Haven't done one of these in a while. Had a busy morning with a job interview. Hope that goes well. Then I decided to get a double dose of crap. My daughter, Dandelion watched the first one with me. Martha listened in and made fun of the second one with me. Ready? Here we go.
CHEERLEADER MASSACRE
From the fabulous Jim Wynorski, we get, well a Jim Wynorski film. You know the one. Bunch of hot girls, a cabin out in the woods, hot tubs with dozens of bottles of chocolate syrup nearby. You know! A Jim Wynorski film!
Anyway, there are a group of cheerleaders that are on their way to a game or something. One of them gets killed before they leave the locker room. They run out of gas because of a busted fuel line and are forced to hike to the aforementioned cabin.
We find out that this killer, Jeremiah McPherson is on the loose and in the area and the body count is rising.
But, something is not right. The MO is off.
Is Jeremiah McPherson their only worry?
CHEERLEADER MASSACRE is a fun throwback to the slasher films of old. Not the good ones, but the low rent type. Think SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE without the wit and originality and you're on the right track.
It's a Wynorski flick so the amount of boobs are humongous, as a re the actual boobs. The acting is deplorable, but there are lots of boobs. The interesting part of this is half of the female cast manages to keep their tops on. So, how does genius Wynorski deal with this? He has the comic relief, Buzzy, tell a story about three girls running from a killer and winding up at a cabin that has a big bath tub and, conveniently enough, several bottles of chocolate syrup lined up next to it. You can guess what goes on at that point.
For a film of this caliber there are some interesting ideas going on here. It's really the one true twist in the flick so, I won't spoil it here.
We get a few intersting kills, the one where the killer lets the hose run under the feet of a woman trying to turn the power box back on and when she flips the switch gets toasted was the best one. Wynorski manages to blend some high budget stock footage into the film to give it a better feel.
Finally, I have to mention that the power gets knocked out of the cabin early on in the flick. Apparently it is a weird fuse box that lets certain rooms have power while others don't. Just adds to the hilarity of what is CHEERLEADER MASSACRE.
YETI, CURSE OF THE SNOW DEMON
As is the rules with any SyFy film, we get a flashback to the 70's so that we can see the titular beast kill someone. Then we hit the Present Day signage and start the movie! We have a college football team on their way to Tokyo for an exhibition game. This has them flying over the Himalayas. Well, until their idiot pilots crash the plane because they don't know how to fly over the storm.
This leaves us with a handful of college kids, a large piece of the fuselage to use as a set, uh I mean shelter. And the Yeti roaming the countryside looking for food of the college kid variety.
The movie tries to incorporate aspects of a monster flick with the stranded in the mountains how long til we eat our friends genre. The one guy, Ravin, (and with a douche name like that you knew he was a douche before he started acting like a douche) starts screaming for human flesh pretty early on. Reminded me of that South Park episode where they are trapped for a couple of hours in a snowstorm and then they eat Eric Roberts.
The captain of the football team tries to keep the survivors together, but douche bag Ravin is sabotaging him at every corner. Their biggest issue, besides the yeti, is that the tail of the plane is nowhere near the black box/locator device they need so the search party can find them.
The 'search party' being Sheppard (Peter Deluise) and Fury (Ona Grauer) and, because of the weather, are on foot.
Now it's a race against time before the Yeti runs out of dead bodies and starts craving something a little fresher.
YETI, CURSE OF THE SNOW DEMON is not a bad film. It's a SyFy film so it already was brought into the world with a chip on it's shoulder, trying to prove itself. I was impressed that the CGI was at a minimum, used for the plane crash and only when the Yeti ran or jumped. Yes, apparently, Yeti can jump in a way that would put Mario to shame. But, for the rest of the film, it was a guy in a suit. It wasn't a bad suit, but it wasn't a great suit.
No real acting to speak of to get in the way of the action. Jerry Gross' horrid black and white film MANBEAST is still a better Yeti flick, but this one tried to make it different with the plane crash survivors with the haunting possibility of cannibalism.
Best part of the film is two of the football players go in search of the black box. They get cornered by the Yeti and try to squeeze through a crevasse. The little guy makes it (probably their goal kicker, yeah, I know a lot about football), when he tries to help his bulkier buddy all he manages to get is the big guy's arm. Later, when he breaks his leg he uses his buddy's arm as a split. This was so cool! I'm pretty sure I never saw this before ever. A bright ray of sunshine in an otherwise mediocre flick.
