COPE is one of hundreds of amateur horror videos finding a happy home on box sets where quantity, not quality is king. I was shocked to see that the video-maker Ronald Jerry had managed to create a second feature after this embarrassing debut.
Not merely dull but a pointless and pretentious exercise to boot, COPE deals with subject matter that could conceivably made for an adequate (if below average) "After School Special" for TV in the '70s, minus the bloody horror overlay. Yes, I managed to make up my own movie while watching this garbage, often the only way of coping with aimless and truly mindless footage -one has to revert to do-it-yourself or otherwise tune out altogether.
Heroine Lauren (Rachel Pinto, unfortunately not as pretty or lucky as the instant superstar from India with that surname) is going through the usual generation gap crisis -her parents, gosh, don't understand her! For writer-director Jerry, this translates into an excuse of shaggy-dog style gore and "Twilight Zone" fantasy, when a more grounded and thoughtful auteur would have played the interpersonal drama straight. Oh well, we live in a post-MTV era where gimmicks rule.
The gimmick of abstraction, where sudden violence and gore are the only things one can rely upon, wears off in a hurry. Lauren and her family meet with bloody fates in the first reel and she's dragged away from her bedroom, ending up trapped in a white-on-white environment, seemingly cribbed from George Lucas' classic THX 1138.
While we're treated to a series of cryptic flashbacks involving Lauren's boring (that's the point) parents, a parallel story involves her brother Mickey, who arrives in Kodiak, Alaska (apparently for a visit) and finds the town eerily absent of life. The only clue is borrowed from Hitchcock, as the birds are still crowing and seemingly (and just as cryptically as in the Master's film) responsible in some way.
Mickey wanders through boring non-adventures, and whenever something becomes slightly interesting, as his walking into a movie theater showing the white-on-white footage of sis, Jerry drops the ball and moves on. Mickey befriends a little boy named Franklin who has somehow survived the holocaust around him, but either separately or together nothing of interest happens to them. Once again, gore is its own reward, as another video-maker pours on blood and makeup to the exclusion of all else.
I was inspired to make up my own movie due to some flashbacks establishing an incipient lesbian relationship between Lauren and her best friend Alice. Busty blonde Alice is alluring, but whenever the two gal pals are about to kiss or embrace, violence or other gimmickry intercedes. This unrequited love affair, replete with daddy's ongoing disapproval of Alice, had the makings of a puppy-love After School Special, but Jerry's not the man to direct it.
Echoing the viewer's reaction, Mickey yells near the end "What's wrong with this place?". Only the idiot who sort of wrote and directed it knows for sure, since adding insult to injury he fails to tie up a single loose end or deliver a finale to the junker, opting instead for an extraneous end title sequence featuring a new character (not appearing in the previous video) taking a shower, but of course without delivering nudity. Thanks a lot, Jer.
Not merely dull but a pointless and pretentious exercise to boot, COPE deals with subject matter that could conceivably made for an adequate (if below average) "After School Special" for TV in the '70s, minus the bloody horror overlay. Yes, I managed to make up my own movie while watching this garbage, often the only way of coping with aimless and truly mindless footage -one has to revert to do-it-yourself or otherwise tune out altogether.
Heroine Lauren (Rachel Pinto, unfortunately not as pretty or lucky as the instant superstar from India with that surname) is going through the usual generation gap crisis -her parents, gosh, don't understand her! For writer-director Jerry, this translates into an excuse of shaggy-dog style gore and "Twilight Zone" fantasy, when a more grounded and thoughtful auteur would have played the interpersonal drama straight. Oh well, we live in a post-MTV era where gimmicks rule.
The gimmick of abstraction, where sudden violence and gore are the only things one can rely upon, wears off in a hurry. Lauren and her family meet with bloody fates in the first reel and she's dragged away from her bedroom, ending up trapped in a white-on-white environment, seemingly cribbed from George Lucas' classic THX 1138.
While we're treated to a series of cryptic flashbacks involving Lauren's boring (that's the point) parents, a parallel story involves her brother Mickey, who arrives in Kodiak, Alaska (apparently for a visit) and finds the town eerily absent of life. The only clue is borrowed from Hitchcock, as the birds are still crowing and seemingly (and just as cryptically as in the Master's film) responsible in some way.
Mickey wanders through boring non-adventures, and whenever something becomes slightly interesting, as his walking into a movie theater showing the white-on-white footage of sis, Jerry drops the ball and moves on. Mickey befriends a little boy named Franklin who has somehow survived the holocaust around him, but either separately or together nothing of interest happens to them. Once again, gore is its own reward, as another video-maker pours on blood and makeup to the exclusion of all else.
I was inspired to make up my own movie due to some flashbacks establishing an incipient lesbian relationship between Lauren and her best friend Alice. Busty blonde Alice is alluring, but whenever the two gal pals are about to kiss or embrace, violence or other gimmickry intercedes. This unrequited love affair, replete with daddy's ongoing disapproval of Alice, had the makings of a puppy-love After School Special, but Jerry's not the man to direct it.
Echoing the viewer's reaction, Mickey yells near the end "What's wrong with this place?". Only the idiot who sort of wrote and directed it knows for sure, since adding insult to injury he fails to tie up a single loose end or deliver a finale to the junker, opting instead for an extraneous end title sequence featuring a new character (not appearing in the previous video) taking a shower, but of course without delivering nudity. Thanks a lot, Jer.