Cemetery High

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.

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.

I found out about this movie from a friend. He said it was the only movie ever that he was not able to watch all the way through. That sounded like a challenge to me and I am so glad I watched it. It's very Troma-like except that the jokes are actually funny and they don't show the gore. The only thing I didn't like was that they rarely used the Gore Gong. It would have been funnier if they had used it every time someone died. Most low budget movies have a lot of things that don't make sense and this movie really only had one instance of that. They show an older married couple in their kitchen for eleven seconds. They never talk and there is nothing in the movie to explain why they are there or who they are until the end credits. I've seen some reviews here crying that the title is misleading. Those people must only watch Oscar winners because at least half of the movies I watch have titles that don't make sense. This is a good movie. Watch it.

I was Facebook friends with Carmine Capobianco (really nice guy, btw). I mentioned something about wanting to see all of his movies, and he actually told me "You can probably skip Cemetery High". And damned if he wasn't right-it's pretty bad 😣😣😣

Start with Psychos In Love or Galactic Gigolo instead...

My review was written in July 1989 after watching the movie on Unicorn video cassette.

"Cemetery High" is a threadbare horror comedy being released direct to video.

Made-in-Connecticut pic originally was titled "Assault of the Killer Bimbos" when lensed for Charles Band's Empire Pictures in June 1987, but that catchy moniker was reassigned several months later by Empire to a west-coast lensed feature instead.

With backyard movie production values, talky tale concerns a quartet of angry women who following high school graduation become vigilantes to wipe out "male slimeballs", after having been assaulted. Led by Debi Thibeault, they later recruit voluptuous Ruth Collins to join their army and help in the seduction of unwitting males.

Flat line readings by much of the cast and too many unfunny in-jokes and self-references to the film progress sink this exercise. Old-fashioned gimmick of inserting shots of a Gore Gong and Hooter Honk to announce impending explicit violence or nudity merely breaks up the action in tiresome fashion. Gore content turns out to be relatively tame.