John McBrearty
Distracted by the firm ass and bouncy tits on a spandex-clad female bicyclist,
some policemen escorting a half dozen chain gang members unwisely turn their
backs on the dangerous criminals. A shovel to the head, a pick-axe through the
chest and a machine gun fight later, one of the thugs - Gerome Desenso (Glen
Vincent) - manages to make his escape into the woods. Meanwhile, Denise the
bicyclist (Stacey Lynn) returns to her college campus where she proceeds
to whine and complain to her sisters about getting stuck with Sara (Lynette
McBrearty), "the ultimate geek," for the entire weekend. After all, the year
before she'd been stuck dealing with a bunch of "Oriental exchange students."
God forbid! The semester's over and the Alpha Phi girls are planning a trip to
sister Kristina's (Gloria Hylton) family's mountain cabin to party and
celebrate. Also going along with the aforementioned ladies are slutty rich bitch
blonde Belinda (Dori Courtney) and giggly Mary Anne (Deborah Dutch),
who's so dumb she has to ask her friend whether or not she'd failed her exams
because she herself hasn't a clue. But rest assured patient viewers, it's not
just the ladies who'll grate on your last nerve: The handful of frat guys who
will be joining them at the cabin are just as irritating, if not even worse. Well
actually, they are much worse.
For some reason that defies clear explanation, it takes three different vehicles
to transport five girls to the cabin. On the way there, a couple of them break
down on the side of the road and are rescued by whiny country bumpkin Gerald (Wynn
Reichert), who won't shut up about fishing and his beagle Old Blue. Belinda,
who has recently dumped the dorky Skip (Carl Johnson) in favor of his
fraternity brother JJ (Matthew Schiff), has decided to go early with her
new boy toy to break in the bed. The rest of the girls arrive soon after.
Following them is a ticked off Skip (who speaks in an extremely obnoxious and
forced high-pitched pubescent voice) and his constantly-scowling buddy Steve (Eric
Clark), who first made time to swing by a backwoods dive to piss off a
bunch of rednecks. Meanwhile, Kristina's archaeologist uncle Ray (Doug Koth)
is excavating some caves and uncovers Native American artifacts, a skull and
finally a stone face on the wall, which lights up, possesses him and turns him
into a rubber-masked creature. From hell? Sure, why not. The echo-voiced spirit
then informs the monstrous Ray that he is now a "disciple of blood" and commands
him to get blood to help him regain his power.
Sex, beer, junk food, dancing, hot-tubbing, bickering, metal music and apple
juggling are the order of the day until the creature pops in to the cabin and
begins killing everyone off one by one. One of the girls is thrown off the roof
and there's a strangling, a neck snapping and a head ripped off, though just as
many people are simply pulled out of frame to meet their demise off-screen. The
bodies of victims are drug back to the cave, where the spirit orders the
creature to get "More!... I must have more!" Some other people stop by the cabin
to further complicate matters, including biker Chris (Shawn Player from
Andy Milligan's THE WEIRDO) and the escaped convict from the opening scene.
Top-billed Len Lesser, who'd achieve his greatest fame just a few years
later as Uncle Leo on Seinfeld, shows up as Tex, a grumpy,
toboggan-wearing backwoods hunter who likes to shoot bunny rabbits, keeps
complaining about all the noise coming from the cabin and has a stockpile of
firearms that figure in the finale.
I suppose one could say that Sorority Girls does what is asked of it. One
would expect violence and nudity from a title like this and it does attempt to
deliver on that promise. Unfortunately, it does everything so poorly that I
can't even champion this as trash. There's not one aspect of this movie that
they manage to pull off successfully. The direction, writing, editing,
photography, acting, sound, continuity, lighting and special effects are all
painfully, annoyingly awful. As a creature feature, this commits the biggest
possible sin it could: a barely-visible creature. Shot on 16mm, the picture
quality is often blurry and the lighting is so dark you can barely make anything
out. The creature is primarily shot in semi-darkness or from afar so you never
really even get a good look at it. For what is essentially a cabin in the wood
slasher, the film also seriously lacks blood and gore. Aside from one head being
ripped off (which - again - can barely be seen because it's so dark) and a bit
of blood on the corpses, this is dry as a bone.
There's a sort of amateurish, sincere charm bad films like this can sometimes
skate by on, but this film has none of that. Not only is it ineptly made, it's downright irritating. Could they have possibly made the characters any
less likable? At one point, a guy hovers over his drunken, passed out friend and,
completely unprovoked, starts screaming, "Wake up dip shit! Get up asshole! I
don't even believe you, man. A good looking girl here is sitting right here and
you're not even doing anything, man? You're a disgrace to all men! What are you,
a fag?!" And that guy is this film's hero. Dutch, a sort-of second string
Scream Queen some are familiar with, is probably the best known of the younger
cast but she's extremely annoying here herself. When she's not running around
saying "Party! Party!" for absolutely no reason, she's cackling in a whiny way
Fran Drescher would find obnoxious and lisping her way through awful dialogue
like "Well, she wasn't there and JJ wasn't there. It's really weird. I mean,
first they were both there and then they weren't there." It frequently appears
that this was filmed without sound and that it was all dubbed in later but I'm
not 100 percent sure about that.
The one and only thing the director is smart about is getting maximum mileage
from hot blonde Dori Courtney. Even though her character is one of the first to
get killed off, she's nude no less than six times in the first half: in a
shower, in a car, in a bed, in a hot tub, in ridiculous fantasy sequence and by
a lake. Hell, she's even topless when she gets killed. Vicki Darnell
(best known for her appearances in Frank Henenlotter movies like BRAIN DAMAGE)
also shows some skin as a stripper at the bar. Whoever did the music ripped off
the classic FRIDAY THE 13TH score. It was based on a story by the director /
producer / writer and co-star Lynette (who is probably his wife). If
you want a fun "Sorority" horror title, let me now direct you toward
SORORITY BABES IN THE SLIMEBALL BOWL-O-RAMA (1988) or SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE II (1990).
The VHS I viewed was from Complete entertainment.
★
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