rockoforza While most horror directors feature lovely young girls menaced by evil, director David DeCoteau has turned the tables with films where handsome young frat boys are the victims. Voodoo Academy is one such movie and we know it from the opening scene, where a built young stud, clad only in his tighty whities and white socks, is bound to a table. A priest and a busty woman take turns massaging his near naked body until he is in the throes of orgasm – whereupon he is slain in a voodoo sacrifice.Welcome to Carmichael Bible College, a male-only school for pure minded boys who have pledged to remain virgins. Rev. Carmichael and Mrs. Bouvier (see above) need six young male virgins for their nefarious voodoo ceremony. The whole movie revolves around these six. In a way, they are like the seven dwarfs – each with a defining characteristic. Chris, the new boy, is played by Riley Smith, who's featured on TV's new 90210 and has played tough guy roles in several action movies. Here, he is the smart guy that quickly catches on to the weird stuff happening at the school. His best friend is Billy, played by Kevin Calisher, a wiseass with a sculpted body. Then there's Rusty, played by Huntley Ritter from the movie Bring It On. Rusty is a teenage bodybuilding champ whose powerful young physique is always on display. Mike, Sam and Paul (Drew Fuller from TV's Charmed) complete the six.Though the plot is murky, it comes down to drugging the unsuspecting boys with a lust-inducing potion and then luring them – one by one - up to Mrs. Bouvier's room where she seduces them before sacrificing them to Satan. After avoiding the drug, Chris wakes up one night and witnesses its effects on his buddy Billy. Billy, asleep and naked except for a tight pair of Tommy Hilfiger boxer briefs, is writhing in ecstasy, running his hands over his smooth, ripped body. With his bare chest and chiseled abs glistening with sweat, he works himself up to an orgasm in his sleep. Looking around the room, Chris realizes that each of the near naked boys is likewise involved in a wet dream of their own.When Rusty, clad only in briefs and gym socks, goes sleepwalking, Chris, also in his skivvies, follows him to Mrs. Bouvier's room where he watches her run her hands over Rusty's muscled body and lick his impressive six-pack. When her seduction is complete, the young stud is ready for death and Satan accepts another sacrifice. The next day Chris tries to convince the other boys of their danger, but the drug is still working on them and transforming them from innocents to thugs. Flaunting their hard bodies and now dressed in wife beaters or skin tight black tee shirts, they've become "bad boys" waiting for their turn with Mrs. Bouvier.One by one the other boys are targeted. Rev. Carmichael finds Paul soaking in the bathtub and offers him a soothing shoulder massage. While the boy moans with pleasure under the priests strong hands, the Rev slips a potion into the water and watches the young stud succumb. Mrs. Bouvier seduces another boy with her demonic charms and adds him to the body count.Finally, only Chris, Billy and Sam are left and it's up to Chris to save them with a few tricks of his own. The Rev's and Mrs. Bouvier's magic finally backfires and they are destroyed. The boys, however, are permanently changed and their new badass attitude becomes them. Like Chris says, "Hey, I really wanted to go to Business School anyway."

PeterBradford I love this movie. I love seeing horror movies that dare to be different, that don't do the same thing I've seen over and over in horror movies before. VOODOO ACADEMY is a dark, intimate little horror movie about some creepy activities going on at a school for boys. The twist is that it has a strong homoerotic overtone, which works for the story. It's also a good example of how creative horror can be on a minuscule budget. I would have given it a 10, but it suffers from some horrible acting. The female lead spends the whole movie reciting memorized lines, but at no time does she give a performance. And the dude playing a priest...well...let's just say he comes across as someone who may have been in movies before, but never actually had to speak a line of dialogue until now. The young actors playing the students are all great, and more than make up for their adult co-stars' lack of acting ability.

EvanEast And a few more "no"s on top of that. Voodoo Academy is, without a doubt, the least ambitious film of all time. What exactly is it trying to do? Tell a story? Obviously not; as has been pointed out, most of it's just barely-legal guys rubbing themselves. Could it, then, be an attempt at subversive homoeroticism? Well, maybe, if not for the fact it never ever ever goes beyond the most innocuous and nonthreatening forms of male contact. (Which is, to the delight of none, repeated about eighty thousand times.) Well, it is sort of a horror movie; is it trying to scare us? Not unless the director meant to do so through the utter tedium and vacuousness of his "work."Never in my life have I enjoyed a movie less. This is the most boring and unnecessary thing I've ever seen. It's like Voodoo Academy takes the genres of horror, zombie, and gay movies, puts them in a grinder, then runs them through a coffee filter--only instead of it being the kind of coffee filter that filters out coffee beans, it's the kind that takes out everything vital, edgy, or in any way interesting. The result is 74 minutes of film every bit as exciting as a glass of warm water--only without the ability to rehydrate you after the 10-day gin binge that will inevitably befall you if you watch this abomination of human effort.

edkishel Well what do you want, if you see the Full Moon on the back of the box, you know its late night cheese! All the films produced by Band under the EMPIRE label were great, Re-Animator, From Beyond, Troll, even Zone Troopers was fun. However when Empire Films folded, so did the quality of their films. So Full Moon is born, and they had themselves a pretty good little gravy train with Paramount distributing their flicks, but even they got tired of the same old vampire and Puppet Master junk, and subsequently pulled out. The pictures where pretty bad with big studio money, and without it they got worse.Case in point with Voodoo Academy. Like most other DeCoteau films, there are allot of pretty young men running around in their boxer briefs, and a whole lotta fake lightening. Throw in an uninspired story, about 6 million candles, and actors who look like their bored and you have what I consider one of the worst Full Moon pictures to date.I'm not going to beat this dead horse anymore by talking about everything that's wrong with this story, so I will talk about the only thing I consider good about this film, and that's the DVD Directors cut version. Now your probably wondering, if its so bad why would I want to see the director's cut? Two reasons; one, I wanted to see the footage that was so offensive that even Charles Band wanted it cut from the original release. It turned out to be 20 minutes of harmless male erotica (85 % of horror film rentals are by girls anyway) ho hum big freakin deal. The other reason I wanted this DVD is for the audio commentary.DeCoteau talks at length about the process of "by the numbers low budget cookie cutter filmmaking". This is invaluable for film students like myself. Sometimes you learn how to do things right when you see how they are done wrong. All criticisms aside, Band has a very well tuned filmmaking machine (features shot in 4 days, that 24 pages a day!), and the special features of this DVD gives rare insight into Full Moon, the makers of films so bad they're, well bad.