The Majorettes

REVIEW
Why mourn the demise of the once-reviled low-budget slasher subgenre? If for no other reason, this 1980’s trend of independent horror cinema may have represented the last time in recent history that commercially minded regional filmmakers were consistently capable of producing popular films for little money that still connected to wide audiences. In the process, they afforded views of off-the-beaten-path American culture that still provide a welcome respite from the slick studio fables served up by Hollywood, a secondary quality which nonetheless lends a film like The Majorettes much of its charm. Shot in the rural and suburban Pittsburgh environs which formerly hosted the production of Night of the Living Dead, The Majorettes reunites several key personnel from that classic, including John Russo, Bill Hinzman, and Russ Streiner. The plot is standard issue post-Halloween fare, with a camo-clad crackpot eviscerating the overage actresses portraying high school majorettes (though the final third of the film takes a bizarre detour into revenge-driven action movie hyperbole), but The Majorettes impresses chiefly as a time-capsule snapshot of indie horror as it existed twenty years ago: gratuitous nudity, big hair, tacky suburban locations, and a score driven entirely by synth and drum machine. As such, it’s a treat for anyone weaned on drive-in fodder from the last days of drive-ins, though it’s admittedly not a classic of the genre. Shall we say, better than Prom Night and Madman, but not as good as, for example, Don’t Go in the House or Toolbox Murders? Or, for that matter, Don’t Answer the Phone or The Prowler? Or…well, look, someone put this out on DVD, don’t you think you ought to buy it?