Tragica notte al bowling

What do expect? Just glance at the title and this will give you a good indication of what is in store for you while watching this movie. This movie never was meant to be a great horror or comedy movie. There were no intentions of it being serious, Watch this movie with the expectations of poor acting, absurd circumstances, poor characters, bad lines, topless girls, sexual situations and language, violence and a mixture of horror, and comedy. This is what I expected and this is what I got. It's a fun movie with enough going for it that it does keep your attention. Don't expect a very serious film, lighten up, laugh at the bad lines and situations and you could find this to be somewhat enjoyable.

Although I hold Dave DeCouteau, Fred Olen Ray, and Jim Wynorski personally responsible for the decline of the low-budget horror genre into brain-dead comedy and boring, softcore porn, they did create a handful of relatively non-awful movies between them. This is probably DeCouteau's best movie ever (kind of like being the best venereal disease ever, I know). For one thing it doesn't all take place in one house. There are three (!) bonafide locations: a sorority house, a dorm room, and, of course, a bowl-a-rama. It also features three of the most famous 80's "scream queens"--Brinke Stevens, Michelle Bauer, and Linnea Quigley. And though two of the three of them do the obligatory undraping scenes, DecCouteau doesn't use the nudity to simply paper over the total lack of a plot a la his earlier "Nightmare Sisters", for instance, which features the three of them cavorting in a hot tub for what seems like half the movie (even though by the late 80's seeing this ubiquitous trio naked was about as exciting as peeping on your spouse of ten years). And while the movie, like most vintage DeCouteau, is painfully unfunny, it does have a creative and completely off-the-wall plot (which was probably cribbed from "Hell Night", "The Initiation", and/or "The Outing", but nevermind). Catching this late at night on "USA Up All Night" fifteen years or so ago, I even remember being mildly entertained (even if I probably wasn't too sober at the time). OK, it still sucks, but if you are ever forced at gunpoint to watch something from the DeCouteau-Ray-Wynorski collective oeuvre you could do (a lot) worse.

This film is the work of the auteur DeCoteau and boasts of a cast that contains three members of the All-Century Eye Candy team (Brinke Stevens, Michelle Bauer, and Linnea Quigley). The underlying message of this film is the horrors of hazing within the Greek system and its potential for things to go bad. The two pledges are played by the ever-so-lovely Ms. Stevens and the majestic beauty Ms. Bauer. Our third All-Century member, the sultry Ms. Quigley appears at a later juncture but alas does not play a role that allows her to bare her soul. However, Ms. Stevens (ahhh!) and Ms. Bauer (oooh!) give a knockout performance as a 1-2-3 punch: they get paddled, then sprayed with whipped cream, followed by a shower. Further into the film , Ms. Bauer gets to show more of her talents when her character gets possessed. Unfortunately, we here at the academy can't give classic status to this film. However, don't deny the fact that 2/3 of the All-Century team deliver the goodies and that is a winning percentage.

"Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama" is an enjoyable b-movie horror-flick/boobfest from David DeCoteau, who directed this one before he found his homoerotic side.

The plot concerns two sorority pledges, played by b-movie scream queens Michelle Bauer and Brinke Stevens, who are instructed to break into a bowling alley by their potential sisters. They are accompanied by a trio of '80s nerds, identifiable by the fact that they wear glasses and ugly shirts. One of them in the requisite fat-guy-who-is-always-eating. I guess his presence is what makes this a horror "comedy"; all '80s boob comedies featured this character as a mainstay, but I can't think of too many straight-horror flicks that did.

Anyway, after getting their panty-covered butts paddled and giving us a requisite shower scene, the girls go to the bowling alley with their dorky chaperones. They expect to have to break in but find the doors unlocked, which is sort-of explained by one of the sorority sisters having a father who owns the mall. At least they TRIED to explain that unbelievable stroke of luck.

When they go inside, the holy trinity of scream queens is completed by none other than Linnea Quigley playing her usual bad girl role, but hey, she does it so well, and looks stunning here. Disappointingly, she doesn't get naked, but you can't have everything.

Anyway, the movie makes what feels like a belated, and perhaps even unnecessary, detour into horror territory when a trophy the girls are supposed to steal is dropped, and releases a mysterious gas, which in movies like these, always indicates that a "spirit" or supernatural creature of some kind has been set free.

Is this the only movie ever with a haunted trophy? It's got to be the only movie with a haunted BOWLING trophy. I guess they think that a trophy looks enough like a lamp that they can just swap one for the other and nobody will notice.

What the movie refers to as an "imp" materialises, having apparently been stuck in said trophy before it was dropped (they didn't even have to rub it?). This creature looks like something made in ceramics class by an unusually talented twelve year old. I don't mind that the claymation to make the thing talk is predictably shoddy. But they could have at least painted it or something.

The imp's voice is also a really strange touch. It's not in any way a typical monster, horror movie voice. It sounds like a gay Jamaican after a stroke.

The imp offers our heroes some wishes, but also possesses some other people, and you can pretty much fill in the blanks from there. I confess I sort of lost interest when the movie went into tiresome slasher mode, but there were a few other things that set this one apart:

1. One of the nerds asks the imp to allow him to have sex with Michelle Bauer (hell, wouldn't you?) And they get what seems like an endless series of scenes together. The movie keeps cutting away to scenes of action elsewhere as the horror movie plot develops, and then cutting back to Bauer and the nerd. And back. And back. And back. It makes you wonder how long they were supposed to be together for. Each time we revisit the two, Bauer has less clothes on than before. It's like they're playing the world's slowest game of strip poker.

2. I haven't mentioned it yet, because it really goes without needing to be mentioned with movies like these, that Stevens, particularly, looks too old to be in college, and especially to be young enough to be trying to join a sorority, which is something I assume people do when they first start university. But what's unusual is that there is a janitor character who is apparently supposed to be old, hard-of-hearing and senile, and yet clearly isn't old enough for at least two of those. Movies are always trying to make us believe actors are younger than they really are. It's not often that they try to make us think actors are old and decrepit when they clearly aren't, at least out of Hollywood biopics.

3. Lastly, there is a pretty cool scene where someone bowls with a decapitated head. I mean, in a horror movie set in a bowling alley, how can you not include that?

"Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama" is an entertaining flick that is obviously a much-watch for b-movie and '80s horror fans for its featuring Stevens, Bauer and Quigley in the one movie. However, strange as it is to say, I wish it hadn't gone to typical-slasher toward the end there. That's when it becomes a lot less fun.

As I said in my review of Night of the Demons, this is another example of enjoyable 80s indulgence in sex charged portrayals of comely young women. This time we get nice full frontal views of two babes. Sadly, neither of them is the babelicious Linnea Quigley, although the two who do bare it all have nicely enjoyable assets of their own. The way Linnea looks in her skin tight spandex pants and bare midriff tells you it would have been quite a treat to see her bare it all. Ah well. The plot, such at it is, revolves around sorority candidates trying to make the grade by stealing a bowling trophy from the local bowling alley. They're accompanied by horny frat boys who were caught ogling them in the bathroom. Bad things ensue when the trophy turns out to contain a demonic "imp" with supernatural powers and the ability to grant wishes. Linnea plays a tough, hard edged bad girl robbing the place.

The film is fair escapist fun. I found myself attracted to its wonderfully cheesy title, which has to be one of the best ever. An aspect of the film that's annoying is that one of the horny frat boys instantly transforms into an "I'm shy and not ready for it" idiot when he's granted what he wished for: To have one of the girls be a sex maniac eager to have him.