The Cover Tells A Different Story: Cheerleader Massacre

In many of my journeys up and down the video store aisles, I've run across great multitudes of video duds. You know what I mean, those movies that you would pick up because of the awesome cover. You'd go "Hell yeah, that looks cool!", rent that sucker, dance all the way home, pop that bad boy into the DVD player...only to find out that somethings wrong, some great cosmic calculation has misfired, some mystic primordial being is pointing his or her finger at you and laughing.

Essentially, the film in your DVD player doesn't match the one on the box.

Let me give you a recent example of my exposure to a video dud. Basically, I've been hitting the aisles of Blockbuster, thanks to the "5 for $5.00" deal - Five movies, for Five Days, for Five Dollars. You can't really beat this deal, especially if you're like me, and looking for old movies as opposed to new releases(sorry, doesn't extend to them). I came up on this movie titled The Last Resort. Look at the cover...you have a hot chick in a skimpy swimsuit on a beach, with a knife in her hand. Do you get such chewy goodness in the actual movie?

Hell no! The "Resort" of the title is actually some isolated hotel in the middle of Mexico or some place south of the American border. The swimsuits are seen in only one scene, and that's that. There is one nude scene by the Beth character(I think that was her name), but that was it. Long story short, it was a disappointment to me. If I ever do a review on it, I'll go into more detail for the reason why.

Anyway, we're here for this feature's first victim: Cheerleader Massacre!

The Cover Story(What the cover tells you): A group of hot, scantily-clad uniformed cheerleaders are being stalked by a psychotic killer in Dukes of Hazzard-type blue jeans, armed with a chainsaw and a desire to spill cheerleader blood...uniformed cheerleaders' blood. No amount of cheering will save the girls from this maniac!!!

The Cold Hard Truth(What you really get):

How do you f*** this concept up?!

I really don't know what is more disappointing: that this movie, obviously made on a shoe-string budget, was too cheap to even buy cheerleader costumes(or too lazy), or that this was made by the usually awesome Jim Wynorski. Mr. Wynorski is one of my favorite B-movie/exploitation directors, having created such awesome gems as Chopping Mall(1986), Sorority House Massacre 2(1990), and Hard to Die(1990)(I swear, I'm going to write a remake of both as a trilogy). Yet with Cheerleader Massacre, he drops the ball, beats up the rep, and destroys the playing field.

As I mentioned before, it seems that the director was too cheap to even buy cheerleader costumes. So the image on the cover? Bogus. You don't even know that the girls are cheerleaders in the film after the first five minutes, where they practice a routine in their baggy clothes. After that, they are in their regular clothes, and not even skimpy clothes to highlight their curves(face it people...you do not pick up a movie called Cheerleader Massacre to learn about the human condition).

And there are some really hot chicks in the movie, like the coach, played by Tamie Sheffield, main character Parker Jameson, played by Charity Rahmer(who gets naked for a few seconds in a shower scene), and some big-breasted hiker who gets killed (confusingly) on a rope bridge in the forest. And the rest of the story? Basically, the "cheerleaders", two guys, the cheerleader coach, and the male driver, all drive to an away game when they have car trouble. They find an abandoned house(not really abandoned per se, just someone's vacation home) where they all decide to stay for the night. Meanwhile, an escaped murderer is on the lose, and Sheriff Murdock(Bill Langlois Monroe), his deputy(Gigi Erneta), and Detective Demarco(Melissa Brasselle) race to stop him(and maybe order him a new wardrobe, 'cause that tight jean suit he wears is a nightmare in and of itself!).

Back at the abandoned vacation home, someone is picking the "cheerleaders" and their companions off one by one...and I could care less. There is a small industry of straight-to-video slashers, and the whole appeal of this one(scantily-clad cheerleaders being stalked by a murderer) is lost by the sheer senselessness of not trying to capitalize on the freaking concept! I mean, the freakin' box has "Cheerleaders" in the title, for goodness sake! If you wanted to be so cheap as not to use cheerleader costumes(the equivalent of Batman without a costume), you could have called the movie Snow Massacre. Lord knows that is what is seemed like, with the girls all bundled up, and snow on the ground. Christmas Massacre could have been another title used.

Another travesty was marketing this as a sequel to the Slumber Party Massacre series. Now, let me explain...see, in Sorority House Massacre 2, a sequel to the horrible Sorority House Massacre, Wynorski used footage from the first Slumber Party Massacre to explain the origin of the film's villain, Ketchum. Taking scenes where the Slumber Party villain stalks the main heroine and one of her friends, this is changed in Sorority House to Ketchum stalking and killing one of his daughters. Being the creative mind behind the Sorority House series, you'd think this movie would be a sequel to that film continuity(no matter how extremely loose it was). However, the director confuses matters even more by using Brinke Stevens, a star from the original Slumber Party Massacre...whose character was killed off from what I understood!

So What Have I learned?: I just don't understand why there couldn't be actual cheerleaders in the movie, LIKE ON THE COVER OF SAID MOVIE. I've noticed that even B-movie/exploitative movie companies ignore the elements of psychotic slashers and cheerleaders. I would rather pay to see that, than another Last Resort or some big fakeout like this...and from one of my favorite directors too!!

Guilty Pleasure: Sorority House Massacre 2 and Hard To Die

I've always been the horror movie buff of my family. But among the Nightmare on Elm Street and Hellraisers, there's also been those guilty pleasures. You know, the ones you get to enjoy T &A, and the scream queens, and you can practically guess the killer is by looking at his or her clothes? Yeah.

I'm a devoted fan to the "Golden Age" of the slasher film...those of the 1970s and 1980s...the ones where the casts are unknown thespians, and the plot was more important than Josh Hartnett or Buster Rhymes or Kelly Rowland's appearance in the film.

Anyway, while renting movies from my favorite spots, i came across a little gem called Sorority House Massacre II. The story is simple: five sorority babes buy a house where, five years prior, a family was murdered by their father. This is where the fun starts, lol.

To explain the murders, footage from Slumber Party Massacre was used...so the crazed killer in said footage(who wasn't linked to the family, if i remember correctly) kills his daughters Ginger and Mary Ann(i laughed when i caught the joke. Where's Skipper?). Oh, and our cast of Sorority Heroines(tm?)? Gail(Robyn)Harris is the lead character, a hot British Chick(my nickname for her) with a nice...ahem...smile. She's the lead character(introduced in a nice framing device..."Is it over? Oh God, is it over?" with a nice Brit accent) followed by Melissa Moore, a giant blonde who towers over the others(Sailor Jupiter). The others escape my mind at the moment; push comes to shove, they are dispatched by a guy with a hook(years before The Fisherman showed up) resulting in a large spray of red stuff on the walls. No, literally...the deaths are shown off camera, but you can see the shadows on the wall...hook comes down, blood squirted on the walls.

In the end, British Chick is "The Final Girl" left to battle the resurrected family killer. I don't want to spoil it for you, so i won't tell you who it is(*cough*Jupiter*cough*) But sadly, British Chick did not make it out alive of this one...:(. Oh, and i forgot to mention the other main attraction of this movie...Orville Ketchum, a mix of Wolverine and John Goodman, with the speech pattern of a retarded ape.

Seriously, this guy(who...should he even be considered a red herring?), a neighbor, is extremly creepy, and nearly gives the girls a heart attack when he appears. He later appears in the house, when the girls are on red alert from the killer. Let me tell you, this guy has a healing factor...seriously. He's stapped multiple times, choked by British Chick with a cord, drowned in the toilet, blown away by policemen...and he is still alive when the credits roll, even getting a hot nurse as a bonus. Must be all the bloody raw meat he eats, lol.

British Chick and most of the same cast return in "Hard to Die". Imagine my surprise when the film opened the exactly same way, with the exact same framing device. This time, our heroines, under different names, work in a highrise building. We have new "members" on the team, including another English Babe(British Lady) and Stripper Girl(she was a hot stripper in Sorority House Massacre II). British Chick is back, as well as Sailor Jupiter and the other chick(i might call her Country Chick, 'cause she had a southwestern drawl to me).

Anyway, this time, we learn that the family killer practiced occult magic, and had split his soul into three parts, one part in a Egyptian-styled box that British Lady opens. I enjoyed that concept, as well as the links between the movies. Oh, Orville returns. When the s*** hits the fan, he goes through the same punishment...even being thrown off of the highrise...and surviving!!
The finale involves another possessed babe and guns...lots of guns. It was halirious to see the possessed woman and Orville shoot each other and slump down in a bloody heap...only to keep getting up and shooting each other again.

Other running gags and subplots included a detective duo, a man and a woman, investigating Orville Ketchum and blaming him for the murders(thinking he had something to do with the first set of murders(the family) and then killing the Sorority Girls(Hard to Die). It was funny to see the man going to different erotic locales to find information...on Sorority House, he went to a Stripper Bar and talked to a stripper, and in Hard to Die, a Porn Star on set. Both, much to his lady partner's chagrin.

I really wish these two movies were part of an official trilogy, with Gail Harris's character surviving the first movie only to have to battle the killer's spirit again and again. I swear, when i obtain professional status, i will write the remake of Hard to Die as a trilogy.

Trailer For Sorority House Massacre II:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2NOgOpvOYs
Trailer for Hard to Die:
There isn't one:(