ALL CHEERLEADERS DIE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Two Cool Directors team up for cool babe-hunk-blood-fest!

Why does this provocatively posed BABE have BLOOD on her LIPS?

I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE...

All Cheerleaders Die (2013) ***1/2
Dir. Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson
Starring: Caitlin Stasey, Sianoa Smit-McPhee, Brooke Butler, Amanda Grace Cooper, Reanin Johannink, Tom Williamson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Okay kiddies, it's time once again to do the math. Get out your pencils and write down the following equation for success.

BABES + HUNKS + GRATUITOUS CHEERLEADING + LESBO ACTION + BUCKETS OF BLOOD = ALL CHEERLEADERS DIE by one of my all-time favourite sicko filmmakers Lucky McKee (May, The Woman) and his talented cult co-director Chris Sivertson (The Lost, I Know Who Killed Me).

Does it get better than this?

Not especially.

You've, of course heard the expression, "everything but the kitchen sink", mais non? Well, All Cheerleaders Die might best be described as everything including a shitload of kitchen sinks, congealed with months worth of scum and piled high with un-scrubbed mould-encrusted pots, pans and every imaginable kitchen receptacle and utensil. This foul, hilarious, revoltingly gross and sniggeringly juvenile mélange of Heathers, Bring It On and pretty much every teen horror film ever made and hereto-for known to man (and beast, especially beast) is one of the most offensively entertaining movies of the year. One might even accuse it of being utterly moronic, but its more mentally deficient moments are so clearly intentional that the film works as both satire and pure visceral horror.

Teenage girls are ALWAYS interested in physical fitness!

Maddy (Caitlin Stasey) is a babe who inexplicably hangs with the geek squad at school, but in spite of this, she's, like, uh, well, a babe. Our gal is hell-bent on revenge when she discovers that Terry Stankus (Tom Williamson), the hunky, mean-spirited, misogynist-asshole-dreamboat captain of the high school football team has immediately begun dating Tracy (Brooke Butler), an equally nasty babe who runs the cheerleading squad after Terry's girlfriend and Maddy's babe gal-pal bites the bullet during a freak cheerleading accident.

Are you with me, so far? I hope so. It's not rocket science. After all, who wouldn't be appalled when one's friend, like, dies and her scumbag boyfriend takes up with another ho'? Maddy's plans for revenge, however, will mightily piss off Leena (Sianoa Smit-McPhee), her kinda creepy babe roommate and ex-lesbo-lover who, as it turns out is a Wiccan priestess trying her hand at all manner of occult shenanigans.

For her part, Maddy exacts revenge with the aplomb of a some wily duplicitous Shakespearean minx, getting Terry Stankus (is that not one of the best character names in movie history?) and Tracy to begin questioning their devotion to each other. Adding insult to injury for macho Terry Stankus (I think I need to use this guy's full name all the time), Maddy seduces Tracy quite openly and the movie delivers some first-rate Lesbo-action for our edification.

Things really come to a head when Terry Stankus gets so jealous that he causes a fatal "accident" and it's Wiccan Leena who comes to the rescue by using her occult powers. Soon, we've got babes rising from the dead, becoming supremely horny (well, far more than usual), developing an unquenchable thirst for blood, a hankering for human flesh and a telepathic connection resulting in delightfully embarrassing results at school when even one of the cheerleaders achieves an explosive orgasm.

Needles to say, Terry Stankus needs to watch his really cute ass.

So, let's summarize, kiddies. Here's a handy checklist of delightful exploitative aberrations for you to enjoy: Witchcraft, Rising from the Dead, Vampirism, Necrophilia, Reverse-Necrophilia (don't ask), Cannibalism and Zombies. Add more Lesbo-action, straight boinking, Lesbo-rug-cleaning, flesh-ripping, blood-splashing, viscous-lapping, blood-drinking, flesh-eating, girls kissing boys, girls kissing girls, graveyard hijinks, more orgasms and nerdy guys losing their virginity and wondering why vaginas are so ice cold.

What can I say?

The movie delivers and delivers BIG TIME!!!

As it's Father's Day weekend, teenage girls should especially give the gift their Daddies will enjoy the most. Take them to the movies. Take them to see All Cheerleaders Die. They'll thank you for it. Dad might even buy you a new car if you use the movie as a cautionary tale in your post-screening discussion.

All Cheerleaders Die opens theatrically June 13, 2014 via Video Services Corp. (VSC) at the Carlton Cinema in Toronto. Demand that your local cinema get it NOW!!!

Here is a lovely selection of VSC (Video Services Corp.) titles you can buy directly from the links below, and in so doing, contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner:

THE WOMAN - DVD Review By Greg Klymkiw

From the demented minds of Lucky McKee and Jack Ketchum comes this  utterly sickening horror nasty involving the kidnapping of a sexy feral woman, her violation and revenge. 

The Woman (2011) dir. Lucky McKee
Starring: Pollyanna McIntosh, Sean Bridgers, Angela Bettis, Lauren Ashley Carter, Zach Rand, Shyla Molhusen

****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The Cleek family are living the American Dream! Chris (Sean Bridgers) is a successful back country real estate lawyer with loads of cash, oodles of prime land, a beautiful, devoted wife Belle (Angela Bettis) who puts June Cleaver to shame, three lovely kids including his chip-off-the-old-block son Brian (Zach Rand), a cute-as-a-button little girl with a name to match, Darlin' (Shyla Molhusen) and Peggy (Lauren Ashley Carter), an intelligent, attractive teenage Emo girl privately suffering morning sickness due to possibly being impregnated by her Dad. In the barn are some crazed German Shepherds and a blind, naked feral woman raised with the dogs and tended to by Brian who physically abuses them.

Like all corn-and-steak-fed American men, Chris wakes early in the morning, eats breakfast lovingly prepared by Belle and then, packing a scope rifle and adorned in hunting garb, he smiles and declares how much he loves the quiet of the country before revving up his ATV and tear-assing into the woods for some hunting. To complete this portrait of All-American bliss, one of his hunting trips yields a live trophy - a buxom, beautiful, feral woman from the backwoods that he manacles in the fallout shelter where she is forced to eat food from the floor and/or a Tupperware container and gets scrubbed raw by wifey after being good and hosed down by Dad. When she's first introduced to the family, one of the kids asks if they can really keep her. The answer from Dad is a resounding: YES! After all, she needs to be civilized - a charitable act on Dad's part; even more charitable considering she's already bitten off his ring finger when all he wanted to do was inspect her teeth.

Trussed up and manacled in the dank fallout shelter, the civilization process includes being raped late into the night by Chris while son Brian watches jealously through a peephole. The lovely daughters sleep soundly in their warm, comfortable beds and wifey Belle weeps in the properly accoutered conjugal boudoir at the thought of hubby getting his manly satisfaction elsewhere and, of course, as any eager All American Boy would do, the feral woman, is eventually tortured with wire cutters and sexually abused by the randy little chip-off-the-old-block.

America.

Love it or leave it.

As rendered by director Lucky McKee and his co-screenwriter Jack Ketchum, The Woman is, without a doubt, one of the most foul, wanton and viciously humorous movies of the new millennium. It also seems to be a part of a new wave of films (including those of the brilliant Bobcat Goldthwait) which take family dysfunction several steps further - where dysfunctional depravity has become the norm.

McKee has his actors play everything in a straight deadpan. There isn't a single, out-of-place performance in the entire movie. McKee's mise-en-scene is distinctively sun-dappled-with-dollops-of-blood-and-nastiness and the movie works as both vicious satire and thriller. To say the movie is brutal, would be an understatement of the highest order, but the horrors on display never feel cheap and exploitative the way most torture porn horror films are. This is a savage, raw-nerve-ending-exposed portrait of life in the mean, new America.

As such, it's an unflinching, unyielding ride on the locomotive of excess that has turned one of the world's strongest nations into a veritable third-world country. The movie requires a strong stomach and open mind - anything less and you'll feel like you stepped into your worst nightmare.

So grit your teeth, gird your loins and, enjoy!

"The Woman" was a closing night film at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2011. It's currently available on Blu-Ray and DVD via Bloody Disgusting and The Collective. Special features include a mediocre "making-of", deleted scenes and an okay short Film entitled "Mi Burro".