All
Cheerleaders Die (1999)
Well, how
can you not like this film? It's just good ole silly
Z-grade movie fun. Yes, it's goofy and ridiculous and
dumb and obviously filmed on DV. But it's also amusing
and gory and cheesy. It's love of the genre it recreates
is infectious. It's not spoof or camp, however. It's
almost like homage.
What you
got here is the typical set-up. High school kids go
out in the woods, get drunk, get high, get laid and
then, sometime later, get eaten by zombies. It's nothing
new. And the filmmakers here, Lucky McKee and Chris
Sivertson, don't try to pretend that it is. Instead,
they tweak the genre. The actors are all obviously in
their mid-20's yet they play high school kids. It's
funny. There's enough sex to keep you going until the
gore comes. There's shower scenes, gay jokes, bare butts
and bra-covered breasts, fornication and football. What
more could you ask for? There is such a wide variety
of males and females in the leads (5 of each gender!)
that you'll easily find one to be attracted to no matter
what your taste. Titillation and gore. It's the American
way! There's a cutie with long hair in the film that
just kept me going. He seemed to flip the front of his
shirt up and show off his smooth chest at every opportunity.
This was my favorite part of the film. You will find
your own.
Giving
away some of the plot won't hurt the film too much.
The film concerns a group of cheerleaders and their
boyfriends who go to the woods for a party. When the
girls complain that cheerleading is hard, the guys decide
to put them through a "hell week" like they endured
in football training. It's all in good, clean, heterosexual
fun! Then something goes awry and things will never
be the same for our characters.
The acting
in this film is surprisingly pretty good. Sure, it's
not Shakespeare, but the thespians on screen never seem
to stumble or fake it. They all do pretty good with
their lines. No one particularly stands out, bad or
good. Sometimes you get the silly female screaming or
the "I-don't-notice- all-that-commotion-behind-me-and-why-are-you-guys-running-
away?" acting, but it's all in good fun. Even the girl
with the ridiculously phoney accent does a pretty good
job. Nobody ever hams it up. They don't have to.
The special
effects in the film, the gore, is also pretty good,
if you like that kinda thing. There's buckets of blood
and lotsa chewing on body parts nee raw meat. The zombies
look pretty cool and there are some interesting ideas
going on here. One guy gets attacked by zombies while
he's in the water. Another gets skewered to a rotating
outdoor clothes line. Nothing really looks phony. Only
one scene, the dead- bodies-at-the-bottom-of-a-cliff
scene, leaves a lot to be desired.
The film
is made interestingly enough at times. The opening credits
sequence, though extremely long, has some nice shots
of creepy birds. But this sort of nuance soon gives
way to fairly typical camera work and DV cinematography.
The blood does look really red! and the devouring of
human flesh is always handled well.
The only
complaint I can make about the movie is the music, which
is extremely bad. The score tunes are horrid. The song
over the opening credits will grate your nerves to finely
granulated annoyance. The "rock" songs splayed throughout
the film almost always stick out like a sore thumb.
Of course, this is exactly what we expect from a film
like this.
Yep, "All
Cheerleaders Die" is a fine All-American no-budget backyards
zombie extravaganza. It's just got more red than white
or blue.
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