from Scott Weinberg, Apollo Movie Guide

Do you love to sink your fangs into a nasty black comedy? Did you feel that War of the Roses was a sweet-natured and touching portrait of marital bliss? Maybe you thought that Heathers was darkly amusing, but didn't go "far enough" in its depiction of teenage suicide. Well, if you're looking for a dark comedy that makes Prizzi's Honor look like When Harry Met Sally, keep an eye out for Pep Squad - a movie so ballsy and harsh that I'm stunned it ever got made.

Written and directed by first-time filmmaker Steve Balderson, Pep Squad is a colourful, shocking and generally amusing comedy set in the brutal realm of modern high school. The mania begins as soon as several girls are nominated for prom queen, with one notable exception - the hateful and despicable Cherry has not been nominated, and man, is she angry. Cherry takes to murdering a handful of the candidates, while a trio of relatively "normal" teens finds itself embroiled in a web of unrelated kidnapping, murder and basic teenage mischief.

Beth, Julie, and Scott have the school principal bound and gagged in their basement, the result of the vile educator's licentious advances on Beth. Unfortunately, a truly bizarre prom queen candidate named Terra (Scott refers to her as "the world's most absurd person") has witnessed the crime, and promptly blackmails her way into the twisted proceedings. Julie decides to hire Cherry to kill Terra, partially because Cherry's been murdering people left and right, anyway and partially because Cherry hates Terra. (Several of the movie's more entertaining moments come as profane and insane screaming matches between Cherry and Terra.)

On a technical level, Pep Squad is quite impressive - especially considering the relatively meagre budget the filmmakers had to work with. As a director, Balderson keeps things moving along at a brisk pace and you'd be hard pressed to find another low-budget movie that crams in as much "off-kilter colour" as Pep Squad does. For the most part, the cast is a pleasant surprise as well; Brooke Balderson's rabid performance as Cherry could sear the paint off your walls (that's a compliment), and the lovely Summer Makovkin (as Julie) delivers a smart, sexy performance as well. The highlight of the cast is Amy Kelly as Terra, an actress who seems to think she's playing Divine in a John Waters-directed biopic. Kelly's performance is strange, obnoxious and over-the-top hilarious.

As I sat watching Pep Squad, my jaw dropped open a few times. Regardless of how "questionable" a film's material may be, any time you can shock a jaded old film freak like me, you're doing something right. If you were under the impression that topics like pedophilia, kidnapping, mass murder, and teenagers blowing each other away with shotguns are "too real" for comedy, then it's too bad that nobody told Steve Balderson. Pep Squad rockets from shock to jolt to outright assault, never once pausing to apologize, and the result is a solid little "sick joke" of a comedy, one that would never be released by a "normal" studio (seeing as how the big studios generally like their black comedies to come "already eviscerated" a la Jawbreaker or Teaching Mrs. Tingle).

Much like those really nasty jokes you reserve for only your closest friends, Pep Squad will probably be most appreciated by those with an open mind and a penchant for sick humour that knows no boundaries. If this movie doesn't offend the living hell out of you, I bet you'll have a ball with it.