killed when Three
Finger swings an axe into her mouth. We get a VERY awesome and creatively-shot kill as
we see that she's been half-decapitated, with her body tumbling down the tree branches like
a Jurassic Park Explorer. Love this damn kill.
The fillmakers put a lot of care into making sure this was a memorable death. It started
with rehearsals of the initial axe swing, which they wanted to be practical, and continued
with a lot of storyboarding for the shot of her body falling down, which of course had
to be CG. Even for that shot, though, they used a practical tree that Emmanuel Chriqui
stuck her head through before they animated the rest of the shot, including the tree,
the branches, and the body. Great stuff!
Chris and Jessie sneak away and rig up a trap with a tree branch. As Chris harnesses its
elastic energy, Jessie employs a classic military maneuver by getting Three Finger to come after her.
It works, and as he approaches her making nasty noises
*wet mouth noises*
Chris lets loose with
the branch and knocks the little bastard out of the tree. But don't worry, Saw Tooth and
One Eye, he's not dead - did you see a Kill Graphic appear?
Didn't think so.
Chris and Jessie make it to a waterfall that they hide behind as the cannibal hunters pass.
Together, they re-bandange Chris's wound, talk about Jessie's dead friends and quote
Good Will Hunting
"It's not your fault."
They camp there overnight and come morning, slide
their way down some rocks to continue on trying to escape this endless forest of death.
They finally come across a road only to also come across an axe near their heads - cause
the cannibals are here! They knock Chris down the mountain and steal Jessie away, but instead
of going after her himself, Chris decides that the best thing he could do is recruit
a cop, who he stops in the middle of the road.
The dude's actually out looking for them, thanks to their fire tower SOS, and Chris
tells him that some people are dead
"Dead? What people?" *squish*
People like you!
Thanks to ole Sawtooth there
Chris escapes into the woods before Sawtooth gets down to the
car and stuffs the cop's body in the trunk. He gets in to take the car home, and Chris
hitches a ride in a totally baller way, rolling beneath it and hanging on like Sideshow Bob.
Sawtooth drives the cop car back to his cabin, where Jessie is in restraints and being petted
by One Eye - when he's not too busy brandishing a blade at her throat. Chris finally gets
to give his arms a break as the cannibals drag the cop's body inside the house.
They hack off his head as Jessie wriggles and squirms about, but before One Eye can keep her still,
a fire erupts at their front door.
Man, you guys's house is on fire. Couldn't get much worse than this!
*car busts through the wall*
Nevermind, now you've got an SUV in your living room. Chris throws a molotov cocktail that
sets Saw Tooth on fire, then grabs a wrench and uses it to stab the big man in the chest.
This puts him down, but not for long, since he interrupts Chris's untying of Jessie to
resume the fight.
She's free enough to reach a bow and arrow, and she puts Sawtooth down again by lodging
an arrow in the back of his head. Three Finger shows up next, and fights them until an axe
is slammed into his chest, but none of these fuckers have actually been killed yet - not
even One Eye, who got run over by that car.
Chris and Jessie back out of the cabin slowly, and with the gun's last shot, Chris aims for
a gas tank and fires
*gun shot and explosion* *someone screams, sounding like "wow"*
Now, listen, I have to address this here,
because this came up when Chelsea and I reviewed this movie on the podcast two years ago -
that fucking explosion sounds like James Brown at the beginning of I Feel Good.
Don't believe me? Here's the explosion...
*explosion sounding like James Browns "wow" in I Feel Good*
...and here's I Feel Good
*singing* "Wow! I feel good!"
And need I remind you, Mr. Brown was previously mentioned in this movie, by Scott
"Y'know, a faux James Brown is- is- is really... quite intolerable."
So, Wrong Turn samples James Brown. That's my head canon.
*singing* "Wow!" *explosion sounding like James Browns "wow" in I Feel Good*
I'll also say it's canon that Sawtooth and One Eye are killed by this explosion slash fire.
They're never seen past this point chronologically, while Three Finger lives on to giggle it up
through all the sequels.
The movie ends with Chris and Jessie driving the tow truck
back to the gas station, where Chris takes the map so they can finally get out of there.
That'll do Chris, that'll do.
How many people got killed in them there mountains? Let's find out and get to them there numbers.
Ope, wait a minute, nope, not making that mistake.
9 people died in Wrong Turn, and with 6 of them male and 3 of them female, that gave
us a 2:1 ratio of dude deaths. With a runtime of 84 minutes, that left us with a kill on
average every 9 and a third minutes.
I'll give the Golden Chainsaw for Coolest Kill to Carly, definitely. Three Finger left
her looking like a South Park Canadian, the crazy uncle fucka.
Huh, that insult probably works with these dudes, too.
Dull Machete for Lamest Kill will go to Halley from the
cold open, since she was dragged offscreen and killed unseen.
And that's it! Wrong Turn came out in 2003 and spawned a whole damn franchise of bloody cannibalism.
The next movie's probably my favorite of the series, so tune in for that next week.
Until then I'm James A. Janisse. This has been the Kill Count.
Thanks a lot for watching this Kill Count! I wanna thank some Patrons like
Shannan Evanson, Jesus Guardado,
Justin Robinson, Ivy King,
and MrNiceGuy 420
Really wanted to run off to The Numbers, giggling like Three Finger, but I can't do that giggle man..
*attempts a shrill, crazy giggle*
No, its-its just not good.
Like I mentioned, I have a special surprise comin' up on The Kill Count soon.
Might take me a few more weeks to get it ready, but you'll know it when you see it.
Be good people.