Cheerleader Massacre (2003)
"This is one game you don't want to miss."
Plot
Five high school cheerleaders, their coach and a couple of guys travel to a cabin in the woods for a weekend getaway only to find themselves being killed off by a maniac.
Let me get one thing straight - I knew what I was getting myself in for when I rented this out. Or at least I thought I did. I was thinking of something along the lines of 80s sleaze and cheese fests The Slumber Party Massacre or Sorority House Massacre. And low and behold, this was actually supposed to be a continuation of the Slumber Party Massacre series and was originally penned as Slumber Party Massacre IV, presumably until someone pointed out that there are actually no slumber parties in here. Funnily enough there doesn't seem to be any cheerleaders here either.
What I did not expect Cheerleader Massacre to be was what is more or less a cheap porno flick masquerading as a horror film. Every teenage female member of the cast obviously got their part because of two large reasons. And they proceed to show off those reasons at every possible opportunity. Now I like my T&A in horror films as much as anyone as it’s one of the staple ingredients of a classic 80s slasher but this film runs like a porno and has the production values to boot. There are plenty of shower scenes, a couple of sex scenes and one really pointless scene, bordering on soft core, in which three of the cheerleaders get into a bubble bath and start rubbing each other down. Then they find a bottle of chocolate sauce and proceed to squirt it over each, rubbing it across each other's bodies and generally wishing they were in a porno so it could go further. It's so much tackier than it sounds as there's something very unsexy about a bathtub filled with brown water.
Director Jim Wynorski has made countless trashy exploitation films from the 80s through to the present day. Between camp sci-fi horrors, overblown monster movies, silly low budget slashers and plenty of softcore sleaze fests, his output has been steady and consistently tacky – films which have a massive fan base it has to be said. I can’t say I’ve seen too many of them (Chopping Mall, Sorority House Massacre II and Komodo Vs Cobra spring to mind) but out of the ones I have, at least they’ve always looked professional. With Cheerleader Massacre, Wynorski has shot on digital video and the end result is atrocious - it actually looks and sounds like a home video, something Wynorski had always managed to avoid with his previous work. As bad as some of his previous films were, at least they maintained that professional look so that you knew they were proper films, not something put together as a college project. With digital video, you lose that natural grain that film provides and which can cover over some poor cinematography - Wynorski's issues as as a director are more evident in this digital age than they ever were.
As I've previously said, Wynorski has form with this type of cheap exploitation film and he's done it very well in the past (The Slumber Party Massacre is quite the epitome of the 80s slasher) so to see him go off the rails so badly here with what should have been an easy to replicate formula is sad. Despite the ‘massacre’ part of the title and the front cover promising someone wielding a chainsaw, there’s no such thing in the actual film and most of the deaths happen off-screen. In fact the goriest death of the film is flash back footage which has been lifted straight out of The Slumber Party Massacre.
Considering there is a relatively big cast for such a low budget flick, the lack of decent gore and innovative kill scenes is a big downer. Its not like the characters are anything to shout about – I couldn’t name any one of them, only differentiating the females thanks to the differing sizes of their chests. So the film was begging for some maniac with a drill to come along and put paid to their partying just like Russ Thorn did in the original. Alas this doesn’t happen on the scale you’d expect and you’ll have to sit and watch as this bunch of ‘actors’ goes through the motions. Porn films are better acted so I’m not sure whether there have been some crossed wires somewhere down the line. Brinke Stevens, who starred in and was apparently killed in The Slumber Party Massacre, returns as the same character to provide some pointless continuity but most blatantly to pad out the running time with some flashbacks.
Final Verdict
Cheerleader Massacre is more concerned with the T&A factor than the slash and slice which is a pity because if it is meant to be part of the Slumber Party Massacre series, it has fallen way short of delivery anything as remotely as entertaining as the original or even the lesser sequels. It’s cheap exploitation cinema at its worst. I can’t even recommend it for the nudity as you’d be better off watching a full-on titty flick!
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Cheerleader Massacre Director(s): Jim Wynorski Writer(s): Lenny Juliano, Jim Wynorski (based on a joke by) Actor(s): Tamie Sheffield, Charity Rahmer, Erin Byron, Lenny Juliano, William Langlois, Samantha Phillips, GiGi Erneta, April Flowers Duration: 85 mins |  |
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