The  standard by which all cheerleader movies of any genre is judged is Bring it On.  This is no Bring it On.

The sad part here is that All Cheerleaders Die was so close to greatness.  You can still see sparkling gems scattered throughout like Leena’s Wiccan stones, but much of it is a mess.

We start out with a video profile of head cheerleader Lexi being taken by nobody Maddy.  Lexi is certainly cute, but like most everyone in this high school, is an asshole.  Kudos to the producers for getting the movie off to a great start by dispatching her quickly and cruelly.

The next year, Maddy puts on some eyeliner, let’s her hair down, and is suddenly gorgeous.  Maybe this is a sign that Hollywood has finally figured out you don’t ugly-up girls by putting glasses on them.

Maddy’s relationship with Alex is not clear — was she a real friend, or a hanger-on just doing a class assignment?  Clearly, she was not one of the cool kids.  The next year, she is trying out for Lexi’s spot on the squad.  We get a montage of the cheerleaders and football players practicing their craft,  Not to pick this thing to death, but an unusual number of shots are poorly framed, or shot too far from — or too close to — the subjects. Maybe they were hiding the stunt people; I never had this problem with Buffy, though.

If there was one frame of the whole squad looking decent, I missed it.

Maddy’s motivation seems pretty loose.  She hates Tracey because she started dating Lexi’s boyfriend Terry before a suitable mourning period.  Granted, despite being a dead-ringer for Tiger Woods, he is the most hatable guy I’ve seen onscreen in quite a while, but this is thin stuff.  But wait . . . for an hour, the film withholds the fact that asshole Terry raped her the previous summer.  It would have been better for her motivation to be completely mysterious rather than use this flimsy excuse about dating etiquette for half the movie.

Now that Maddy is on the squad, she no longer has time for her freaky Wiccan friend Leena.  But wait, wasn’t she just becoming a cheerleader to get revenge on them?  How did Leena get shut out in the process?  Again, we don’t know their relationship.  There are indications that she is either a) a stalker, or 2) a friend from Maddy’s pre-cool days, or c) a lesbian ex-girlfriend.  I think we’re all pulling for “c”, but a little nudge from the writers would have been nice.

The girls have a pool party.  “Bitches only.” They send the “Dawgs” away.  Maddy tries to drive a wedge between Tracey and asshole Terry by ratting out his infidelity. Mentioning that he raped her might have also caused trouble in paradise.  She then tries to steal Tracey away by coming on to her.  This is one of the aforementioned gems.

At yet another party, Leena is off by herself with her stones.  Maddy and Tracey start making out again.  Soon asshole Terry shows up and proclaims that the the football players will no longer fraternize with the cheerleaders.  Tracey tells him off and asshole Terry punches her in the face.  Hard.

The girls drive off and asshole Terry & his suck-ups chase them, quickly running them off the road.  The car lands in a river upside down.  A couple of the guys protest, but asshole Terry makes like asshole Ted Kennedy, leaving the girls to die.

Leena, following in another car, pulls the girls from the river and uses her Wiccan stones to resurrect them.  Their scene waking up at Leena’s house had a lot of potential, but the opportunity was largely squandered.  Like the party scenes, the large group of people was not handled effectively.  This seemed to be a recurring theme — not knowing quite how to handle a crowd, and poor choices on composition.

There were some nice shots and even whole scenes in the last half of the movie, but it frequently seemed confused.  Maybe this is the result of having two directors. With the exception of Leena’s neighbor Larry (Michael Bowen), I can almost make a perfectly sexist divide and say the female performers were all good to great, and the male characters were either zeroes or repugnant.

It is easy to say the tone was wrong, or inconsistent, or rushed.  But then there will be 10 examples of films where the abrupt tonal change worked.  Pretty much anything will work in the right hands.  Unfortunately, the 4 hands directing this film were not able to make it work.

2, 4, 6, 8, I did not appreciate.

Post-Post:

• What?  Is there no shower room at this high school?
• Terry really should be treated like Brad in Rocky Horror.  Every time he appears on screen, the audience should yell “asshole!”
• I’m far from high school, but Christ this is the worst music I’ve ever heard!  Pretty quickly got my fill of “bitches” and “dawgs” also.  I noticed the subtitles opted for the more traditional “dogs.”
• Loved this shot, but again, they botched the composition.  Nice 3 feet of headroom when her feet should have been fully in the frame to indicate her 100% vulnerability and obliviousness to anything other than her desire to feed.

Making this up as I go, I am invoking the haven’t-seen-in-20-years clause in order to qualify this film.  And by invoking, I mean inventing.

From the opening seconds, with the blocky title and the weirdo theremin music, this is chewy 50’s sci-fi goodness.  It is already more interesting than the remake, if only as a piece of history.

A UFO is approaching the earth at 4,000 MPH.  This is really poking along compared to the 18,6000 miles per second velocity in remake.  All over the world, dames and men in hats are listening to the radio for updates on the bogey.

On a lovely day in Washington DC, a saucer flies past several monuments, and lands in a park near the White House.  As a behatted newsman is describing the scene, a ramp extends from the saucer and a doorway opens up.

A humanoid in a spacesuit walks out and says, “We have come to visit you in peace and with goodwill.”  He pulls something out of his pocket, and is shot by one of the soldiers.  Suddenly the robot GORT emerges from the ship.  The spaceship and the alien just seemed to reel in the crowd, but GORT gets the civilians running and the soldiers backing up.  GORT’s visor opens, and shoots beams at the weapons, destroying them.  The wounded spaceman orders him to stop.

He stands and hands the damaged gift to a soldier.  He says it was a gift to enable the president to study life on other planets, then is taken to Walter Reed Hospital.  Ignorant of our ways, he believes checking into the V.A. will actually improve his chances of survival.

The spaceman, Klaatu, says he has traveled for 5 months and 250 million miles to reach earth.   He says we are neighbors, and it is assumed by the hat-wearing press that he is from Mars or Venus.  250M miles is too far for either of those planets.  I know there was no internet, but did the writer not have an almanac, or did noone involved remember basic science from elementary school?  Twilight Zone had this problem too.

Apparently wanting to address all world leaders in the most corrupt and ineffectual setting possible, he asks for an audience with the United Nations.

Meanwhile, since Klaatu foolishly left his saucer in downtown DC overnight, it is getting blowtorched, and GORT is being roughed up with a diamond drill.  Unlike AL GORT in the remake, the drill has no effect on this GORT.

Klaatu heals his wound by applying a miracle salve, just as in the remake.  He escapes from the hospital and takes a room at a boarding house.  One of the other residents shares the name Helen Benson with Jennifer Carpenter in the remake.  Both Helens have a son, although the name was changed from Bobby to Jacob in the remake, and he was made completely obnoxious.

In both movies, the kid drags Klaatu to his father’s grave.  Bobby trades $2 for 2 diamonds.  So he is not only less obnoxious than Jacob, but smarter.  They go to Lincoln Memorial.

Klaatu and Bobby go to see professional smart guy Professor Barnhardt (whose first name Jacob was mysteriously used for the Bobby character in the remake).  In both movies, Klaatu goes all Good Will Hunting on a blackboard.

He says that we have started using atomic power and will soon apply it to space travel, endangering other planets.  If earth does not listen, it may be necessary to for his race to take action.  The professor asks if a demonstration is possible.

Klaatu sneaks back to his ship, and signals GORT to knock out the guards.  Bobby’s sees this and tells him mom.

The next day all motors and electricity on earth stop, trapping Klaatu in an elevator with Helen. Unlike the remake, exceptions were made for hospitals and planes in flight.

On his way back to the ship, Klaatu is shot.  Again.  Helen delivers the message to GORT, Klaatu Barada Nikto.  GORT carries her into the ship.  He also retrieves Klaatu’s body, which he is able to resurrect.

As Professor Barnhardt is addressing the crowd, Klaatu emerges from the ship. He says the threat of human aggression can no longer be tolerated.  If earth is not less aggressive, they will burn our planet to a cinder.

Maybe they can make some krazee ships and robots, but we’re miles ahead of them in irony.

Post-Post:

• Writer Edmund H. North won an Oscar for the screenplay for Patton.
• Not to blame the victim, but Klaatu clearly did not need the helmet and spacesuit when he emerged from the ship.  Maybe he wouldn’t have been shot if he had looked a little more human.