PANDEMONIUM spoofs horror-tropes in a much more general way than OLD DRACULA, though it focuses principally on the subgenre of the slasher film, still popular in 1982. In fact, PANDEMONIUM's director Alfred Sole had made the "pre-slasher" ALICE SWEET ALICE in 1976, one influenced by earlier horror-thrillers by Roeg and Hitchcock, though ALICE wasn't released until the same year Carpenter's HALLOWEEN codified the rules for the "official slasher."
Sadly, PANDEMONIUM's comedy doesn't succeed as do the thrills of ALICE, in that most of the jokes are just as lame as those of OLD DRACULA. However, PANDEMONIUM provides a greater variety of gags, making one's chances of liking something better than average, along the lines of the old vaudeville saying, "If you don't like one, there'll be another along next minute." I confess I did rather like the "cheerleader shish-ka-bob" scene and Paul Reubens' performance as an annoying twit.
The film also benefits from an ample list of famous faces. Tom Smothers doesn't contribute much as Cooper, a Canadian mountie (did anyone even remember Nelson and Eddy in 1982?) But it's fun to see actors like Eve Arden, Donald O'Connor, Eileen Brennan and Judge Reinhold tossed into the same soup. Carol Kane plays the closest that the film has to a central character: a young woman named Candy who makes the decision to enroll in cheerleader camp just as a serial killer-- maybe more than one-- starts killing cheerleaders. Candy herself is a bit of a monster, given that she has psychic powers a la "Carrie," though Kane plays her like a possessed Linda Blair. She becomes the film's "final girl" long before that role had become set as in stone, though because she ends up fighting the psycho-killer with her powers, this is more of a "combative" work than most slashers. Six years later, Jason would contend with a "Carrie"-like telepath for one go-round.
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