Vinegar Syndrome scrapes the bottom of the barrel for their Blu-ray of the MGM-licensed slasher parody PANDEMONIUM.

It's 1963 at It Had to Be's local college campus ("It Had to Be U") and quarterback Blue Grange (Tab Hunter, DAMN YANKEES) is on his way to the big leagues. Brooklyn transfer student Bambi (Candice Azzara, EASY MONEY) secretly pines for him, but she is an outcast because of her accent, stonewalled by the cheerleading squad until a particularly-skilled javelin thrower skewers all five of the them. From that point on, each cheerleading camp for the school ends in brutal murder. Twenty years later, Bambi returns as a cheerleading coach with a new batch of recruits – telekinetic virgin Candy (Carol Kane, THE MAFU CAGE), dopey hunk Glenn (Judge Reinhold, ZANDALEE), beauty pageant winner Mandy (Teri Landrum, THE DEVIL AND MAX DEVLIN), bitchy Sandy (Debralee Scott, POLICE ACADEMY), and buddies Andy (Miles Chapin, THE FUNHOUSE) and Randy (Marc McClure, BACK TO THE FUTURE) – and janitor Pepe (LAVERNE & SHIRLEY's David L. Lander) is already lining up guided tours to gawk at the next numbers in the body count. Years before DUE SOUTH, Reginald Cooper (Tom Smothers of The Smothers Brothers) is a Mountie transplant based locally, having been on the trail of "The Cheerleader Killer" for twenty years, and he's got his hands full with an escaped hand-drill murderer Jarrett (Richard Romanus, MEAN STREETS) and asylum escapee Fletcher (Jim Boeke, DRAGNET) both in the area – and his own assistant Johnson (Paul "Pee-Wee Herman" Reubens) jealously resentful of Cooper's preferential treatment of his horse Bob – and the unsuspecting cheerleading squad none the wiser about their potential victim status.

Drawing primarily from the first FRIDAY THE 13TH film – particularly with hitchhiking Sandy getting the first indication that things are not right, a third act strip poker game, and a victim lying in bed when attacked from beneath – PANDEMONIUM is more often just dumb than funny even when it courts bad taste with an "Air Tokyo" that is too juvenile to be racist. The film's budget shows yet it is a more polished effort than something like NIGHT OF THE DRIBBLER but also less consistent in tone from something like Greydon Clark's WACKO. There are some laughs to be had like hitchhiker Sandy screening the drivers who offer her a ride and asking for references but the approach is so scattershot that the only thing to really savor is the guest appearances of the like of Eve Arden as a prison warden, Eileen Brennan as Candy's religious mother, Kaye Ballard and Donald O'Connor as Glenn's parents, Edie McClurg as Blue's mother, and CELEBRITY SWEEPSTAKES' Jim McKrell as Mandy's father. Director Alfred Sole shows none of the flare for atmosphere he brought to ALICE, SWEET ALICE while composer Dana Kaproff lampoons the suspense stylistics he brought to WHEN A STRANGER CALLS – produced by PANDEMONIUM's Doug Chapin and starring Kane – and would treat straight the same year in DEATH VALLEY.

Released theatrically by United Artists and on home video by MGM, PANDEMONIUM was shown frequently in the early eighties on HBO and has made a recent reappearance via digital revenue-sharing stations that have licensed the MGM library. Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from a new 2K scan of the original 35mm interpositive, and it appears to faithfully represent the film in its uneven look, with grainy titles and old-school optical effects, saturated colors that stand out but rarely pop – including reds which do not extend to onscreen bloodshed – while close-ups offer the best in detail in facial features, hair, and wardrobe (including Bob the horse). The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track sounds fine with the score and some exaggerated sound effects having prominence while the dialogue is always intelligible. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided.