By: Frank

 

It's hard to pinpoint, but there's some bizarre connection between early 80's horror spoofs and horse jokes. The excellent Student Bodies had its horse head bookends, and a year later Pandemonium had not only a Canadian Mountie horse as the subject of numerous jokes, but  also a horse head mask-wearing corpse. Maybe it was the popularity of films like The Black Stallion, or maybe it was latent beast lust on a grand scale. Maybe people were just retarded in the 80's. I'd be retarded if it meant I could take a time machine back to that time.

 

Director Alfred Sole, known for directing the influential 1976 slasher film Alice, Sweet Alice, created this spoof of the genre with the help of a Rock 'n' Roll High School co-writer and an all-star cast, including Judge Reinhold, Carol Kane, Tom Smothers, and theater masturbationist and children's favorite Paul Reubens.

 

 

The plot follows a group of young women and men attending a summer cheerleading camp with a history of serial murder. After two killers escape from nearby institutions, one from prison and the other from an asylum, they show up at the camp and start a killin'.

 

Pandemonium is stacked high with self-referential humor and straight-up weirdness, and it serves to further proove that the horror/comedy mixture is as fertile as the fanciest of manures. After watching this, I'm pretty psyched about doing more reviews for the "Horror Spoofs" section.

 

Paul Reubens is awesome as Mountie Smothers' assistant, elevating the role with the Herman-esque strangeness he brought to the greatest of Cheech and Chong frolics, Nice Dreams, a year earlier. Carol King shines in a role that proves she was once a hot piece. I also really enjoyed Judge Reinhold and Teri Landrum, the latter being perfectly cast as a blonde ditz. Despite an her limited career, she' s got an 80's-style hotness you won't find in movies anymore, and like it.

 

 

This is perfect example of a movie that really should be on DVD,  if only for the interesting all-star cast and smirky humor. For horror fans, there's no gore and not even that much actual horror atmosphere. But in mocking the stupid conventions of slasher and comedy films of the era, it succeeds.

 

Pandomonium is not an ultra-expensive VHS, but still it's probably not worth the money it goes for on Amazon. I'd say go the bootleg route, but not before you at least bother MGM through e-mail or (preferably) snail mail about releasing this on DVD.

 

 

Fun facts:

• The working title was Tuesday the 12th, a full year after that joke had been used by Saturday the 14th. Question: while they avoided looking like rip-off artists by changing the title, was "Pandemonium" really much better? Answer: no.
• Other famous people in this movie include:  The late, very great Phil Hartman; David Lander (best known as Squiggy on 'Lavern & Shirley') two years before was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis; and Edie McClurg, a well-known face from 80's entertainment who played the school secretary in Ferris Beuller's Day Off.

 

 

Things Pandemonium parodies:

• The Wolf Man
• Carrie
• John Carpenter's Halloween
• Giallo films
• Ed Gein's human-parts household items
• Canadians
• 1940's musicals
• Awful restaurants and cunty waitresses

 

 

Rating: 2.5/5 Distrurbing horsehead masks

 

Good in a Good way

 

 

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