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SORORITY BABES IN THE SLIMEBALL BOWL-O-RAMA

TEENS ACCIDENTALLY FREE A MURDEROUS PUPPET FROM HIS PRISON



★★★☆☆ (Good for One Viewing)

Director: David DeCoteau

1988


At first glance, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama appears to be a standard 1980s horror flick about co-eds running naked from a killer with no backstory—a low/no budget Revenge of the Nerds meets The Initiation. The movie poster may scream trash and the title might bring to mind names like Donald G. Jackson and Ed Wood, but you’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised by how entertaining a movie about mean girls getting trapped in a bowling alley with some geeks actually is…as long as you’re not offended by Porky’s humor and still find Beavis and Butthead amusing. From music to costumes to lingo, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama is pure 80s neon drivel in the best possible sense. Come for the bad acting or boobs, stay for the adorable hand-puppet slaughtering dumb youngsters with his evil powers.


Our protagonist, Calvin (Andras Jones), is such a square, he gets drunk off one beer and can’t pry himself away from the TV to join his buddies—a big-boned shlub and an asthmatic scarecrow—who want to infiltrate a sorority’s midnight initiation rites. After convincing him, the trio watch through a window as queen bee Babs paddles two pledges and sprays them with whip cream (this movie is not subtle), but they’re caught while sneaking a peek in the shower. Instead of running from Babs, who is drunk on power, the boys follow her orders to break into a bowling alley with the pledges, and steal a souvenir. Little do these minions know that Babs and her two henchwomen are watching them.



These girls aren’t the only ones skulking around the closed building. A janitor is obliviously going about his night shift and a strange woman is cleaning out the registers. It doesn’t take long for the guys and pledges to run into this burglar Spider (Linnea Quigley), a hot babe who talks in a totally tubular California accent. Right off the bat, Calvin takes a liking to this prickly woman trying to bash his head in with a crowbar, but his amorous thoughts are shelved when Jimmy drops the souvenir trophy and a strange mist comes out of it.


The character of Uncle Impie (voiced by Dickey Flyswatter) comes out of left field. I thought I was watching a straight sorority spank film when poof, a puppet imp crawls out of a trophy, offering to make his saviors’ wildest dreams come true. The movie moves from parody to camp as the teens make some of the dumbest wishes you can imagine—one girl who missed out at her prom wishes to be a prom queen—but the screenwriter must have read W.W. Jacobs because after initially getting what they want, the imp strikes them down with a monkey’s paw, all while making wisecracks. As heads literally start to roll, Spider sneers while Calvin wets his pants from fear, and I found myself rooting for the two of them. She needs someone to constantly threaten and he’s an obvious sub, so they’re a match made in heaven. As she defends him from zombies(!) he toughens up enough to pull his weight, giving us a satisfying ending.


Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama is a zirconia in the rough, waiting for you to discover it. The bitchy imp turns what could have been junk into a likable film that knows it’s lane. The only lesson in this story is the derivative “be careful for what you wish for”, but right now I’m wishing for more movies directed by David DeCoteau.





GENRES: Funny, Monster/Creature, Teens in Peril


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