Considering their mutual dependence on hot, 20-something actresses pretending to be clothing-adverse teenagers, combining a slasher film with a teen-titty comedy does sound like a natural fit, but efforts like Cheerleader Camp quickly prove this isn’t the case. Instead of just ending up with a terrible slasher movie, the filmmakers involved inevitably make something much, much worse: a terrible, bitterly unfunny slasher comedy.

Set in a strange, bizarro world where adults who have clearly graduated from college are slaughtered willy nilly while gathered together in a wilderness summer camp location to practice horribly choreographed cheerleading routines, the film doggedly reproduces only the worst aspects of both genres, with the result that you find yourself covering your eyes whenever it tries to be funny, and laughing out loud when it attempts to be frightening.

Chances are, however, you’re going to watch Cheerleader Camp anyway, since it features what has to be one of the most intriguing exploitation casts the period ever produced. Where else are you going to find a balding ’70s teen idol has-been (Skateboard’s Leif Garrett), two ’80s B-movie icons (Private School’s Betsy Russell and Breakin’ starlet Lucinda Dickey), two of the era’s most infamous Playboy Playmates (Rebecca Ferratti, who became a tabloid sensation after describing life in the “harem” of the Sultan of Brunei, and Teri Weigel, the only centerfold in the magazine’s history to become a hardcore pornstar), and George “Buck” Flower (They Live) to top it all off?

A perfect example of what happens when cynical filmmakers attempt to produce a saleable product instead of a good movie, Cheerleader Camp is one of those miserable experiences every genre fan has to suffer through because the cast, poster art and concept are too much to resist, resist it though they should. —Allan Mott

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Dan Curtis’ Burnt Offerings comes from that era in horror when the genre was a chic gig for Oscar winners and A-list talent, rather than any given season’s crop of young, cheap TV supporting players. This one has Oliver Reed, Karen Black, Burgess Meredith and even the grand bitch herself, Bette Davis.

Reed and Black portray the Rolfs, who — with son Davey (Lee Montgomery) and Aunt Elizabeth (Davis) in tow — rent a sprawling Gothic manse for the summer for $900. Seems too good to be true? It is, because there’s a catch: Thrice a day, they are to set out a plate for the unseen 85-year-old woman who never comes out of her room. RUN!!!

Not only do they not run, but Mrs. Rolf does what she’s warned not to do: entering the coot’s room. After doing so, she starts acting all weird. Her hubby also starts exhibiting strange behavior — well, if attempting to drown your own kid counts. (Is it? I can’t keep track of things like “laws.”)

You get the idea Reed was just doing this slow stepper for beer money, because he tends not to invest much in it beyond teeth clinching. No one told Davis, however, who overacts the hell out of things, to the point where you can feel her arrogance seething through your TV. At least the ending is kinda cool, if expected. Was that scripted or was Reed so tanked he slipped? —Rod Lott

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As Elisabeth Shue so famously warned in Adventures in Babysitting, “Don’t fuck with the babysitter!” It’s a quote that Angie Albright (Sarah Thompson, Cruel Intentions 2) neither utters nor paraphrases in Babysitter Wanted (which should not be confused with the ’80s Touchstone teen comedy), but certainly embodies, if a little too late.

Angie’s a good, Christian girl-next-door type who moves away from her devout mom to study art history at college in a small town where young women have been disappearing. Smooth move! Needing money to buy a bed, she takes a job babysitting one night for Sam (Kai Caster), a cute but shy only child who always wears cowboy gear and drinks buttermilk. He lives with his parents in a middle-of-nowhere farmhouse.

Everything goes well until the some big, bald man with scars all over his face tries to bust his way inside, recalling — how could it not? — John Carpenter’s Halloween. But debuting co-directors Jonas Barnes (who also wrote) and Michael Manasseri have a trick up their collective sleeve, and odds are that you won’t be able to guess at least the most twisted part of it.

Unfortunately, from there, this otherwise better-than-expected Babysitter loses all its juice. Its greatest asset, Thompson, spends most of the remaining time tied up and gagged, listening to one character go into exposition overdrive for a situation that could be explained in just a couple of lines. It’s not the great Bill Moseley, incidentally, who plays a cop sympathetic to Angie’s plight. She’s so darned cute, who wouldn’t? —Rod Lott

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If you’re ever boarding a commercial airline and the pilot happens to mention it’s his last flight before retirement and a long vacation with the grandkids, turn around and get off! Because there’s a middle-aged housewife zombie locked up in the cargo bay and she. Wants. Out.

The proof is in Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane, which is like Snakes on a Plane, minus the snakes, adding the undead, but keeping same the ratio of “fuck” and its variations to all other words spoken. I’m fairly certain the subtitle only exists to hammer this point home, and even potentially confuse/trick viewers too clueless to know the difference.

Soap actor David Chisum is no Samuel L. Jackson, but his FBI agent has a gun. So does Richard Tyson as a federal marshal with a beret that, at certain angles, make his hair look like Princess Leia. There are three super-hot flight attendants (that’s how you know it’s fiction) on the Paris-bound plane, one pro golfer whose carry-on is a golden putter, Kevin J. O’Connor in the John Malkovich role of kooky criminal, several douchebags and, eventually, a jumbo jet full of zombies that just seem to come out of nowhere, despite the confined setting.

Once it gets going, Flight is awfully fun, but it could’ve been more fun, had the whole of it played things as over-the-top as the last chunk of scenes. One moment even veers into the purposely slapstick deaths of the great Final Destination 2. It gives you a lot of simple-minded entertainment for your ticket, but no free bag of peanuts. —Rod Lott

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Popular legend has it that when Zombie High was (very briefly) released to theaters, its distributor printed the negative with the reels in the wrong order and nobody could tell the difference. True or not, there’s no denying the film has a jagged, unfinished feel to it that is simply too strong to be overcome by its talented cast and a plot ripe with satiric potential.

Virginia Madsen — at the height of her Virginia Madsen-ness — plays a scholarship student at a prestigious prep academy, which has just started admitting female students (including her roommate, Sherilyn Fenn, only then at the cusp of her potential Sherilyn Fenn-ness). Despite its reputation and successful alumni, there’s something definitely off about the students at the school. Turns out, they’re all emotionless zombies whose brains have been drained to provide the serum necessary to keep its ageless faculty members alive.

Despite acknowledging the comic possibilities of its plot in the third act, Zombie High ends up being a dry, flaccid movie that completely fails to take what it has and turn it into something entertaining. As a result, the few moments that do stand out seem to have happened more by accident than design. That it ends with a bizarre animated sequence apparently inspired by similar sequences found in Savage Steve Holland’s Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer only adds to the confusion.

A horror/comedy that is never frightening or funny, Zombie High is one of those films that prove that an interesting concept is ultimately powerless against a terrible script and incompetent execution.—Allan Mott

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