A crazy low-budget slasher film that's best described as "Friday the 13th" meets "Deliverance," "Simon Says" is b-movie filet mignon smothered in caramel and topped with onion rings and cotton candy.
It's style, it's got grace, it's got perhaps the most inspired casting of all time (or at least the most obvious): Crispin Glover as a psycho killer.
Glover plays twin brothers Simon (hence the title) and Stanley, who own a gas station and convenience store in a one-stop-light town on the far outskirts of nowhere, where a group of teenagers are passing through, looking for good times, good booze, and good sex.
Of course instead they find these twisted twins, who spend the rest of the film tormenting and killing them and any other living creature they happen upon in the woods.
There are two sequences in this film that are simply too totally b-movie wonderful to spoil, but suffice it to say one involves a squeaky little lap dog, and a CD player inexplicably figures into the other.
Also, the brothers' weapon of choice is the pickaxe, and they must have run into a helluva sale at Lowe's because they have tons of them, strung through the woods as booby traps and loaded into these nifty-looking catapult devices that flings dozens of them at the same time.
But don't worry, we also get deaths by boot, by joint (yes, I mean the kind you smoke), and a few other choice implements of destruction, and even a great little twisty ending.
The biggest thing this film has going for it, of course, is Glover, but Margo Harshman, the female lead, is a close second. She has good presence and holds her own with Glover through a protracted finale that almost veers into "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" territory in terms of sadism.
Oh, and we also get another favorite schlock convention in advertising an actor who is a star who is in the film for literally a minute. In this case it's Blake Lively of "Gossip Girl," who gets billed alongside Glover on the DVD box cover (above the title), but if she's in the film more than 60 seconds I'd be surprised.
There also appears to be a disproportionate number of people with the last name "Lively," which leads me to believe Blake's role was brought about by nepotism as much as anything, and that perhaps this film was a family affair.
But if you are looking for a balls-out crazy good backwoods low-budget slasher, search out "Simon Says." It's got what you're looking for in a bad movie.