[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

THE MAJORETTES – Screwball slasher with ultimate zombie ‘Typhoid Mary’ Bill Hinzman at the helm. He doesn’t deliver another ‘Flesheater’ here, which is a pity as I consider that flick to be classic dreck. Instead, TM is pretty much by the numbers (it’s quite telling that its alternative title was ‘One By One’) before it swerves from its cookie-cutter high school stalk’n’kill set-up and flips out into a weird mixture of blackmail-based intrigue and Rambo. I expect the filmmakers were so desperate to make it work that they were just throwing any old shit at the wall to see what might stick (I haven’t read the John Russo paperback so can’t comment as to whether it’s all a dazzlingly intricate plotline that didn’t quite translate), but before the ludicrousness of that last half hour the scant horror moments are sandwiched between lots of scenes where people hang out after gym for a nice long chat. Missed opportunities fade out into the blur as the wheels slowly come off, like the weird religious imagery that accompanies the kills – yet another throwaway, it’s kind of there as a red herring almost. The style is drab and the acting wooden, and it only worked for me on that ‘this is the eighties’ bottom line, notwithstanding an overall silliness that just about kept me in.

CRYSTAL EYES – Interesting Argentinian giallo homage with a serious eighties fixation. It uses that old mainstay, the fashion house setting, to good effect in that it allows for a thorough wallow in excessive visual style. In fact the lush aesthetic of ‘Crystal Eyes’ can’t quite shake the underlying digital production, but that doesn’t stop the film from laying on a string of gaudy, candy coloured set pieces. Tonally, CE seems to alternate between melodramatic screechiness and blissed out flights into pure imagery – it can’t quite square the circle between those two and this affects the pacing, but I was drawn to such atmospheric highlights as a smoky chanteuse in monochrome doing a number on TV, not to mention the mannequin-like killer themselves. There are flaws but who cares when the film is capable of offering up such outrageous contrivances as the Argento crystal plumage-referencing kill at the end, so bluntly and artificially orchestrated that I laughed out loud. Maybe it’s all a bit tongue in cheek, but latter day giallo pastiches have become a bit of an indie staple in the last fifteen years or so and this is a good stab at that sort of thing.

Yet again sir ....