After the big game, a high school cheerleading squad is skewered on a javelin, thus kicking off a rash of brutal cheerleader murders. Years later, cheer wannabe Bambi (Candice Azzara) starts her own cheerleading camp at the very school where the murders took place. So, it’s no surprise when the new squad starts getting knocked off almost immediately. Too bad the killer doesn’t know about cheerleading hopeful Candy’s (Carol Kane) telekinetic powers and the keen intellect of former Canadian Mountie Cooper (Tom Smothers) who just took the case! Well, actually he’s been on the case for years but is too incompetent to solve it. Let’s not focus on the details.

Alfred Sole, best known to horror fans as the director of Alice, Sweet Alice (1976), tried his hand at a Zucker Brothers style comedy and gave the world Pandemonium (1982). And the rest is history! I should probably mention that by “history” I mean that this film didn’t do very well and no one remembers it except me (and Vinegar Syndrome). Co-screenwriter Richard Whitley, of Rock and Roll High School (1979), would take the success of this project and go on to disappear until the 1990s when he began writing for television. Luckily, the cast would go on to bigger and better things, mostly.

Time to meet the squad! Carol Kane is in fine form here as horny goody two shoes Candy, but then again, I’ve never seen her in a film where she wasn’t great. Judge Reinhold plays Glenn Dandy, a cheerleader with a cheerleader fetish (coincidence?), who has the hots for Mandy (Teri Landrum), a bubbly gal who only has eyes for her toothbrush. Knucklehead creepos Andy and Randy (played by Miles Chapin of The Funhouse (1981) and Jimmy Olsen himself Marc McClure) are just here to cheer and get laid but not necessarily in that order. And finally, there’s streetwise Sandy (the lovely 70s TV personality Debralee Scott), who plays a mean game of strip poker.

Nostalgia alert! Can this reviewer be trusted? Not likely. But when was that ever a problem? I saw Pandemonium at a very impressionable age, so young in fact that I wasn’t sure if this movie was supposed to be scary or not (it’s not!). So, big shocker, I love the heck out of this damn thing. Even with the jokes that miss their target by several feet or miles, I still laugh a lot during this movie. There’s just something about it that still warms my heart to this day.

Surprisingly literally no one, certain parts of Pandemonium have aged terribly. A scene with an airplane full of Japanese tourists would never get made today and for good reason. And just lifting dialog from a horror movie, in this instance, Carrie (1976), instead of actually parodying it, is never funny. As with all horror comedies, results may vary. As I’ve made abundantly clear, Pandemonium still works for me, though it pairs better with something like National Lampoon’s Class Reunion (1982) than it does with Student Bodies (1981). That makes sense, right? Good!

Vinegar Syndrome really knows how to make me stand up and cheer. Pandemonium looks and sounds pretty damn good on Blu. The editor’s reliance on zooming in wildly in post-production for the occasional gag means that there’s some irreparable softness in a bunch of shots but it doesn’t detract from how good this film looks overall. In terms of extras, there’s an interview with the Sole director -oops, I mean director Sole! He discusses how the project came together and shares some fun stories including how he found out that horses can’t go down a flight stairs, much less three flights of stairs. It’s a great interview but I wish some of the cast would’ve showed up to share stories as well. There is a photo gallery but sadly, no original trailer.

Director – Alfred Sole
Cast – Carole Kane, Candice Azzara, Tom Smothers, Paul Reubens
Country of Origin – USA
Reviewer – Richard Glenn Schmidt