At first blush, The Slaughter appears to be just another Evil Dead knockoff, but, as knockoffs go, it isn't half-bad. Writer-director Jay Lee has a clear affection for exploitation flicks and B-movie splatter, and he pays tribute to such trappings while infusing his picture with enthusiasm and even a fair amount of wit.

He jumpstarts things with some viscerally interesting nonsense. In faux-scratchy black-and-white, a coven of nubile young witches disrobes -- always a promising way to begin -- and then plunges daggers into an unseen sacrifice. That scene turns out to be a nightmare (or is it?) of a lovely young woman sleeping in a creaky house she has recently inherited from her grandparents. One thing leads to another, as they say, and the woman, taunted by the ghastly image of an old crone, winds up impaled on a coat rack.

Cut to the present day. A group of college archetypes -- the serious-minded good girl (Jessica Ellis), the strong and silent dude (Terry Erioski), the Che Guevara-wannabe (Zak Kilberg), the cocky jock (Travis Wood), the blonde slut (Laura Stein) and the stoner (Billy Beck) -- gathers at the aforementioned house, which has long been abandoned. The crew has been hired by an arrogant, cigar-chomping real-estate mogul (Brad Milne) to clean up the premises in hopes of putting the home up for sale.

Supernatural shenanigans commence soon after, with the nasty old crone playing peek-a-boo with our good girl, named Dana. Then the kids stumble upon an ominous book filled with scribbled incantations (I told you the picture owed something to Evil Dead).

Evidently, these guys are not horror buffs. Otherwise, they would have thought twice about allowing the wannabe revolutionary of the group, Iggy, to immediately read aloud from the book. Oops.

As it turns out, evil spirits will be unleashed only if something ritualistic or sinful occurs in the house. Of course, seeing how these are horny college kids, and the jock and the slut have sneaked away upstairs ...

Well, you get the idea. Humping leads to she-devils, blood-spurting, decapitations and shredded entrails -- a maelstrom of badness that one character observes is "worse than ... the Bush administration."

Rim shot! That sort of leaden joke aside, The Slaughter is a moderately entertaining horror flick with tongue placed firmly in cheek. Lee's screenplay can be rough-going, particularly with dialogue as clumsy at the exploitation pictures he spoofs. But it is too smartass and slaphappy to resist for long.

Is The Slaughter steeped in cliché because it's a parody or because it's just another splatter flick? The picture appears to be both. Characters get freaked out by the scariness and then promptly forget about it long enough to screw or get high. The buxom blonde suddenly decides to take a languorous bath in the midst of the weirdness (and thank goodness she does). The college kids debate whether the attacking zombies are of the old-school lumbering type, or whether they're the newer, faster models.

By the time a blood-soaked Dana rails against the chief baddie as a "hateful, evil, murderous bitch with no friends and bad skin," you realize the entire film is pretty much critic-proof. If you pick things over, you just can't take a joke.

The 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen print transfer is adequate but unremarkable. Colors are washed-out and images can be soft, but these shortcomings appear to be from the source material.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix can be a bit thin at tomes, but it gets the job done and occasionally wrings atmospheric use from the rear speakers. Subtitles are available in English and Spanish.

One deleted scene (3:59) and five minutes, 14 seconds of outtakes are mildly amusing. Also included is a theatrical trailer and trailers of other Lionsgate pictures.

If you like drive-in movies with laughs, nicely executed gore (and some not-so-nicely-executed gore), so-so acting, some legitimately earned jolts and a few bare-breasted hotties, The Slaughter might just be worth your time.