Customer Rating:
Summary: More Cheese, Please ...
Comment: KURLEBJ did an excellent job of reviewing this movie. I agree completely that while the women chosen to star in this film are cute and curvy and they do spend some time naked (and this is greatly appreciated), the rest of the movie is pretty much just a waste of time. Heavy use of the fast forward button is recommended for those who don't mind admitting that they buy these movies to see cute women run around without much on.

It was amusing to discover while listening to the director's comments that one of this film's starlets turned out to be a porn actress and that this wasn't known until after fact. I guess background checks aren't part of the standard process of hiring slasher flick starlets.

While this movie is hardly a good example of it's genre ... a genre already fraught with endless inherent difficulties ... I did watch parts of it several times before selling it at a second hand store. And listening to the directors commentary does provide something that can't exactly be called insight into what goes (and doesn't go) into making this sort of movie.

My advice ... rent it first ... then decide if it's worth the investment for your collection of guilty pleasure movies ... the ones you don't tell most people you watch.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Three cheers for the big kill!
Comment: Not quite like the old originals of Jim Wynorski, but a definite fun horror investment. I must admit that the "deleted scene" made me want to puke. Come on, Jim! You are pushing it! Anyway, a few inspiring Playboy models are driving to the big game with their unnaturally large coach, 2 teen boys who are there to "help out," and some equipment guy. Most of the girls are whiny and snotty, but watching them get stranded in a snowy cabin is well worth it. Jim gives his male audience the traditional shower scene...however, a headless knock on the front door is when it really gets good! Horrible acting but Jim makes up for that by providing dialogue in Special Features where he reveals some of the secrets to making the film on a budget. Excellent tips for inspiring filmmakers.
December 18, 2005

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Too much cop drama, too little time with the "cheerleaders".
Comment: Oddly enough, when I bought a movie named Cheerleader Massacre, I was expecting to see cheerleaders. But the folks who made this were too cheap to shell out a few bucks for cheerleader uniforms. I can only guess, but apparently this was so Wynorski could give a paycheck to just about everybody who's been in any film he's ever made, and they're all in here for no reason whatsoever. We start out with some good stuff, a nice murder in the woods, then some cheerleaders (wearing regular clothes) doing a cheer. There's the usual shower scene (except one of the girls has tattoos - yuck. Ever hear of an airbrush?), Then there's a spooky locker room scene which was basically lifted from Slumber Party Massacre. After that, the movie shifts into neutral. The girls get in a van and head into the mountains, the van runs out of gas, they swear like truck drivers (maybe this was Biker Babe Massacre?) and complain and whine, then they happen to find a cabin. The atmosphere here is nice, they do a good job of letting the audience feel the coldness of the mountains. But, then the movie shifts into park. We see a whole bunch of cops and other assorted old guys running around, talking on phones, driving around, talking in offices, directing traffic, talking to a guy at a cabin, etc. etc. etc. Brinke Stevens reads a few horribly written lines, and we get a flashback from Slumber Party Massacre (The same scene they just did a remake of 10 minutes earlier). I have to admit, it is the rare movie that can do a flashback to 20 years earlier and have the same actress who is actually 20 years younger. Then there's more cop drama, driving through the woods, talking on radios, talking on phones, endless "ominous" warnings about the killer, etc.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CHEERLEADERS?!?!? Do they think we buy movies called Cheerleader Massacre to see a stinkin' cop drama? I bet 50% of this movie is wasted on the cops. The word "Massacre" is in the title - we know there's a killer on the loose - we get it already!!! It would have been SOOOOOOOOO much better to get rid of all the stuff with the cops and instead had the cheerleaders doing cheerleader stuff. Whatever that might be; I imagine it might be pretty interesting. I guess now I'll never know. We never get to spend much time with these girls, we don't know them at all, we don't care about them at all.

I will give the movie a couple of stars for the nudity - Diana Espen aka April Flowers is awesome! - but that's about it.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: April Flowers is the only reason to endure this mess.
Comment: There are two hot girls in this movie. Both get naked. One in an o.k. shower scene that kept getting interrupted by pointless non-shower scenes of people running around in the woods with their clothes on. She also has her hair up; I didn't care for that too much.

April Flowers, by far the hotter of the two hot chicks gets naked in a much better sex scene that is also rudely interrupted by scenes of people standing around in the dark fully clothed.

If you do insist on watching this steamer then check out the deleted scene cause it's a nude one featuring Julie K. Smith, of all people, in a bathtub with two other naked females. Not really hot cause they talk a lot, but it's always nice seeing Julie.

Nikki Fritz also has a small non-nude scene.

D: Jim Wynorski (CHOPPING MALL, DEATHSTALKER II)

April Flowers (THE MUMMY'S KISS, EMBRACE THE DARKNESS II)
Julie K. Smith (THE DALLAS CONNECTION, DAY OF THE WARRIOR)
Nikki Fritz (BIKINI DRIVE-IN, DINOSAUR ISLAND)

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Gimmie a D...
Comment: ...for dumb, because that's exactly what this film was, and in spades...touted as coming from the people who brought us the Slumber Party and Sorority House Massacre films (most of which I've seen) released during the 80's, Cheerleader Massacre (2003) hardly follows in the footsteps of its predecessors, which seems kinda strange because it's not like they set the bar really high or anything, and to make a film that's actually worse than those would be pretty hard to do...but it was done...I guess the main difference is while those earlier films may have been bad, at least they were entertaining, and this one really wasn't...directed by Jim Wynorski (The Return of Swamp Thing, Sorority House Massacre II), the film stars Tamie Sheffield (Intolerable Cruelty), Charity Rahmer (The Frightening), and Erin Byron (One of Them). Also appearing is Leonard Johnson (Manhunter), Bill Langlois Monroe (Freedom Strike), GiGi Erneta (El Chupacabra), Melissa Brasselle (Raptor), and legendary scream queen Brinke Stevens (Teenage Exorcist, Hybrid), who's in the film for all of about three minutes, looking a bit long in the tooth.

The film opens on a couple camping in the woods, and since we don't know these people, it's a good bet they're going to be our first victims...and sure enough, they are...but hey, where's the blood? Sadly, these scenes are pretty much indicative of the kill scenes throughout the film, as very is little shown, and features very little blood. Anyway, cut to some cheerleaders practicing (since `cheerleading' is in the title, I figure they gotta show some girls getting their cheer on, and this is it for the entire film), and afterwards we get some nekkidness as the inevitable shower scene occurs (very few of the Wynorski films I've seen don't have one of these scenes). Seems the girls, along with their coach, the very stacked Ms. Hendricks (Sheffield), are preparing to go on some kind of camping trip, and the short bus is leaving very soon. Around this time we cut to some scenes involving various members of the police department talking about a recently escaped serial killer and how the bodies are beginning to pile up. So the girls leave, end up running out of gas, and hoof it to the relative safety of a spacious, deserted cabin, but find themselves up to their eyeballs in trouble as their number begin to dwindle due to an aggressive depopulation campaign propagated by a unknown assailant.

The first thing I noticed about this film was it was shot not on film, but on video, giving it an overall cheapness quality right off the bat. At least the previous massacre movies were shot on film...oh well, anything to save a buck. The only real reason to watch this movie is for the softcore stuff, of which there is a decent amount. The rest hardly matters much as the story is lame, even for this kind of movie, the kill scenes really pathetic and nearly absent of any blood or violence, the dialog insipid, continuity errors galore (watch as the killer cuts the power to the cabin, but oddly enough the lights still work in the bathroom where Sheffield's character is showering), virtually no tension, and the acting all around rancid. I will say the actors playing the high school students looked close to the age of their characters, which is pretty uncommon for films like this...one thing this film does have in abundance is pointless characters. I lost count of how many different characters kept popping up, and it's not like they were there to provide for a plentiful stock of victims, but just more so to fill out the 85 minute run time. They could have cut the number of characters in half, focused on those that were left, and had a slightly less crummy end result, but that is just my opinion. Wynorski seemed to have phoned it in, expending most of his talents filming, in loving detail, the female characters in varying degrees on nekkidness, master of the slow pan. The best among these scenes would have Tamie Sheffield, who played the coach, and her extended shower scene...oh yeah, use that soap, baby...as far as the massacre bits go, there really wasn't much there, except for one scene where a character lost his head, literally. The characters basically run around, doing stupid things, more so than normal for a movie like this, and get killed off screen. As far as the mystery killer goes, throughout most of the film, we only see the hands, and the choice of weapons and methods used to off the victims were very bland and conventional, as if there was no effort to even try and make it interesting, which was completely disappointing. If there's the appearance of effort put forth, I can overlook a lot of things, but here there doesn't seem like much was given, and the result is just an edgeless, boring, predictable film with some decent boobage. Oh, man, I almost forgot...the big revel of the identity of the killer and motive...that's a key element to a movie like this. The rest of the film can be crud, but you can't do a movie like this and shortchange your audience in this area, which is what happened here. It was just so pathetically lame when it was finally reveal...no bang, just a slight pop...the music was okay, but its repetitiveness wore on me.

The fullscreen picture does look decent (for video). The audio does come through clearly, and is available in Dolby 2.0 stereo and 5.1 digital surround. There are some extras including a commentary track with director Wynorski and actress Erneta, along with a choice deleted scene (3 girls in a tub), cast & crew bios, a trailer, and previews for the films Quicksand (2001), Disappearance (2002), and Sting of the Black Scorpion (2002). I give this film two stars, one because Amazon does not allow for zero stars, and a 2nd for the nekkidness featuring the hot babes.

Cookieman108

By the way, in case you're interested, I got a body count of about 9, but it could have been more as I lost interest about halfway through...

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