“I’m no maiden! I’ve been a cheerleader for three years!”

Drake’s rating: Well, at least it’s not a Crown International flick

Drake’s review: The horror-comedy is a bit of an oddball in film. Both of the genres are very similar on the surface, relying on surprising the audience to garner an abrupt reaction, but the comedy wants the audience to laugh while a good horror film wants to make the viewer uncomfortable, and maybe eke out a scream or two.

These are very different goals, yet comedy and horror have been linked together since the beginning of the motion picture. As a matter of fact, the great Georges Méliès, an early innovator of film, directed and starred in the horror-comedy short A Terrible Night in 1896! The two genres were mixed again in at least a few silent films, although it was the teaming of Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard in the late 1930s and early ‘40s that proved the horror-comedy was a legitimate draw* and paved the way for Bud Abbot and Lou Costello meeting up with the Universal monsters a decade later, and for films such as Return of the Living Dead, Zombieland, and Tucker and Dale vs. Evil to find receptive audiences over the more recent decades.

But if there’s a decade in which the horror-comedy was virtually nonexistent, it was the ‘70s. Horror had become a serious business again, with films like The Exorcist and Jaws terrorizing audiences around the globe, and no one** was looking to make light of a genre that was bringing in the bucks.

Except Greydon Clark. Somehow, the future director of Joysticks and Angel’s Revenge came up with the idea to take a cheerleader flick, a popular attraction at the drive-in, and cram it together with a movie about a Satanic cult, another exploitation movie moneymaker. The results are… kind of weird.

Satan’s Cheerleaders starts off as a straight-up teen flick, with cheerleaders, bikinis, beach football, school rivalries, bumbling teachers, and water balloons. Then, around the halfway point, Satan’s minions intercede and everything becomes much more serious. It’s a jarring transition and, although a few bits of humor pop up in the last half, they seem misplaced by that point and don’t fit in with the darker tone the movie’s taken on.

The film centers around a cheerleading squad led by Patti (Kerry Sherman, 48 Hrs.) and watched over by their teacher Ms. Johnson (Jacqueline Cole, Angel’s Revenge) who get up to all sorts of teen-related exploits in the first half of the flick. But when the Satanic school janitor, Billy, uses black magic to make their car crash, the squad ends up in the back country, menaced on all sides by the Satanic sheriff (John Ireland, Waxwork II: Lost in Time), his Satanic wife (Yvonne De Carlo, Munster, Go Home!), a Satanic monk (Sydney Chaplin, son of Charlie) and a strange but probably not Satanic bum (John Carradine, and if I get started on his bad movie filmography I’’ll be here all day).

Cue the girls getting captured, escaping, getting captured again, escaping again, and finally getting captured one more time, just to close out the movie with a strange and confusing conclusion.

There are a few decent moments in the film, but nothing ever gels into a cohesive whole. The second half of Satan’s Cheerleaders takes itself far too seriously and the scant fun to be had in the first half is nowhere to be found. It’s an experiment at best, but one that should probably have been left to bubble away in a basement laboratory for another decade or two.

*The Hope/Goddadrd horror-comedies were in fact remakes of earlier silent films.

**Except Mel Brooks, although Young Frankenstein is a straight-up parody rather than a horror-comedy.

Intermission!

• Beach football is never going to replace beach volleyball.
• Hey, she threw a touchdown! She’s a better QB than Bryce Young!
• So far this is H.O.T.S. without all the nudity. I’m really gonna have to get around to reviewing that one.
• Boy, that sure is some disco on the soundtrack. Yes, it sure is.
• Beach teen stand-off! Although I don’t think any of them are really teens. More like beach twenty-somethings stand-off!
• I mean, it’s OBVIOUS Yvonne De Carlo is up to no good.
• This is a horror-comedy like Angel’s Revenge was an action-comedy.
• Patti has black magic powers. Could it be… SATAN?!
• What? Did that reference date me? I’m not old! You’re old!!! (Runs off sobbing)
• The Satanists run around in silly looking robes, not feeling foolish AT ALL.
• The dobermans are “Lucifer” and “Diablo.” Satanists are pretty bad about hiding their Infernal allegiances.
• It’s over! I guess? Did Satan have a C-note on the football game?