Cheerleader Camp

Rating:
Summary: If 80s slashers are your thing you'll probably love this.
Review: This one's ok. Has some fab kills but overall it doesn't exactly represent the best that the 80s slasher boom had to offer.

Betsy Russell is good and tries hard. If you're into this kind of movie you'll probably want to check it out.

Go Anchor Bay - thank god these guy exist. How else would we horror fans get our fix of classic flix.

Give me a K
Give me an I
Give me an L
Give me an L

Rating:
Summary: Head Cheerleader. It's an honor to die for...
Review: Within the time frame of the late 70's/early 80's movie audiences saw a real explosion within the horror genre, especially with the growing popularity of the slasher flick. I do like horror movies, although I've never been partial to the whole slasher sub-structure within the genre, but every now and again I do like to venture into uncharted waters (for me, atleast), maybe finding something really worth looking for...unfortunately, this time around I found Cheerleading Camp (1987) aka Bloody Pom Poms. Now really, given the title of the film, what the heck was I expecting? Not a lot, but this film didn't even meet my very low expectations.

Directed by somebody and written by somebody else (actually two people...it took two people to write this film? Geesh....)...believe me, it really doesn't matter who they are as it's not they ever moved on to bigger and better things, I checked...the film does posess a few notable actors and actresses...besides a few women whose biggest claim to fame probably comes from appear au natural in various men's magazines around the time, appearing in the film are B-movie favorites Betsy Russell, who's also appeared in films like Private School (1983), Tomboy (1985) and Avenging Angel (1985) and Lucinda Dickey, who prior work includes not only Breakin' (1984), but the sequel we absolutely could not live without Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (1985). Also appearing is the quintessential 70's teen idol Leif Garrett, looking exactly like you'd think a star from the 70's would as one who has long since cast aside by his fickle fan base and left to slum it up in stuff like this, meeking out a living, trying to keep their name in some sort of limelight within the entertainment industry with the hopes that they'll be the next one found and elevated to star status by the likes of a Quentin Tarantino, as he did with John Travolta, saving him from acting purgatory. Finally, I wanted to acknowledge George `Buck' Flowers appearance in this film. A fairly popular character actor who appeared in tons of low budget films from the 70's right up until 2004 usually as a drunk and/or a homeless man (he was the homeless man in John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981) who was mistaken for the president), who has also just recently past in June of '04.

So, what is the film about? If you guessed a serial killer on the loose in a cheerleading camp, you'd be right. Big surprise, huh? Betsy Russell stars as Alison Wentworth, a cheerleader with one group of....(cough, cough) teens arriving at cheerleading camp. I am hesitant to call them teens as they certainly appear much old than their characters portray them to be...this is not an uncommon occurrence, and one only has to have seen an episode of Beverly Hills, 91210 to understand what I mean...Leif Garrett...one of the few high schoolers I know with a seriously receding hairline...hee hee...anyway...Alison is having bad dreams, and her boyfriend Brent (played by Garrett) has a roving eye. Does this add up to murder? You'd think so, given how hard the filmmakers try to shove it down your throat. The red herrings are laid on very thick and also very poorly, as the identity of the killer, which is supposed to be a mystery until the end, is given away somewhere around the middle of the film. Honestly, even the most remedial viewer should be able to discern this plot point early on, given the floopy, floppy, utterly pathetic plot. I had read somewhere that this film is supposed to be a spoof of slasher films, a comedy horror film, if you will, and if that's true, then the film is even worse than I thought it was, as it's about as funny as a Carrot Top comedy routine or a Pauley Shore film. To spoof something, you satirize it lightly, but I really saw none of that here. I suspect the film came out so badly that it was decided after the fact to call it a spoof. So, what does this movie have going for it? It is funny, in a completely unintentional way in that the dialogue is so very lame. And seeing Leif Garrett playing an amorous teenager was pretty funny. Also, the character of Pops, played by Buck Flowers, was good for a few chuckles. There is couple of scenes with some nudity of the topless kind, if you focus on that kind of thing, and the scenes involving the gory killing are pretty poor and sub-standard, comparatively speaking to effects in other films within the genre. Even the method of the killings is highly unoriginal and hardly surprising or shocking. The murders are virtually telegraphed long before they happen, creating something I call anti-suspense...that is, not only is it not suspenseful, but it actually works just the opposite, deadening any thrills, purposeful or incidental, and really making the viewer realize that time expended on watching could have been used in so many other ways, like shaving the dog or trimming one's nose hair.

Anchor Bay does provide a superior wide screen print here, supposedly transferred from the original negative completely uncut. Special features include an audio commentary with the director and the producer, along with theatrical trailers for the film, an alternate title sequence using the foreign title of the film Bloody Pom Poms, behind the scenes photos, poster and still galleries. There's also gushing liner notes written, or provided, by someone named Adam Rockoff, who I think is the author of Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, 1978-1986, print on minor booklet within the DVD case. All in all, an excellent release of a entirely poor film. Also, there is supposedly a sequel to this film out there, and even a listing in the Internet Movie Database, being released in 1990, even showing Uma Thurman as one of the stars, but I doubt this film exists.

Cookieman108