Gimme a K. Gimme an I. Gimme a L. Gimme another L. What does that Spell?!

 This was just a quick and easy watch. Cheerleader Camp (1988) has all the gratuitous (and oft-expected) tropes of late 80s slashers: heavy set character (Travis McKenna) whose weight is the butt of jokes, the female cast members in the film just to show their breasts, cheerleaders wearing barely anything but uniforms to show off their athletic (or heavy diet and workout regimen) figures, the ditsy blond (Lorie Griffin) with a lot of appeal and personality (but not a lot of brains), the unstable but very sexy lead (Betsy Russell) having strange and often disturbing dreams that ask us if she is the killer, the former magazine pop culture heartthrob trying to hold onto his past glory (Leif Garrett) but given a flattering male lead with young beauties desiring him, the creepy older guys ogling the girls (Buck Flower), and authority figure often antagonizing the film's established group (Vickie Benson, with lots of makeup, lipstick, and bright dresses, along with an obnoxious personality suitable for a character we're supposed to find annoying and laughable). The sole purpose for the story is to parade a lot of cheerleaders across the screen at a summer camp style setting. By the late 80s, the slasher genre had fallen on hard times, and while I'm sure Cheerleader Camp has its admirers, I believe you can tell that the bloom was off the rose. This was a popular slasher review for my blog back in 2013. It is still very much of its era so anyone that grew up with it (and that poster with the cheerleader leaping into the air with a skull face) and watched it countless times in their youth might be unable to remove the nostalgia goggles and see it for what it is: VHS rental store and USA Up All Night mainstay with very attractive cast and predictable killer. The collection of personalities, particularly Benson and Russell (doing her best "barely keeping her shit together" performance while looking very desirable), might boost this flick enough. There is grisly violence, with guts spilling out of a stomach ax wound and van crash stomach destruction, slit wrists and garden sheers through a head and out the mouth, so that, too, might help keep Cheerleader Camp just above the lower tier of the slasher hierarchy.

Although she mostly plays second fiddle to Russell, Lucinda Dickey gets the last laugh and, despite being relegated to a mascot uniform, deserved to wear that cheerleader uniform (and does so very, very well) as much as the rest. McKenna really lets that damn camera get him into a lot of trouble, including at the end when a fucking killer has already left a substantial body count. Garrett, to me, is in the film for his name value, because he doesn't exactly light up the screen with much star power.