1988. Michelle Bauer. Linnea Quigley. Brinke Stevens. A scene where a severed head rolls down a bowling lane. That’s all the information that you need to know that this is good.
This is that old story about sorority sister initiation rites that result in gratuitous nudity (which is the best kind of nudity) and a pile of corpses. The bad guy here is The Imp, a little demon trapped in a bowling trophy who gets out and ruins everyone’s night.
Michelle Bauer and Brinke Stevens are college girls desperate to join a sorority whose membership seems to consist of only three total bitches. In what I’m sure is a realistic, documentary-like depiction of the process, Michelle and Brinke have to strip down to their panties while the head of the sorority spanks them about fifty-eight times each with a wooden paddle. Then they get sprayed with whipped cream for about five seconds. Then they learn that their final test is that they have to break into a closed bowling alley and steal a trophy.
Somewhere in there, three nerdy guys show up to spy on the whole affair, up to and including watching Michelle and Brinke shower. They get caught and roped in to the bowling alley heist, where outsider bad girl Linnea Quigley has also broken in to raid the cash register. There’s some brief internal drama before The Imp shows up and helps most of these characters live up to their potential as dead meat.
This film provides one of the best examples of why director David DeCoteau is good. This production is classic B-movie stuff, made up of lots of scenes of people being chased on only a few sets (a closed bowling alley and a shopping mall, mostly). In a lot of films like this, they run out of ideas in about five minutes and blow most of their budget on one big scene at the beginning (or sometimes they save that for the end). They get dull and talky and their idea of a plot twist is having one of the characters do something idiotic.
DeCoteau keeps this one paced at a snap, though. He maintains a consistently campy, ridiculous mood. When the characters do something stupid, it’s only because DeCoteau thinks it’s funny. Creative deaths or bare breasts are around every corner. DeCoteau also has true B-movie gold on his hands here with three of the greatest scream queens of the time and he doesn’t waste them for a moment. He gives their fans exactly what they want (okay, Linnea keeps her clothes on, but she’s still a lot of fun as Spider, a thief with about 200 lbs. of attitude crammed into her 90 lb. matchstick body).
Even the exposition dump scene, delivered by the elderly deaf janitor played by exploitation movie stalwart George “Buck” Flower, is very funny.
In the end, this earns one of the best compliments that you could ever give to a movie called Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama.
It lives up to its title.