[Once
again I'm going to attempt to do a horror(ish) movie review a day for
the entire month of October. I've done this the last few years on The
Cleveland Movie Blog. Most of the time I succeeded (usually with the
help of a few other writers). Other times I didn't. We'll see if I can
pull it off this year.]
Despite being an avid consumer of straight to video B movie
dreck in the eighties, somehow I never saw SORORITY
BABES IN THE SLIMEBALL BOWL-O-RAMA. Sometimes even for a movie maniac such
as myself, a classic will slip through the cracks. For example, I didn’t see SCARFACE until the 2000s, if you can
believe that. Anyway, I noticed a few friends of mine had been watching this
one recently (it’s on Shudder as part of Joe Bob Briggs’ “The Last Drive-In”),
and that proved to be the push I needed to finally check it out.
The plot is that sorority pledges Taffy (Brinke Stevens) and
Lisa (Michelle Bauer) have to break into a bowling alley and steal the trophy
as part of their initiation. This after sorority sister Babs (Robin Rochelle)
has already given them a gratuitous spanking while the only other two sorority
sisters – Frankie (Carla Baron) and Rhonda (Kathi O'Brecht) watch. Also
watching are a trio of nerdy dudes – Calvin (Andras Jones), Keith (John Stewart
Wildman), and Jimmie (Hal Havins).
The nerdy dudes get caught peeping, and are forced to
accompany the pledges into the bowling alley while Babs and her sisters oversee
from the security booth. As it turns out, there’s someone else already trying to
rob the bowling alley, 80s movie punk rocker Spider (Linnea Quigley). While
Spider is looking for loot, she also helps the gang retrieve their prize. At
some point, the trophy gets knocked over, releasing a jive talking imp (voice of
Dukey Flyswatter).
The imp offers everyone a wish for setting him free. Spider
and Calvin are smart enough to know these sort of things always backfire and
take a pass. Jimmie wishes for gold, Taffy wishes to be prom queen, and Keith
wishes to have sex with Lisa. Poor Lisa doesn’t even get a wish to have
backfire on her. Meanwhile Frankie and Rhonda get possessed or something, while
Babs manages to escape the control room unscathed for the moment.
There’s also a maintenance man (character actor Buck
Flowers, notable for several John Carpenter films) who spends most of the movie
trapped in a closet and escapes only to provide backstory and exposition to the
remaining un-demonized characters.
Released in 1988 by Full Moon Features, the production
values are exactly what you’d expect for a film with a budget of less than
$100,000. A good portion of that literally goes up in flames in the film’s one
and only fire gag, which is pretty much it as far as special effects go. The
demon make-up on the sorority sisters comes down to a mud facial for Rhonda,
Bride of Frankenstein hair for Frankie, and a really bad wig and black metal
chick wear for Babs.
Gore is almost non-existent. None of the kills happen on
screen, and a character who has supposedly been torn in half has her post-mortem
depicted by placing the top half of the actress behind one end of a wide post,
and stunt legs placed at the other end. We do at least get one severed head
used as a bowling ball, but for all I know the prop was left over from another
film.
SORORITY BABES
does deliver on the nudity, though. Scream queens Bauer and Stevens both spend
a decent amount of screen time in the buff. Not to give the movie too much
credit, but Quigley keeps her clothes on (she certainly wasn’t averse to taking
them off in other films) which is wholly appropriate given that her character
is here to be the capable heroine, and not anyone’s sex object. Also of note,
the film manages to take the problematic sex wish and somehow make it not so
rapey. Once Lisa starts writhing on Keith’s lap, he actually recognizes that
she isn’t in control of herself and tells her to stop because she will regret
it when she comes back to her senses. For the eighties, that’s a pretty unusual
example of showing that consent matters.
Now for the imp. Remember, folks, this was the eighties. It
was not an enlightened decade. So having a white guy talk jive for a rubber
demon puppet was pretty much par for the course. I’m not saying it’s right, but
if you’re going to spend any amount of time diving in the dumpster of eighties
pop culture, you’re going to find a lot of this kind of thing.
Working from the often-incomprehensible cocktail napkin
script by Sergei Hasenecz, director David DeCoteau does his usual competent job
of direction. He knows he’s not making CITIZEN
KANE, but he still does his best to turn in as professional a product as he
can given the limitations.
On the plus side, like most B movies this one knows not to
overstay its welcome (it’s 80 minutes long). The pacing is quick, and it’s
never more than a few minutes between action scenes, nudity, or groan inducing
comic relief, so it’s hard to get bored. And if we’re giving points for eighties
nostalgia value, then it would score at least an 8 out of 10 in that category
if only for having all three of the decades premier scream queens together in
one movie. That one movie is still very, very bad, but what did you expect? Joe
Bob gives it 4 stars. I can’t go that high myself, but if you’re in the right
mood it’s entertaining.
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