Cheerleader Massacre (2003)

Maybe I'm just getting tired of 'Turkeys' or maybe this film is actually as uninspired and wretched as I believe it to be. I'm very gentle on what some call 'bad movies,' as my reviews from the past two weeks will reveal. I never laugh because a film is 'bad'; at least not until tonight.

Some sort of sequel to The Slumber Party Massacre--a well-written and jokey slasher--Cheerleader Massacre tells the story of a group of very attractive cheerleaders getting stuck in a cabin in the mountains with three guys and their coach. At the same time, a serial killer has escaped from prison and is killing high school girls. For some reason he ends up at the camp in the woods too. The theme of serendipity is built up out of the motif of the arbitrariness of this film's events.

The holes are flecked with some plot, but don't let that deter you. The escaped killer's MO is killing women in their 40s. Yet the police still go and question Brinke Stevens, who apparently survived the locker room assault in Slumber Party Massacre, about her attack in that film. She's introduced in an overdramatic shot as a wraithlike creature, the embodiment of angst and victimhood that never forgets. So that section, which includes a lengthy clip from SPM, is a big slab-o-filler. The whole police procedural about the escaped killer is merely a red herring, though it takes up half the film. The rationale behind the murders makes no sense whatsoever and has nothing to do with Slumber Party Massacre. One can detect the influence of David Lynch in how the events of the narrative have little to no bearing on one another outside of their shared motifs of insipidity and tits.

Cheerleader Massacre is decently shot and decently edited--far better than most shot-on-video pictures. More's the pity that it's so inept and vapid an instance of storytelling. The only thing it offers is lots of beautiful girls. Every woman in this movie, young and old, is gorgeous and busty (all natural, too). This is offered for our gratification in awkward, silly moments, like the cheerleading coach's shower, which, if shot in real time, would have amounted to a full hour of a woman doing nothing but rubbing her own tits very slowly, over and over. Each symbolic movement of Irish Spring over her large aureoles, shot with the kinetic grace of Kurosawa, brings to mind Stonehenge and the Nazca Plains with their mysterious grandeur. Sounds erotic, eh? Well it's not; it's just stupid and manipulative. Besides, you know what? Most women are beautiful, unless they're fat, ancient, or inbred. You go to the grocery store any day and you'll see plenty of women who could be causing boners in b-movies. It's just not that interesting. Oh, and all the men are flabby, gormless doofs.

Nothing to recommend. Sorry, this one's a total dud. I went in expecting to like it, too. I say you'd be much, much better off watching The Corpse Grinders 2 for some shot-on-video fun.