Cavalcade of Awesome

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Okay, this is it. The final Fangoria Movie Friday Review and the final post for this year’s AWESOME-tober-fest.  Like I mentioned yesterday, I had serious issues deciding what movie to review today.  There were so many awesome 80s slasher movies to choose from.  But one movie stood out just a little from the rest.  Sort of “the little movie that could”.  So, I went with my gut (and other parts a little further south of my gut) and chose Cheerleader Camp from 1988 starring a metric ton of 80s cult movie stars.

This poster is balls-out amazing. I love it. FYI, the alternate title for this movie was Bloody Pom Poms. And I’m not even kidding.

So you see why I picked this movie. BECAUSE IT LOOKS F**KING AWESOME.  Plus, there’s like five hot, known 80s actresses all over this movie.  The premise consists of a cheerleading competition that takes place at some remote “camp” (read: isolated cabin) in the middle of the woods.  Suddenly cheerleader campers start showing up dead and everyone wonders just who is the killer.  We get several red herrings that are almost immediately proved to be untrue.  The eventual culprit was a surprise to me up until a few minutes before the big reveal.  But I wasn’t really sitting there trying to figure it out.  We get lots of angsty female teen melodrama and pent up horny boys drama like in a typical Porky’s but less skin.  The ensemble 80s female cast is pretty epic and you get several bikini/underwear scenes with all of them.  This is a fun watch.  I’d watch it again if only for the great visuals and not for the amusing story or dialogue.  All in all, a great 80s sexy horror romp.

Here are some of the visuals because they are GREAT.

Awesome, colorful title card.

There’s going to be LOTS of pictures of the chicks in this movie because the vast majority of them are really hot and many of them are awesome 80s cult stars. You will probably recognize the chick in the middle here. That’s Lucinda Dickey. One of my personal favorite 80s actresses most famous for both Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo but she also awesomely starred in the phenomenal Ninja III: The Domination.  The blonde on the left is Lorie Griffin who is most famous for playing, Pamela, Scott Howard’s crush in Teen Wolf.  On the right is Betsy Russell.  This brunette hottie is probably most known for her star turn as Angel in the movie Avenging Angel as well as the 80s sex comedies Tomboy and Private School and most recently playing Jill in the last five Saw movies.  There are two more ladies in the back I’ll get to next in a better screenshot.

In the middle of this pic is Lorie Griffin again.  She plays a dumb blonde in this movie which is weird compared to her sultry turn as Pamela in Teen Wolf.  On the left is Rebecca Ferratti.  She was Playboy’s Playmate of the Month in June 1986.  She had a small roles in Three Amigos and Beverly Hills Cop II but I know her most from her small but memorable appearance at the very beginning of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.  And, on the right, we have Teri Weigel.  Teri has been in a TON of movie and TV appearances such as Predator 2, Embrace of the Vampire, Return of the Killer Tomatoes and Married With Children.  However, she is also most recently known for being a porn star.  And these are the five ladies that awesomely headline this movie.  But, wait, there’s more!

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Yesterday you saw the ad for the flick, Zombie Nightmare from 1987.  It starred Adam West, Tia Carrere and Jon Mikl-Thor.  I’ve loved the look of that ad since I first saw it in Fangoria so I decided that it was going to be this week’s Fangoria Movie Friday review.

The only thing I’ve ever seen on this movie was yesterday’s home video ad. I remember the image vividly from when I bought the issue. So, since I’m filling in holes in my cult horror movie watching this month, I decided to track down this movie and give it a watch.

The premise is simple enough.  A guy is run over by a bunch of teens in a sports car and killed.  He is resurrected as a mindless zombie by a voodoo priestess in order to get revenge on all the teens that were in the car.  Bloodshed ensues.

It stars Adam West and Tia Carrere, so this should be 100% a winner.  And I mean that in the most B-movie awesome way.  Now that I’ve watched it, what did I think?  In a nutshell it’s a bit disappointing.  There’s definitely some high moments here and there.  The aesthetic is early Troma, as it seems with all the movies I’ve picked this month.  Not a whole lot of gore, surprisingly, but a metric ton of cheese.  Production values are on par with something like Street Trash but that movie was endlessly more fascinating than this one.  Do I recommend?  Hmmm, not really.  I don’t plan on watching it again, even though it amused me a bit during my viewing.  Another movie this reminded me of was Hard Rock Zombies which I reviewed last year for AWESOME-tober-fest 2013.

Let’s look at some of the more choice moments of this movie.

And the movie begins, and we see that right away, this movie has the potential to be several different kinds of awesome. Adam West in a schlocky zombie movie? Yes, please? Tia Carrere?! Yes! And maybe she’ll get topless for her kill scene.  Those are the thoughts running through my head when I see the title cards.

Wait…slick back hair, tight t-shirt, cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve.  Did I put on The Outsiders by mistake?  Is Leif Garret going to show up in a letter sweater?

Oh, I see. Those greasers are here to endanger that young lady. And the husky, sweat panted dude is going to do something about it.  And that something is participate in the most ridiculously choreographed fight scene I’ve seen since Miami Connection.  Yes, husky sweat pants actually does spin around with the guy on his shoulders.

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