Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Stay Out Stay Alive, Barbara Crampton not Humphrey Bogart

It is an exact duplicate of "Treasure of the Sierra Madre."  Okay...not an exact duplicate.  No Bogart...don't fret, Barbara Crampton is in this one.  Greed!!!  Gold!!!  The human condition!!!  Did I mention Barbara Crampton?  2019's "Stay Out Stay Alive," directed by Dean Yurke, is our feature today.  There will be monsters and ghosts but in this film, there may also be something a bit more lurking and ominous.

Amy (Christina July Kim) is an ecology grad student needing to do a final thesis...just like Bogart in the aforementioned film...wait...scratch that...never mind.  Her and three great looking buddies head into the wilderness for pre-marital sex, marijuana, hiking, and thesis research.  Amy's very lucky boyfriend is Kyle (William Romano). The gang will screw around more than research.  Also there is the fifth wheel... Donna (Sage Mears).  Donna recently broke up with her beau and isn't too likable.  The babe Bridget (Brie Mattson) and hunk Reese (Brandon Wardle) round out the cast.  Oh yeah...the quirky and hippie-like park ranger, Susanne (Crampton).  She'll try to warn the kids away from their camping destination.

The four babes and hunks reach their campsite and the couples engage in pre-marital sex.  Being the fifth wheel, Donna goes for a stroll in the dark and is chased by...something.  When Donna is found she has fallen into an abandoned gold mine.  Now her four buddies climb into the mine and we are introduced to their financial woes.  Now all see mucho dinero in their heads and begin mining the gold.  Uh oh...something else is in the mine.  The answer to what that is is chronicled in an old diary that spells out the adventures and demises of the miners who entered the mine 150 years ago.  Excruciating doom shows its ugly face and our new millionaire wannabes ignore it as the gold is so bountiful.  Death, destruction, dismemberment...and ghosts, curses, and mutilation...and annoying crows and locusts rear their ugly heads.  Suddenly, survival seems a remote possibility...but what is the real menace.

Greed can be a killer...even to the most beautiful among us and this film shows us this.  Will any of our four hunks or babes make it out alive with any gold?  Will Amy's thesis be able to survive her friends and the faculty review board?  How about the quirky park ranger, Susanna?  Will Donna really go through this film without any pre-marital sex?  The cast is terrific in this fast paced study of friendship and ambition going so wrong.  See "Stay Out Stay Alive" and re-evaluate going into business with your buddies.  

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