Pandemonium

MOVIE #1,859 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 07.30.24 When Tom Smothers and Carol Kane are the top-billed performers, you know you're in for one (Paul Reubens and Judge Reinhold round out the cast, among others, like Marty McFly's older brother). From the movie poster alone, I could tell this was gonna be profoundly stupid. But sometimes I can get down with stupid. We open with football stock footage that is clearly several different games made to look like a single college matchup in 1963. I don’t know if that was part of the joke? After a bunch of cheerleaders clean up the props from their halftime salute to vegetables, an unseen psycho comically throws a javelin like a heat-seeking from the tunnels of the stadium and impales the girls like a skewer, quite literally. It actually looks pretty good…

S/O to Phil Hartman delivering a very dumb line there, wonderfully, in his only scene. We get a newsreel montage showing that this killer has struck a few more times, always targeting cheerleaders. The spoofs continue with some meta goofs…


Anyway, you get the gist. There are several gags a minute, mostly of the visual variety for the entirety of its scant 80 minutes (the perfect runtime for this). It's essentially a proto Scary Movie in the Airplane! mold. These spoof films aren't typically my bag but this one is so random and strange, I enjoyed it. Paul Reubens is in full Pee-wee mode as he plays a lackey to local cop Tom Smothers (who dresses like a Canadian mountie and brings his horse Bob everywhere)...


Some weird synergy with this director (Alfred Sole) who is best known for helming the (actual) slasher film, Alice, Sweet Alice in 1976, which I had already planned on watching this October (for religious horror Sundays) unaware of the connection. Stay tuned!

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⫷ MOVIE #1,858 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,860 ⫸

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Pandemonium is a 1982 American parody slasher film. It was directed by Alfred Sole and features an ensemble cast including Tom Smothers, Eileen Brennan, Phil Hartman, Tab Hunter, Carol Kane, David Lander, Eve Arden, and Paul Reubens. It was released on April 2, 1982.