Co-director Angelica De Alba and writer/co-director Paul Ragsdale’s Murdercise is an in-your-face joy-gasm of 80s sex, drugs, aerobics, and murder in the space of an evening that, in an alternate past, could have been a Full Moon Feature directed by Russ Meyer. The film stars Kansas Bowling as Phoebe, a shining example of positivity and leadership for the future of Reagan’s Make America Great Again. She is of promise and virtue. The only problem is that Phoebe’s starring in some sleazy softcore workout flick that doesn’t have its audience’s cardiovascular health in mind.
Adding to our young heroine’s frustration is the fact that she has to battle for the spotlight against a veritable Fox Force Five of sizzling screen goddesses, including mega-sexy Candy (Jessica Flux), Nikki (Adriana Uchishiba), Monique (Victoria Dementieva), and Cassandra (Krystal Shay). Each is equipped with the weapons-grade chest-mounted assets designed to hypnotize. But showbiz is a tough game. Our cast of super vixens stage a dangerous game of lust, manipulation, and, eventually, homicide to grab an edge on landing top billing and winding up on the movie’s cover.
Into this nest of rivals comes Isabella (Nina Lanee Kent), a mafia princess and daughter of the producer, Dominica Stromboli (Ginger Lynn). With no skin in the fame game, Isabella is just doing the gig to get her mother off her back, until she winds up becoming a surrogate hero, teacher, and mentor to Phoebe, who may or may not have gone full Patrick Bateman. As the night wears on, every time thighs rise, another cast member dies or goes missing. The dwindling survivors fight fear and each other as the real killer soon comes calling. All bets are off, leaving the casting couch stained with blood as the price to take the lead in this big-breasted bonanza could easily cost you your life.
“As the night wears on, every time thighs rise, another cast member dies or goes missing.”
Murdercise is clearly a movie directed at an audience who knows what they like when they see it. And in this, the filmmakers left nothing to the imagination. But before you pigeonhole this one as just another cheapo slasher with a plentiful variety of magnificent mammaries on show, take note, there are some well-placed lines, well-played jokes, and well-structured shifts that deliver it from the realm of predictability.
Some might say the 1980s are easy to pull off. All you need is spandex, neon VHS, and gratuitous nudity and sexual innuendo. Well, that’s true. But the tone is also important. And there’s that sense that De Alba and Ragsdale, together with their cast, are in on the joke. Yet they know that for the film to be effective, the straighter they play it, the goofier it is. That’s what made the cheese different in the 80s for those who didn’t live it. We knew it was cheese, but it was good cheese.
So, if you like your chicks hot, sweaty, and carrying a chainsaw, Murdercise has all the right moves. It highlights some dangerous curves as it manages the glam-shock-opera of The Substance meets Sorority Babes at the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama. Fred Olen Ray would really dig this!
"…Fred Olen Ray would really dig this!"
