We've had every holiday and nearly every kind of killer by 1987, so why not bring a Norseman in to wipe out campers? It can happen, right? They say it's a wild bear, but we all know it's the Berserker, right? The kind of killer that can never rest, that can only subsist on human flesh and will never die. Yeah. Berserker!
Just like all the finest slashers, a wizened elder - in this case, Pappy Nyquist (George "Buck'"Flowers) - tries to warn these kids. Yet before you can say Ragnarok, they're all ransacking one another in the woods and that can never go well.
You have to love the gumption of the film's producers to just outright steal the art from Pink Floyd's The Wall to sell this.
This is a movie that really demands more Vikings and doesn't deliver. It's close - so close - to giving you the unholy face painted body destroying epic that you want it to be. It's oh-so-close and fun at times, but what it could be overshadows what it is
Berserker
1987
Action / Horror
Plot summary
In the 10th century a viking ship arrives on the North American shore. In present day, somewhere in the woods, a couple of seniors is struck down by a frenzied assailant. The next day, assertive rock music-loving Josh takes his college friends, easy-going Mike, Mike's fun-loving girlfriend Shelly, enthusiastic Kathy, Kathy's unenthusiastic frizzy-haired friend Kristi and bookworm Larry, in his black pickup to a cabin near a creek in the woods where he and his family used to camp. They have fun there until nightfall. Josh becomes nostalgic for the days of his youth he spent there with his folks and unsuccessfully tries to hit on Kristi, Mike and Shelly have fun with each other and Kathy shows subtle interest in Larry. Larry however is more interested in the history of the place, since it's said that vikings from Norway landed in the vicinity 1000 years ago and built the first settlement there. Another story he's curious about is the Nordic myth of the curse of the berserker. Some warriors among the vikings would allow themselves to become possessed with primal berserker rage. In this state, they were unstoppable and would kill everything in site and even eat the flesh of their enemies. They could sometimes even kill a bear with their bare hands and use its skin as a cloak, claws as weapons and snout as a mask. However, they would pay a terrible price for becoming berserkers, since even in their death they were never to find peace and their rage would return to possess their offspring. Meanwhile, the worried local state trooper and de facto local sheriff, Officer Hill, plays chess with his friend and local Pappy Nyquis and mentions the college kids and the cabin. Pappy mentions that Homer and Edna, a nice senior couple who rented the cabin, should be somewhere around there as well. Hill has a bad feeling, but he isn't sure why.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Movie Reviews
Berserker!
A bare-faced cop-out.
Boasting an insane, bear-mask wearing, cannibalistic Viking for a killer, Berserker promises to be a cut above its mid-80s slasher contemporaries. Unfortunately, director Jefferson Richard does nothing to capitalise on this cool concept, instead preferring to travel down a path already well-worn by countless other stereotypical horrors.
Dumb, horny, pot-smoking teens vacationing at a remote cabin in the woods; a country cop with no patience for city kids; a creepy campfire tale to set the scene; alfresco sex followed by death: this one packs in the clichés whilst neglecting to make the most of the one thing that could possibly have saved it from mediocrity—its bad-ass-sounding Norwegian nut-job.
For most of the film, all that is shown of the titular berserker are fleeting shots of a clawed paw; frequent shots of a grizzly bear wandering in the woods even go to mislead viewers into thinking that the killer has somehow taken on ursine form (although a fight between the berserker and the meandering grizzly eventually clears up this confusion). In the film's closing moments, we finally get to see the killer, and it soon becomes patently obvious why Richard decided to keep him hidden for so long: he looks crap!
Also serving to make the production look super cheap and unconvincing are the terrible lighting and smoke effects designed to create a creepy atmosphere, but which just look plain daft, and the crap gore effects which consist of a few naff claw scratches and a smattering of fake blood.
Thanks heavens for the fact that the film has a half decent cast (including a turn from prolific genre legend George 'Buck' Flower) and that gratuitous outdoor shagging scene—otherwise it would be a complete waste of time.
A really crummy & dissatisfying late 80's backwoods slasher dud
When one ponders how truly terrible a handful of 80's "wackos-in-the-woods" fright features tend to be (e.g., "The Forest," "The Prey," and "Don't Go in the Woods"),claiming that "Berserker" qualifies as an especially abysmal example of this horror sub-genre speaks volumes about its exceptionally abominable lack of quality. The plot's strictly by-the-numbers -- and from hunger to boot: Six bland, witless jerky teens (three guys and three gals) go camping in the Wisconsin wilderness, only to wind up getting bagged by a claw-and-bear snout wearing modern-day descendant of an ancient fabled Norwegian warrior known as a -- big, portentous drum roll please -- BERSERKER! This flat, flaccid stinker misses the boat in practically every respect; it's a cheap, overly familiar and grindingly predictable time-waster brought down by horrid acting from the talentless, irritating teens (only the lovely Beth Toussaint, who bears a passing resemblance to Linda Hamilton, manages to make a favorable impression because she not surprisingly bares all in a thoroughly gratuitous, yet still much-appreciated sex scene),insipid cardboard characters, an unbearably poky pace, extremely bogus gore (the Norwegian nutcase rubs what looks like sodden raspberry jelly all over its victims' faces),a trite, meandering narrative, a blatantly telegraphed "surprise" ending, and dire, uninspired direction. The sole source of faint entertainment is the always refreshing and uplifting presence of late, great, sorely missed fat guy character actor favorite George "Buck" Flower, who delivers a funny, spirited performance as Pappy Nyquist, the choleric, doddering, eccentric camp caretaker whose land the kids trespass on. Flower's frequent co-star John Goff appears as an ineffective sheriff. Goff and Flower collaborated on the scripts for such choice 70's drive-in cheese as "Joyride to Nowhere," "C.B. Hustlers," and the immortal "Drive-In Massacre." Among the many movies Goff and Flower appear in together are "The Witch Who Came from the Sea," "The Alpha Incident," "The Fog," the indispensable Pia Zadora classic "Butterfly," "The Night Stalker," "Maniac Cop," "They Live," "Relentless," "Skeeter," both "Ilsa" flicks, and "Tammy and the T-Rex." And I believe I'm going off on a little extraneous tangent here. But hey, when you're reviewing a flick as lame and unremarkable as "Berserker" the urge to embark on an utterly incongruous tangent is downright impossible to resist. I think that says plenty about this baby's lowly status as an undeniably dismal dud.