Retratos da Morte

A killer is going around in an army camouflage jumpsuit slicing up the desirable high school majorettes with their trusty knife and leaving their bodies immerse in water. Lt. Roland Martell is put onto the case with the help of the local sheriff, but the body count is rising. There are some punk bikers and their leader is a prime suspect, but could it be the perverted school janitor or maybe his deceiving mother who plans to take over the inheritances of the old lady she's looking after.

What in the name?! This is one extremely patchwork film that has so much going on in its heavily plotted premise that it feels like everything has been chucked into a blender. Yummy camp that's frightening for all the wrong reasons. I was rubbing my eyes in disbelief in how ridiculously stupid it gets! What starts off as your conventional copy and paste high school slasher turns into an embarrassing revenge action story. Huh? Where did that come from? We watch one of the characters go "Rambo" on us. It's raining down gunfire and unnecessary explosions. Pure anarchy! These sudden incomprehensible shifts in the fitful story truly made it one unpredictable smörgåsbord of gratuitous 80s cheese. The slasher element is poorly done, but sticks to the main gruel. Vixens who get their clothes off when they can. A POV shot with heavy breathing to inform us it's the killer. Bloody murders (although they are mostly the same old repetitive kills; knife to the throat routine) on "unexpected" victims. And red herrings around each corner. The banal nature of this segment suddenly turned moronic in falling by the wayside. The a-wire action is plain bizarre, and rather guilty entertainment. A lot people bite the dust and there are unexpected surprises in who does too. Sounds complicated… well no, just messy and padded out.

Some of the key players in Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" are who to thank for this shamble. The premise is taken from writer John Russo's own novel and the script he dragged off it is completely insipid and dank across the board. Is the novel that bad? The amateurishly leaden acting makes matters even worse and there's no real central figure rounding it off. The ladies in the picture look nice, but do little else. Bill Hinzman (zombie in the graveyard in the opening scene of "Night of the Living Dead") is in the director's chair, but you wouldn't know it. One or two decent stalk scenes are there, but there wasn't much control and direction seemed quite non-existent. Being plastered with a low budget immensely brings it down and leaves a lot to be desired. The off-kilter story just didn't make too much sense or did the other pointlessly out-of-left-field sub-plots to the bigger picture. It feels fairly longer than it actually is and this erratic mood swings enhanced it even more. A tacky one-note music score is especially jerky and the stale camera-work only hurts your eyes. Mindlessly idiotic and mundane accurately sums up the hack-eyed presentation and feeble production.

This z-grade stinker entertains in its unintentional wackiness, but you can find yourself doing it tough in a glut of unbearable shoddiness. Be afraid… be very afraid.

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.

Hey … what's with all the harsh and negative reviews on "The Majorettes"? I watched this movie before checking out what people thought or even taking a glimpse at the rating and thought it was a surprisingly enjoyable film! I was convinced it would have some loyal fans among the reviewers, but strangely enough practically all comments are discouraging others to see it. Well then allow me to be one of the only souls on the Internet promoting this eighties action/horror oddity!

Avid and knowledgeable fans of the genre will immediately recognize two of the displayed names in the opening credits of "The Majorettes"; i.e. John Russo and Bill Hinzman. Both these gentlemen played fundamental roles in the establishment of one of the greatest milestones in cinema of all time; George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead". Russo was the co-writer and Hinzman played the legendary cemetery zombie with whom the invasion of the dead all begun. They went onwards with lesser successful careers in the 80's (Russo wrote and directed the obscure "Midnight" and Hinzman put together the dreadful "Flesheater"), but "The Majorettes" was their mini-reunion!

That being said, "The Majorettes" opens exactly like you expect an 80's horror movie with such a lurid title to start! With a posse of chicks in tight gym suits doing aerobics to the tunes of dreadful pop music and then collectively stripping nude to hit the showers. So far so good, I'd say… After that it's getting even more typically 80's with voyeuristic janitors, love-making couples getting slashed in the backwoods and harsh bullying all within a span of five minutes! "The Majorettes" can overall be filed in the slasher cabinet, but there's certainly more than meets the eye. The plot is reasonably ambitious and there are some clear attempts to generate tension and atmosphere in between all the gratuitous nudity and brutal gore. A vicious killer dressed in a military camouflage outfit goes around slitting the throats of high school majorettes. The local drug dealer and boyfriend of the first victim is the main suspect, but it seems that the real killer has much more religious motivations for his killing spree.

I spent quite a number of years looking for "The Majorettes" before finding it on a DVD-compilation along with "Hell High" and "Hitcher in the Dark". I have no idea why it's so relatively obscure, as it really isn't any worse than the vast majority of 80's stalk & slash movies. Quite the contrary, at least this movie tries to insert some significant twists and additional story lines. It's a mishmash of obvious red herrings and genuinely inventive plot twists. The whodunit factor is reasonably well-structured and effectively keeps you guessing along. The teen characters are also surprisingly likable and not at all the stereotypical bimbo-dimwits you anticipate to encounter in this sort of films. The acting is adequate (the copper with the mustache not included), there's plenty of excitement and the special effects are pretty cool. As far as yours truly is concerned, "The Majorettes" is one of the slasher-sleepers of the decade and urgently needs a fan base!

PS: Keep an eye open for the sequences with the grandmother! She looks as she had no idea she was on a film set!

A big, camouflage wearing psycho killer is going around offing the girls in a high school cheerleading squad. It's up to the local Sheriff (Mark V. Jevicky) and a big shot detective (Carl Hetrick) to weed through the possible suspects. One recurring clue: this killer seems to have a thing for the purifying qualities of water.

At first glance, this would seem to be a VERY typical slasher, albeit one directed by the legendary Cemetery Zombie of "Night of the Living Dead", S. William Hinzman, and scripted by John A. Russo, based on his novel. There's zero suspense and zero scares, but Hinzman goes through the motions adequately, serving up lots of nudity and violence. Some of the actors are reasonably amiable, but the performances are, by and large, amateurish and dull. (Russ Streiner, a.k.a. Johnny in NotLD, appears here as a pontificating priest.) The trying-to-ape- John-Carpenter electronic score is good for some chuckles, to be sure.

Where this actually gets interesting is at the two thirds mark. Here, the killer gets revealed, and even if you've guessed their identity correctly, it's a hoot that the way that the plot thickens. Then the killer, due to their compromising position, is obliged to help a character from a subplot take care of their problem. (Reminding this viewer of the 1975 Giallo "The Killer Must Kill Again".) Things go bad for almost everybody, and eventually the story turns into a tried-and- true revenge saga! This finale comes complete with some nifty explosions and bloody squib action.

The final third of the picture may be a turn-off for some die hard slasher fans, but just speaking personally, it's what helped to make "The Majorettes" more than just run-of-the-mill for this viewer.

Seven out of 10.

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.