By Geno McGahee
A straight to video horror movie from the 80s is usually gold and I had high hopes for the 1989 slasher by the name of “SLASHDANCE,” but there were some reservations immediately. The film had a few wrestlers from G.L.O.W. and any time you get wrestlers in film, it is usually a sign that it is going to suck. I decided to watch it anyway and hope for the best and I’m glad that I did.
Tori Raines (Cindy Ferda) is a detective that has impressed a lot of people with her work. She is cool under fire and even cool when dealing with a pervert that flashes her on the beach. Rupert (John Bluto) shows up in a trench coat as Tori gets some sun and does a poem about his cock and then whips it out only to be insulted. He storms away. Immediately, I had high hopes for this film. When Tori gets up, you get the tight shot of her purse and she makes sure her badge and gun are in there. Now we know she’s a cop.
Repo (Queen Kong) and Mavis (Kelle Favara) set up a meeting with Tori to sell her some steroids and this is where we see the G.L.O.W. acting come in. They deliver the lines with high volume and over the top, but it sort of goes with the atmosphere of this film. Repo screaming “we got the steroids” is pretty funny, but the fight scenes are terrible. This was obviously to establish Tori as a bad ass as she bounced around the two big girls, but the fight choreography was not what I would call top notch.
On top of dealing with some angry big girls, Tori has to deal with a total prick of a boss in Captain Edison (John Henry Richardson). Edison is not a PC sort of guy and makes some pretty crude comments and suggestive remarks like “that’s quite a bust”. He aspires to bigger things and wants to keep the department quiet and without controversy, but a problem arises when girls begin to disappear, all linked to a theater in town. A man in a mask has gone on a killing spree and now Tori must go undercover to find out who the killer is.
Logan (James Carroll Jordan) is coming in to direct a show at the theater in question and it’s big news, especially for Oliver (William Kerr) and his slow brother, Amos (J. Buzz Von Ornsteiner). Remarkably, they have the dick-exposing pervert, Rupert, working for them and helping with the upcoming show, but that doesn’t last long when Tori makes the cut and becomes part of the production. When Rupert shows his dick again, she scares him off, but there are other problems like the killer, Edison demanding for her to back off the case, her partner trying to screw her and the endless dance routines that the viewer has to sit through. This film has A LOT of filler.
Logan arrives and puts the girls through their routine as Amos creeps around and a killer starts knocking them off, but the film keeps just showing the dance routine over and over again. This reminded me of LAS VEGAS BLOODBATH, where there is a good movie in there but instead of flushing out the idea, they did what they could to get it to feature length. Both films are still good but they could have been so much better.
Repo and Mavis re-appear and let Tori know that they found the killer and have beaten him up, only to discover that they kicked the shit out of Edison. Now Edison is my favorite character by far, but he really turned on the overacting here. Tori helps him up and he starts ranting that he was jumped by 20 men and began sobbing. It was fucking hilarious.
We get the big reveal and it’s not a huge surprise but they didn’t do much to build up the killer…although the motives were quite unique. As I said, there was a really good movie in here somewhere but they just didn’t get it done in the end.
SLASHDANCE is worth a watch for those that have an appreciation for the 1980s shot on video flicks. This feels like CITY IN PANIC or ZIPPERFACE, but just isn’t as good. Props to John Henry Richardson and J. Buzz Von Ornsteiner for bringing a lot of laughs. There is a lot here to enjoy but the never-ending dance sequences should have been cut down, and sometimes they went too far into the direction of comedy for it to be effective. In the end though, SLASHDANCE was a great deal of fun and I really enjoyed it. I recommend it.
Rating: 5/10
