Well Deserved Praise

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

There for me are far worse movies than Cheerleader Massacre, but in all honesty that is not saying very much in the film's favour. The ladies are very good-looking, but the acting on the whole is so forced and fake that it is one of those cases that they were told to just exude sex appeal and not bring much else. It doesn't help that their characters are so clichéd(I was actually expecting that from reading the plot-line), unlikeable or so poorly written, or that the writing is so shallow and full of meaningless fluff when it could have been developing the characters. The film even manages to look cheap, the scenery is okay, but the camera work is frenzied and the gore effects crude. The music is loud, generic and over-bearing, but if there was a worst element it was the story. Cheerleader Massacre did have potential to work, provided that it was executed well. Was it executed well? Was it hell! It is full of lazy exposition where we know nothing about the characters or their motivations, and was so predictable that I couldn't have cared less who the killer's identity was. The slasher parts are undermined by the camera work and a complete lack of atmosphere, suspense or tension. Which made me all the less surprised by the ending, which was contrived anyway. So all in all, even with the sexiness of the ladies this slasher is a stinker. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Like CURSE OF THE KOMODO was for the creature feature genre, Jim Wynorski's CHEERLEADER MASSACRE is a straight-faced parody of slasher movies, such as SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE. A psycho, who has escaped from his padded cell,(..he was sent to the loony bin thanks to killing eleven people)is working across the mountainous backwoods countryside of Bobcat County attacking anyone within his reach. A van load of cheerleaders, their teacher, two equipment hands, and the driver are on their way to a contest when their vehicle runs out of fuel while taking a supposed short-cut to avoid having to turn back. Luckily the group find a cabin up ahead, but fall prey to a killer who attacks each victim one by one. The psycho loose in the county couldn't have killed one girl because she was in the cheerleaders' locker room while he was elsewhere which means someone among their own is the culprit. Meanwhile the sheriff of the county and his deputy pursue the whereabouts of their psycho, while also trying to find the location of the missing cheerleader squad.Shot cheap on video, Wynorski does what he can with the limited budget having to find clever ways to assassinate characters off-screen without the luxury of properly effective special effects. In other words, lots of melons were stabbed, the sound effect used to let us know that certain victims whisked away into the darkness by a black gloved hand died savagely. Wynorski incorporates a scene from SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE regarding Brinke Stevens' character Linda, her being pursued by a killer with a drill(..that killer and Linda both wound up dead, but I guess Wynorski wanted to connect his film to that one, albeit rather poorly)..still it was nice to see her, even if it was a glorified cameo. Tamie Sheffield, as Ms Hendricks the teacher of the students in trouble, has a long bathing scene in the shower soaping her naked body and fake breasts. The girls who make up the cheerleaders are a bit unconvincing, because their obviously in their twenties. Aging soft-core porn stars Samantha Philips(..as a police officer who is attacked by the psychopath she's searching for)and Nikki Fritz(..a hiker who is victimized while jogging across a dangerous bridge)surprisingly don't have to strip. Wynorski vets Bill Langlois Monroe(..as Sheriff Murdock) and Melissa Brasselle(..as a detective who assists Murdock on his case)contribute to the sub-plot of the search for John Colton's serial killer McPherson. Interesting enough, the McPherson story serves as a McGuffan as, in truth, the meat of the film is devoted to the cheerleading group and their perilous situation. I'm not sure if slasher fans will embrace this movie because it takes too long for the kills to flare up and when they eventually enter the picture, the violence isn't potent or shocking enough to satisfy.

This movie was just plain bad. I can forgive low-budget films for being low budget but it wasn't funny, it wasn't smart, it had no redeeming qualities at all unless you really like looking at fake boobs. I don't know what this genre is classified as, possibly erotic horror, but if so-- well, it's neither sexy nor scary. Tying it into the Slumber Party Massacre movies was useless; I'd never seen the previous movies myself, and except for one scene that attempted to tie it together, I had no way of knowing who the escaped psycho killer in 'Cheerleader' was or why they were bothering with including him, especially because (and I don't think I'm revealing anything here) it was really obvious that the cheerleader killer in this film wasn't him. As for the actual murderer? All I can say is, lame. Really lame. When you find out why the killer is offing the cheerleading squad (and the squad's coach, and two stoners who happened to be on the bus trip they're taking, and the bus driver just for the heck of it, apparently) you will sit there and go-- WTF? Worst excuse for a murdering spree ever. The "actors" (two guesses why I added the quotes) generally looked like low-budget porn rejects, which they most likely were. Those poor people, trying to break into "legitimate" film. One of my friends had this to say about the actor who played Buzzy, the bus driver: "He looks like the guy who, you know, gets really into it, and his face gets all red and stuff." We had a good larf at that. Half of the other actors had all the skill and subtlety of the actors in the sixth grade production of "Annie" I just saw. The other half pretty much seemed bored to death (especially in the deleted scene, this one redhead...), and by ten minutes into this movie I was, too.A note: the DVD contains one deleted scene, which would've put the movie from R-rated to NC-17 if it had been left in. It was entirely gratuitous, and as adult entertainment goes of no quality whatsoever. The only reason to bother with it is to laugh, a lot, at the badness.

I saw this on the shelves at the rental place and I have rented everything else so I said why not. Why not is because it's one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It looks like it was shot with home camcorder. I guess thats all the budget would allow. There was less boobs in it than I thought there would be. Some people made it out to be soft porn with a few killings. The funniest part of the whole movie to me is in the extra stuff. There is a spot with deleted scenes. Well there is only one but it is the dumbest and I think it may have brought the rest of the movie down. The girls get in a hot tub and find some chocolate syrup in the bathroom. Yes it ends up all over them. Great stuff !!! This movie is very very bad. Don't bother.