Dieing a virgin.
Could there BE a greater horror for teens?
Well, the students of George Washington High School can top that. How about being brutally butchered, crucified AND having never known the carnal caress of another? Yes, a female serial killer with an impressive Ginsu collection is trolling the lover’s lanes of Cherry Falls and making minced meat of frustrated guys and the gals who never waved them home. As the young bloodied flesh starts to populate the morgue, it becomes clear who’s marked for death, so the wily (OK, horny) student body decides to protect themselves by joining in a MASS deflowering. Talk about turning lemons into lemonade!
Brittany Murphy is our willowy heroine who must endure unspeakable torments far greater than even the boorish advances of her horndog boyfriend (Judge Reinhold-lookalike Gabriel Mann). Remarkably, even with the ratings board’s meddling there’s still plenty of the red stuff, but it is the flick’s wry, subversive undercurrent that is ultimately the most appealing.
CineSchlockers will likely have fast-forwarded right past Ms. Murphy’s chicken-deboning in Girl, Interrupted to see if they really CAN see Winona Ryder‘s goodies.
Notables: Three breasts. Eight corpses. Two-fisted gun shooting. Sleepwalking. Fist-fighting parents. Toe sucking. Neck slashing. Gratuitous scanning-newspaper-headlines-on-microfilm scene. Stuffed shark attack. Food fight. Mass diddling. Gratuitous use of the word "hymen."
Quotables: An eager beau gives it his best shot, "Doesn’t it bother you that you could die a virgin?" Timmy the drama queen squeals, "You haven’t heard about Rod and Stacy?! … Wake up! They’re dead! They flatlined! They shuffled off the mortal coil! They’ve croaked and gone to see their maker! Duh! How can you be so critically uninformed?!" Principal Sisler is worried, "If word gets back to these kids that somebody’s murdering virgins, we’re going to have a goddamn f@#%-fest on our hands!"
Time codes: An exceedingly uncomfortable father-daughter moment (23:28). Slutty Cindy schools the girls on the facts of life (44:33). An illustrated flyer for "Pop Your Cherry Night" (46:12). How this whole mess got started in the first place (1:10:22).
Final thought: Cherry Falls proves once again that the slasher genre can be as satirically sharp as its psychopath’s blades — without overtly leaning on pop culture.