Una por una

AKA One by One. For the first hour The Majorettes plays like a very typical, mediocre 1980's slasher movie. We get teenage girls stripping off in the locker room, a creepy, pervert school janitor and a killer who likes to slash victims throats. But then the boyfriend of one of the female victims goes on a one man crusade against a redneck, drug dealing biker gang in an hilarious gun fight with completely over the top sound effects! And then the plot goes back to the killer, I'm not giving away spoilers but it had me laughing. Brought to us by writer John Russo and directed by Bill Hinzman, both of Night of the Living Dead (1968) fame, this is a real oddball slasher movie, I found it quite amusing but for the wrong reasons. The British VHS release was heavily cut, best avoided.

Weak adaption of a not so great horror book both done by John Russo. A hooded killer is out on the loose killing off high school girls. A local gang is a prime suspect. Full of red herrings, dumb plot twists, an an unexplicable change of tone halfway through the film and then again towards the end of the film. This film is a real stinker in all respects. Rated R; Sexual Situations, Violence, and Profanity.

It's not even a good movie. To many standards, this would be considered a bad movie, bordering on awful. But it's intention was B-horror, so what can you really say? To be fair, my review is a tad biased, since I've been reading a book called "Making Movies" by John Russo, the writer of the screenplay and the novel. He discusses the making of this movie in several chapters, and hence I became hugely interested in checking out this obscure horror flick. So I bought a copy of the video on Amazon.com for a cheap price, eager to add it to my collection. I always enjoy (being an avid video/DVD collector) having movies in my collection that virtually no one has heard about. Hell, there are people out there who aren't avid video/DVD collectors who have movies like "Gladiator" and "Independence Day" in their collections. So I don't want to jump on the bandwagon. Besides, I'm always curious (outside the collection circle) about obscure independent and low-budget films. So the minute I received "The Majorettes" in the mail, I was more than psyched to watched it right away.

Needless to say, this is a truly amateurish work. The dialogue is horrible and the acting is even worse. The film itself isn't very well made, but the atrocious acting was so bad that it distracted me from the cheesy aesthetics. But at least I got some laughs out the deal, though unintentional. The death scenes were poorly edited. They were edited somewhat like a R-rated movie edited for television, cutting mostly to close-ups and medium shots of the killer, until we finally cut to the knife being slashed across the victim's neck. Then we see a little blood. That's the only gore we see, and I'm sure that's due to poor production values. We basically just see the victims drenched in blood, to let it be self-explanatory that the victims got stabbed in other places. But the only effect the director was able to pull off was the neck-slashing.

The plot is flimsy, full of way-too-obvious red herrings (the evil nurse, the creepy janitor, the fanatical priest--just to name a few), and when we finally discover who the killer is, we don't have a clue as to what his/her motive was. It's basically just thrown in there to have the audience go, "Wow! I had no clue he/she was the killer!" I was definitely surprised to find out who the real killer was. I just didn't think it made much sense. And towards the third act, the plot meanders, totally abandoning the majorette-killer premise and seguing into another subplot.

So I have a lot of bad things to say, regarding to how this movie was made. Who wouldn't? I think a better approach would've been camp horror, rather than serious horror. But I got enough laughs from the bad acting (the actors literally never change expression and sound more like they're running through a first read-through) and didn't really need the actors to wink at me and confirm that they're in on the joke. Nevertheless, it has a certain so-bad-it's-good quality. It's like a train wreck. It's really bad, but you just want to see what happens and who gets out alive. I ain't gonna lie, this movie really interested me, in the way that monster movies used to interest audiences back in the 50's. So if you're looking for fun, B-movie entertainment--then I would recommend checking it out. But there's one other minor criticism I have to let out: the lack of gratuitous nudity. There is nudity in the film, but it's not exploitative. If this were a first-rate, or even second-rate, film that would be a good thing. Basically, you see the sides of the girls' breasts, but rarely do we see frontal nudity. Call me a perv, but if you're gonna make a bad B-movie, you may as well thrown in a ton of nudity. It's not like feminists are gonna be watching this!

My score: 5 (out of 10)

If you're an avid fan of George Romero's 'living dead' series then you might recognise the name Bill Hinzman: he played the graveyard zombie who attacked Barbara at the beginning of Night of the Living Dead. After several negligible roles in other Romero movies and assorted jobs behind the scenes, Hinzman decided to have a bash at directing, his first effort being this tawdry slasher/revenge flick based on a novel by John Russo (who also provided the screenplay).

Opening with a gloriously tacky opening credits scene showing a group of sexy, lycra wearing babes (most of whom look a bit too old to still be in high school) busting some moves, closely followed by a shower scene during which we see the pervy school janitor taking snapshots of the girls through a ventilation grille, the film certainly starts promisingly—heavy on the 80s cheeze and sleaze, it looks set to be a blast. Sadly, even though the gratuitous nudity continues throughout, and is accompanied by plenty of violence (but not much in the way of decent gore), the sense of fun soon wears off thanks to the truly awful performances (the girls certainly weren't hired for their acting ability), Russo's woeful script, and Hinzman's uninspired direction which only goes to prove that lurching around like a drooling ghoul in front of the camera is a darn sight easier than calling the shots behind it.

4.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 5 for the silly-but-bloody OTT Peckinpah-style shootout at the end.

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...