15 Second Review: Cheerleader Massacre (2003)

There are very few things you need to know about Cheerleader Massacre. Luckily for anyone who hasn’t seen it, I am here to supply those details.

1) The film is very loosely attached to the Slumber Party Massacre series. Brinke Stevens from Slumber Party Massacre cameos in Cheerleader Massacre, and footage from Slumber Party Massacre is included in Cheerleader Massacre. This inclusion appears to have inspired much disagreement among fan forum members as to whether it belongs to the series or not. I’m not sure I care either way.

2) The clip from Slumber Party Massacre stands out like a sore thumb, much like explosion footage taken from Humanoids From the Deep (1980). The latter two were filmed on celluloid, so splicing them into a DV shot movie does not work especially well. It is quite endearing that the filmmakers tried to get away with it though.

3) In the same vein, the film’s trailer features a number of shots that do not appear in Cheerleader Massacre. Again, some of these appear to be shot on film stock rather than DV. Is this a glaring admission that the film is not very good? The distributors could not find enough footage to fill even a text-heavy one minute trailer.

4) The film’s director Jim “why not?” Wynorski also directed Ghoulies IV (1994), the Shannon Tweed vehicle Body Chemistry IV (1995), and more recently the barely passable softcore porn films The Da Vinci Co-ed (2007), Cleavagefield (2009), and The Hills Have Thighs (2010). So, puns are not his strong point. Neither is quality control.

5) The Film 2000 release of Cheerleader Massacre features a four-star review as its box blurb, which is cited to ’Biggora’. From what I have been able to gather, ‘Biggora’ is just someone who bought the DVD and reviewed it on Amazon. Alarm bells should ring, especially given that Film 2000 reproduce Biggora’s incorrect spelling of ‘definitely’ (‘definately’) on the box cover.

6) As for content, there is little footage that strays from a well-mapped cliche-ridden path. The film does feature a scene in which the three eponymous cheerleaders strip off and share a “romantic” interlude in a hot-tub (this seems to be enough to please some punters - see: Biggora’s four star review). What makes this sequence notable is that the cheerleaders smear chocolate syrup on each other during the sequence. I can’t wrap my head around the thought-process. Hot-tub … chocolate syrup. Hot-tub……………. chocolate syrup.

…I just don’t get it.