Le collège du cimetière

I only half-watched this, it was pretty bad. A group of four high school girls who've been raped by men team up to kill men, including the movie's narrator. Throughout the movie, a gong appears and is gonged whenever there is going to be a violent scene: the "gore gong." There is also a "hooter honker," which is a pair of bulb-type bicycle horns. This is really stupid, and about the level of humor in the movie.

As in Gorman Bechard's other movies, this is set in Waterbury, Connecticut, has Carmine Capobianco in it, has characters talking to the camera, and has at least one scene set in a video store. I don't know if his more recent movies have these features; I'm hoping he's gotten better.

The title "Cemetery High" and the video box cover of women in scanty clothing in a graveyard, one holding a bloody chainsaw, is misleading. I don't recall a scene in a graveyard. I guess it refers more to the fact that high schoolers are killing lots of people.

A bumbling mayor, policeman, and coroner try to figure out who the "scumbusters" are, although two of them destroy some evidence. Maybe if I was paying more attention I would have known why, if it was incompetence, or if they were covering for the women for some reason.

Mainly, it's just boring with lame humor.

According to the director this movie was taken from him and butchered into the incomprehensible mess that is Cemetery High. He apparently has washed his hands of both this and Galactic Gigolo.

Now Galactic Gigolo isn't great, but it has its moments and can be enjoyed when you are desperate for more from the people who brought you Psychos in Love. Cemetery High on the other hand is a nearly joyless affair.

Perhaps one day this movie will be reassembled by the director and a result all the children of the Earth will live in peace and harmony. Holding one's breath while waiting for this day to come is not advisable. It is double plus inadvisable that one watch this movie under any circumstances.

It's a gosh darn shame that things turned out the way they did between Gorman Bechard and Wizard, Cult Epics, Full Moon or whatever Charles Band is calling his company these days. We'll never know what the Psychos in Love gang might have given us had they not been so thoroughly screwed.

Cemetery High is part of a trio within the Full Moon catalogue. Director Gorman Bechard and much of the crew and cast worked on this and before it both 'Psychos in Love' and 'Galactic Gigolo' for Full Moon. Basically a group of average looking young women decide to eliminate all the perverted and criminal men in town including naughty corrupt town mayor. Fortunetly for the bullet manufacturers pretty much all the man are very bad. Though most are vulgar there are moments when the vigilantes seem to be coercing men in order to find them guilty and deserving of death. The death scenes are pretty amusing and as mentioned in a spoken introduction there will be different noises for nudity (a bike horn) and violence and so on. The cast regularly refer to the fact that they are in a film and that it needs to be entertaining for the viewers. Of course by these women's 'all men must die' standards the viewing audience would probably be a victim of the very gang they are watching. Relative fun.

I detest this film.

Long story short: it was originally called "Assault of the Killer Bimbos." It was a black comedy. We filmed it as written. Charlie Band, who ran Empire, called me the day after we wrapped and said he just read the script and it was too dark for his liking. He was taking away the title (because I had gotten such great publicity, including PEOPLE magazine), and keeping only half of what I shot. He was having his staff write some back story.

Thus my story about girl who offed scum bags just because they knew they could...now became a story about girls who were abused, etc and so on. But it was the film that was ultimately abused (and I'm using a nice word) by Band.

I talk about this at length on the commentary of the new PSYCHOS IN LOVE DVD release. (Of course, if I had seen what they did to Galactic Gigolo in post prior to filming this, I would have never made a second film for Band.)

Rent PSYCHOS. Avoid this piece of crap.

And if you're a filmmaker, and an idiot with money tries to tell you what to do with your film...I don't care how badly you want it...WALK AWAY.

After being raped and/or beaten up by men, high school grads Kate (Debi Thibeault), Michelle (Lisa Schmidt), Dianne (Simone) and Kathy (Karen Nielsen) turn vigilante and aspire to wipe out "scum-sucking @SSholes!" Slobs, bikers, barflies, wannabe rapists, anyone who hits on them with a bad come-on line and, in one case a guy who's just harmlessly walking down the street, are all wasted.

Each time violence or nudity is shown, the warning gimmicks "gore gong" and "hooter honk" (a horn) are sounded. It's fun at first, but runs itself into the ground pretty quickly. The girls tell each other it's time to get naked, whine when they get blood on their shoes and fight over who gets to kill who. The mock documentary approach (also used in Bechard's PSYCHOS IN LOVE), where characters talk directly to the camera, is fun and used well.

OK, this is desperate, stupid, senseless film-making and the cheap comic gags are often irritating, but it did make me laugh out loud several times.