The fella was barely 18 when he wandered into Hollywood, yet by 24, David DeCoteau earned a 10 PICTURE deal with Empire producer Charles Band. That’s a phenomenal feat even today. And one of David’s first Empire flicks was the immortal Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (1987, 80 minutes, aka. The Imp), which was shot in about two weeks for right near $120,000. His creation, and films like it, also helped cement the careers of three legendary B-sirens: Michelle Bauer, Brinke Stevens and my close, personal friend Linnea Quigley. More than 50 titles later, he now heads his own production company, Rapid Heart Pictures, which is set to release its third feature, Final Stab, this spring. DeCoteau’s prolific, Roger Corman-esque career has made him a bona fide luminary in the genre world, in fact, with some going so far as to call him the NEW King of Bs. But most will continue to savour the glorious T&A heyday of his youth.
The movie: Three chronically dateless losers get an eyeful outside the Tri Delta sorority house as they witness a buxom blonde smacking the behinds of squealing pledges with a canoe paddle. The babes then get whip cream slathered all over their chests and are ordered upstairs to — you guessed it — shower. Being slightly drunk, the fellas naturally decide to sneak upstairs for a closer look, but are discovered doing that Three Stooges bit with their heads stacked atop each other in a partially open doorway. The grand paddler, Babs (Robin Stille), decides to make a two-for-one deal with the pledges AND the horndogs: They’re to steal a bowling trophy from the Plaza Camino mall. If they do, the girls are Tri Delts and the dweebs don’t land hiney-first in the pokey. Everything goes all right until they find the trophy and it starts rattling and smoking until out pops a jike-talkin’ Imp. He promises them all wishes, and they’re all real happy, until things go predictably haywire and the bugger turns a couple of the gals into blood-thirsty demons.
Lead-geek Calvin (Andras Jones) joins forces with a potty-mouthed punk named Spider (Linnea Quigley) to save the bowling alley — and all who run screaming in circles within it — from utter destruction by attempting to stuff the Impster where the sun don’t shine. Look for CineSchlocker favorite George "Buck" Flower as the deaf janitor who has a terrible time coming out of the closet. DeCoteau also directed Linnea, Michelle and Brinke in Nightmare Sisters about some other sorority girls who dabble in witchcraft and keep falling out of their lingerie.
Notables: Four breasts. Eight corpses. Coed spanking (53 licks). Gratuitous shower scene. Toe biting. Crowbar bending. Multiple puking. One car crash with rollover. Diddling. Chicken-fried face. One Molotov cocktail. Demon hissing. Severed head hurling.
Quotables: Drunken couch potato while peeping through sorority-house window, "What channel IS this?!" Taffy (Brinke Stevens) fends off a handsy admirer, "Do that again and I’ll put a stake through your heart!" Spider emotes, "Eat s%#* and die!" The Janitor doesn’t believe Spider and Calvin’s story, "Demons munching your friends? I gotta tell you both, kids, drugs are not the answer … You got to do like it says on the TV — you got to learn to say, ‘No.’ "
Time codes: Pantied pledges get paddled as part of Tri Delta initiation (8:35). Better rinse off that sticky whipped cream (12:20). Linnea joins the picture (23:20). Behold, The Imp! (28:45). Demon bowls a gutter ball, er, head (42:00).
Final thought: Hitchcock had his blondes, DeCoteau had the greatest Scream Queens who ever lost their tops — with this being one of their earliest, perhaps most beloved collaborations.