colintimberlake.comTell her it wasn’t you…

Ummmm, yeah. So I was wondering what happened to that hot girl from Teen Wolf and a quick perusal of the resume showed that Lorie Griffin (right) followed up the Michael J. Fox classic with a film called Cheerleader Camp in 1987.

Okay, sounds all right. Sounds kind of Friday the 13th. Sounds kind of Slumber Party Massacre. Mixed bag of teenagers stuck in the woods for a decent old-school 80s hack-and-slash. Scary villain, ominous old guy warning people about the danger in the woods. I’ll give it a try. Oops.

Undoubtedly the worst-acted, worst-written, least scary, least-planned, most poorly executed horror film to emerge from this era and achieve any sort of distribution. It comes really damn close to the horror movie a few guys from my high school made by camping in the woods one weekend with their Dad’s handicam and a bottle of ketchup.

They had a good five-plus years to build upon the original Friday the 13th horror model and somehow managed to take some enormous steps backward. The only front on which this movie even remotely delivers would be old-school horror nudity, which we at least know was left in the hands of professionals.

To the left, we see aspiring actress Teri Weigel in a scene from Cheerleader Camp. To the right, we see how the mainstream Hollywood career worked out for Teri Weigel.

I have little doubt, however, that nothing that occurred in the last twenty-something years of hardcore porn would have had as poor a plot or lower production values than Cheerleader Camp. I am also willing to bet that most of the porn was also more frightening.

Yes, Cheerleader Camp appeared to be something of a career-killer, given that it completely halted any positive momentum Lorie Griffin might have been enjoying from the success of Teen Wolf. Leif Garrett managed to survive, however, to a small degree, possibly by spending every dollar he earned from The Outsiders to buy and bury every circulating copy of Cheerleader Camp.

In the case of the film’s top-billed star, Betsy Rusell, twenty years of penance appeared to be a sufficient penalty for her participation in Cheerleader Camp, as she was permitted on screen again for Saw III in 2006, reprising her role in the following two installments of the franchise.

I had never seen the trailer before I decided to piddle away an hour plus on this experience, but had the trailer and I crossed paths earlier…this may never have happened. I think the following 90 seconds sums up the movie pretty well.

Could we be witnessing the resurrection of Tom Cruise as a movie powerhouse and somewhat normal human being? A couple short years ago, it seemed impossible. Sure, he would still be able to headline a movie and have it gross 100 million for the next decade or so. But it seemed he had forever alienated the public, a la Mel Gibson and Michael Jackson before him, to the point where it became difficult to set aside his bizarre real-life persona and accept any new film characters for what they were.

His Scientology rants and bizarre cackling seemed to perforate his performances of the last couple years. Even his creepy Oprah smile trickled into Mission Impossible 3, making that already horrible movie even worse. By bringing his personal life and beliefs into virtually every aspect of his public life, from talk show appearances to promotional press conferences sitting beside a baffled and embarrassed Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise seemed to have mentally imploded and pulled a Britney Spears-esque self-destruction.

Fast forward to 2008.

Tom Cruise is cast as a real-life hero of epic proportions, against the most sinister villain the earth has ever known, all the while walking on the eggshells of some very delicate subject matter. A poorly treated Hollywood production pertaining to World War II or the Nazis has the potential to be an enormous disaster. For someone teetering on the brink as Tom Cruise appeared to be, taking on this role could have been considered, errrr, risky business.

But the guy pulled it off. Somewhere, amidst the couch-jumping, Oprah-strangling, Brooke-Shields-bashing, wife-chained-to-a-radiator-in-the-basement weirdness, we all forgot that this guy could really act. He is, indeed, one of the greatest contributors to cinema of the last two decades. And as he takes on the visage of Claus von Stauffenberg, a colonel in the German army who organized a daring attempt to assassinate Hitler, there is no blemish to reveal the apparently delusional cackling madman that was walking around in Cruise’s Ray Bans for the last couple of years.

Cruise is all business. He is intense, but not in a way that belies some attempt to infuse Scientology into the subtext of the film. He is intense because von Stauffenberg was intense. Because von Stauffenberg had to be intense. He was standing virtually alone against a marching army of steel and evil, with his own life and those of his family continually subject to the whims of a madman.

The true life story of von Stauffenberg and his band of noble traitors is fascinating, and it is a pretty rare occasion where you can walk into a movie knowing exactly how it is going to end and still remain riveted by suspense until the end credits begin to make their way up the screen. Such is the success achieved by Cruise, director Bryan Singer (Superman Returns) and a strong supporting cast that includes Bill Nighy (the aging singer who stole the show in Love Actually), Tom Wilkinson (Batman Begins), Terence Stamp (Superman II, Young Guns), and Kenneth Branagh (Frankenstein).

Is the film Valkyrie Oscar-worthy? That might be pushing it. But it is very good, and it re-establishes Cruise at his place among the film world’s elite…for as long as his mind holds out. A very notable nod goes to Bill Nighy for his performance, as his character was palpably terrified throughout the film, adding significantly to the tension of the story. I have no qualms about recommending this film with considerable enthusiasm.

CT Rating: 3.5 Stars