Satan's Cheerleaders (1977)

Satan’s Cheerleaders is a wacky mix of Satanist horror and cheerleader sex comedies. It’s not scary, but its kinda funny! Our movie opens with a bunch of guys on a deserted beach playing football. Four young girls are standing nearby, and they are very excited! They are the cheerleaders. They are all pretty one-note and out of it, except for Patti, played by Kerry Sherman, who is found wistfully staring at the ocean. The football team is basically represented by one guy, the only one who talks. The others just stand around, laughing or staring, and silent. Their coach is played by Jacqueline Cole, who comes off as zoned-out and sweet. The first half of the movie actually sucks pretty bad, as all the cheerleaders do is fool around with the lame football guy, have a friendly brawl with their rivals from a neighboring high school who drive around in a jeep and throw water balloons at them, and make fun of the overweight stuttering janitor, who gets revenge by checking them out through a peep-hole in the locker room. Anyway, eventually things actually get interesting when their car breaks down on the way to the game, and the cheerleaders and their coach are picked up by the stuttering janitor Billy, who drives them to a secluded spot where there is a Satanist altar. He strips Patti and puts her on it, but she is some sort of Satanic princess, so she gets all breathy and gaspy, and strikes Billy down with her Satan powers (which are portrayed by a reddish tint to the film). The rest of the movie has the girls wandering around the small farming community, being surprised that everyone is a Satanist, including the town sheriff and the guy with the curly moustache and pitch-fork. The best part of the movie for me was John Carradine playing a shrewd bum. At one point, one of the cheerleaders finds him in a clearing, sitting on a sofa drinking beer. She keeps asking him for help, and he eventually points at something and says “Look behind you!”, at which point she turns around, see’s absolutely nothing, and runs away shrieking, as Carradine chants “Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat!” All in all, Satan’s Cheerleaders isn’t half bad, once they actually leave the high school, and once you realize that it’s really just a goofy comedy. Keep an eye out for Director Greydon Clark’s other films, including the similar Angel’s Brigade and The Uninvited, a horror movie about a monster cat hanging out on a yacht.

The Quiet Earth (1985)

The Quiet Earth opens with a naked man lying in a bed. He gets up and we learn that he is scientist Zac Hobson and that he is in New Zealand. He drives around looking for people, saying “Hello!” in a loud voice a lot, and finds nobody. Absolutely nobody! It appears that everyone is dead, and he may be the last man on earth. The Quiet Earth is primarily a character study, as Zac Hobson’s growth as a person is the main thrust of the film for me. Hobson is played by jazz drummer and cult icon Bruno Lawrence, who also played Teddy in one of my favorite movies, Jack Be Nimble. Lawrence spends the first half of the movie wandering around looking for people, and trying to discover the cause of “the effect” which apparently just wiped away almost every human on the face of the earth, like a dry eraser on chalkboard. He goes a little nuts after a while and starts wearing women’s clothes and delivers lectures to cardboard cut-outs of Hitler and Gandhi. The last half is all about discovery, as he meets first Joanne, a pretty young red head, and Api, a Maori, who are the indigenous people of New Zealand. Lawrence soon finds himself odd man out, but also remarks to them near the end that sometimes he feels that he is the only one really alive, and that Joanne and Api are figments of his imagination, spirits sent to aid him on his personal journey. I concur, maybe!