I love this movie so much

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Hey … what's with all the harsh and negative reviews on "The Majorettes"? I watched this movie before checking out what people thought or even taking a glimpse at the rating and thought it was a surprisingly enjoyable film! I was convinced it would have some loyal fans among the reviewers, but strangely enough practically all comments are discouraging others to see it. Well then allow me to be one of the only souls on the Internet promoting this eighties action/horror oddity! Avid and knowledgeable fans of the genre will immediately recognize two of the displayed names in the opening credits of "The Majorettes"; i.e. John Russo and Bill Hinzman. Both these gentlemen played fundamental roles in the establishment of one of the greatest milestones in cinema of all time; George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead". Russo was the co-writer and Hinzman played the legendary cemetery zombie with whom the invasion of the dead all begun. They went onwards with lesser successful careers in the 80's (Russo wrote and directed the obscure "Midnight" and Hinzman put together the dreadful "Flesheater"), but "The Majorettes" was their mini-reunion! That being said, "The Majorettes" opens exactly like you expect an 80's horror movie with such a lurid title to start! With a posse of chicks in tight gym suits doing aerobics to the tunes of dreadful pop music and then collectively stripping nude to hit the showers. So far so good, I'd say… After that it's getting even more typically 80's with voyeuristic janitors, love-making couples getting slashed in the backwoods and harsh bullying all within a span of five minutes! "The Majorettes" can overall be filed in the slasher cabinet, but there's certainly more than meets the eye. The plot is reasonably ambitious and there are some clear attempts to generate tension and atmosphere in between all the gratuitous nudity and brutal gore. A vicious killer dressed in a military camouflage outfit goes around slitting the throats of high school majorettes. The local drug dealer and boyfriend of the first victim is the main suspect, but it seems that the real killer has much more religious motivations for his killing spree.I spent quite a number of years looking for "The Majorettes" before finding it on a DVD-compilation along with "Hell High" and "Hitcher in the Dark". I have no idea why it's so relatively obscure, as it really isn't any worse than the vast majority of 80's stalk & slash movies. Quite the contrary, at least this movie tries to insert some significant twists and additional story lines. It's a mishmash of obvious red herrings and genuinely inventive plot twists. The whodunit factor is reasonably well-structured and effectively keeps you guessing along. The teen characters are also surprisingly likable and not at all the stereotypical bimbo-dimwits you anticipate to encounter in this sort of films. The acting is adequate (the copper with the mustache not included), there's plenty of excitement and the special effects are pretty cool. As far as yours truly is concerned, "The Majorettes" is one of the slasher-sleepers of the decade and urgently needs a fan base! PS: Keep an eye open for the sequences with the grandmother! She looks as she had no idea she was on a film set!

A psychopath wearing camouflage with a hunting knife as his weapon, commences in slaying female majorettes across the throat while bathing their bodies in water "purifying their sins". A reluctant county detective is placed on the case with a sheriff who doesn't want his company. A nurse, whose son is the high school janitor and resident idiot with a vent opened up in his supply closet so he can spy on the majorettes removing their clothes in preparation for the showers(..while also taking snapshots of them, for his private collection), hopes to gain a great sum of money from her employer's will..the employer is an invalid, pretty much a vegetable unable to speak due to a stroke that has left her practically a zombie in a wheelchair. The nurse informs the poor woman of her diabolical plans while injecting her with heavy doses of insulin. Meanwhile, a gang of drug-dealing hoodlums selling their dope to underage teens cause problems towards a high school quarterback and his friend(..she's the granddaughter of the invalid the nurse plans to kill, and also a victim-to-be set up for execution due to what she'd receive in the will at the age of 18)which culminates in two tragic shoot-outs leaving quite a many dead. The nurse, thanks to her voyeur son's taking photos of a victim as she's being mutilated by the killer, blackmails the serial killer, wanting him/her to execute her employer's granddaughter to keep their silence.While I give a lot of love to the "Russo camp" for keeping it real by investing the film with local folks, this film is burdened by the cast's inabilities to adjust to acting in front of the camera. The screenplay is uneasy as the film moves from one scenario to another, with nearly everyone winding up dead. Though, everything ties together somehow, the glue is running and so is the audience for the eject button. I did think the twist regarding the identity of the killer was nifty and the final scene I thought worked really well. The slasher portion of the film I felt was rather clumsily staged and dragged out a bit too long removing the power these are supposed to bring when we are being led through a building murder sequence where the killer is about to strike his prey. The attacks are rather uninspired and typical of the genre. I feel the convoluted uneven story will leave many slasher fans frustrated and the killer's identity is revealed a bit too soon. The shootout belongs in another film(..although, I did enjoy both shootouts I must admit)and feels tacked on..although, the first shootout spoils the nurse's initial plans and shockingly some important characters wind up dead a lot sooner than one would expect. There's some nudity, particularly in the majorettes' locker room. As far as the attacks, most of the violence, except a few throat slicings, is off-screen. Kevin Kindlin, the quarterback who wages war with the nasty bikers, would later return as the lead "vampire" in Russo's flick, "Dark Craving."

The general opinion is that this slasher flick by the "Night of the Living Dead" co-creators John Russo and Bill Hinzman really sucks. And in this case I'm afraid the general opinion is right on the money. What you basically have here is a bunch of barely legal Hollywood bimbos/Motley Crue groupies playing barely illegal high school majorettes who, when they're not prancing around in butt-hugging leotards or skimpy bikinis, are taking long, hot showers and getting butchered by a maniac in military fatigues. I guess I'm not entirely complaining, but these ingredients do not necessarily a good horror movie make.The problem is this movie is derivative to the nth degree. At one point the movie lifts a scene (in a swimming pool) almost verbatim from "The Prowler". And I think this film sets a new record for stupid characters saying, "So and so, is that you?" I'd almost think this was meant to be a pre-"Sceam" parody/homage of the slasher films, but it is neither particularly funny nor clever, just tediously unoriginal. The only thing that sets it apart from other bottom-of-the-barrel slasher dreck is a really stupid action/revenge sub-plot where the studly quarterback takes on a particularly unconvincing motorcycle gang (and if there was one genre that hit bottom more consistently than the 80's slasher films it was the 80's action/revenge films). Amazingly, this empty-headed film was actually based on a novel by John Russo. I would read that instead--it can't possibly be any worse.

I had great expectations for THE MAJORETTES when I found out that JOHN RUSSO (co-author of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD) had based it on his novel. Sadly I had no idea of the disappointment that awaited me inside the cover of this hugely mediocre effort.A masked killer - disguised in army surplus garb - is stalking and murdering the young female members of a majorette team one by one. The brutal slayings leave authorities baffled as there seems to be no apparent motive for the vicious and ruthless attacks. It's left up to the surviving members of the group to watch their backs before they become the assassin's next victims.This is easily one of the 'cheapest' of the period slashers and is best avoided by fans of the genre. Atrocious acting, muggy cinematography and a theme tune that sounds like it was knocked up on a $25 keyboard (honestly!) add up to make an extremely unpleasent viewing experience. The only redeeming feature is that the killings - that were heavily edited in the BBFC's print that I watched - are surprisingly well executed and look like they might be pretty gory in an uncut print. If only director Hinzman had showed the flare for the rest of the film that was evident in the murders, he could have made this a half decent thriller. But the problems really begin when the maniac's identity is revealed far too soon leaving the closing half of the film filled with a poor and unconvincing action-revenge plot that looks like it owes more to Gary Busey's EYE OF THE TIGER or RAMBO than it does any slasher flick.Sadly MAJORETTES ended up being a major-let down...