From the title alone it will either induce an eye roll or peak your curiosity. I have a soft spot for fun cheesy horror, and with the tease of potential nudity well, this seemed like it would be a good time. Turns out I had way more fun watching this movie than I expected; it was actually pretty good. By no stretch of the imagination is this a brilliant slasher, but a solid B-movie that would have made Roger Corman and Lloyd Kaufman proud.
The story follows Rebecca (Katie Peterson) who has returned home from college to spend her Spring Break with her ex-cheerleading friends from high school. Rebecca is looking forward to getting away and has hopes for all the parties and drinking that should follow, but her religious zealot of a mother more than disapproves of her daughter’s decision. The girls end up staying at Missy’s (Shea Stewart) dad’s rental home for some girls-only fun. Thankfully for the viewers the fun consists of drinking and tiny bathing suits that have tops that conveniently manage to come off when the story’s pacing slows. None of the girls are all that likeable here, but when you’re watching a movie called Girls Gone Dead you’re not here for rich character development, you’re here for the boobs and gore.
Sadly it does take a little time before the ball gets rolling in the horror department. It’s only after one of the girls takes off with a guy she meets at a tropical themed bar that things start to shift to horror territory. When our first victims meet their end we get some decent gore but no suspense. My biggest complaint comes with all the kills we get. There is no suspense nor do we care about any of these people. Just because it’s a horror/comedy it doesn’t mean you can’t at least try and surprise us and show us something we haven’t seen before. The gore looks great, but the kills were weak here.
When the girls meet up with the guys filming their own version of Girls Gone Wild things do get a little more interesting. The film makers got lucky getting this group of girls together; they have a nice chemistry that elevates the production more than you would expect. Having another house where there is another show being filmed but with porn star Ron Jeremy and Beetlejuice (member of Howard Stern’s Wack Pack) it just didn’t see me necessary to the plot other than to inject more T&A. Not that I’m complaining about the nudity, but some of this could have been trimmed to make a tighter picture since this has a running time of 105 minutes.
By the time the climax arrives and the hooded killer is dispatching victims one after the other, I managed to get back into the film. Thankfully the gore was plentiful and the kills were decent because the film was starting to wear out its welcome.
With an appearance by Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler off WWF fame, he does a good job as the small town Sheriff, but it would have been nice to see him as more than just convenient plot device. He has a nice bit in the climax of the film I won’t spoil, but he did add a nice bit of camp to this film.
Given the limited budget the filmmakers had to work with, the end product is something they should be proud of. When watching this film you got to simply jus turn off your brain, have a few drinks, and just have fun with this. Normally these campy films are too cheesy and you find yourself laughing at how bad it is, but Girls Gone Dead has a little more to it and even has moments where it’s pretty good.
