Shredded Cheese

Is it hot where you are right now? 'Cause it's hot where I am right now...and I tell ya, it's not just because my new shampoo has my hair bouncin' and behavin' like it's never bounced and/or behaved before. I mean it's like totally Kenny Rogers Roasters-style hot here, man. Like, it's totally I feel as if I'm wearing a jumpsuit made out of asbestos and I live in a hibachi that's on fire AND dangling from the sun at the same time-style hot, man. Now that's hot!

Incidentally, if you click on that Kenny Rogers Roasters link up there, you'll see that their motto is "It's the wood that makes it good". Just thought I'd point that out.

What, oh what is one to do when it's oh so hot and sticky out there? How does one cope with the heat and the so-very-thick air? Yes, yes...we've all crammed frozen Stouffers French Bread Pizzas down our pants to cool off, but what else is there to be done?

Fear not, my disgusting sweaty friends, for I have the solution! To battle the heat, we watch a movie about a crazed skier who dresses all in black and kills pesky snowboarders, that's what we do! Yes! We grab a big, frosty glass full of Mountain Dew or SOBE or some other hip snowboarder-friendly drink. We feel refreshed, we feel "with it"...and we settle in to watch the blood run down the snowy slopes in...SHREDDER! Ah, I feel less disgusting already, don't you? Like I'm taking a bath in York Peppermint Patties...or something that gives a similarly cool sensation.

The story here is as old as the hills themselves, kids: a young, mostly horny group of "teens" heads to an abandoned ski slope- Rocky Summit, a haunted abandoned ski slope!- for a weekend of booze, boobs, and getting killed.

Oh, yeah, sure...there's a big silly story about how the townies hate snowboarders and tried to ban snowboarders from Rocky Summit but then some snowboarders showed up anyway, right? And they totally got wasted and went snowboarding, and they made some little girl who was skiing all nervous, right? Like they were bullying her? And she smacked into a tree and died! And yeah, so the ski slope is all closed and haunted and everyone totally hates snowboarders.

Warnings and scoldings aren't enough to stop our rad group of shredders from heading up to Rocky Summit, though! They've simply got to shred! Shred 'til they're dead! I learned that term, 'shred', and how to apply it to the sport of snowboarding whilst watching the movie. I officially feel 68% hipper than I did before I watched Shredder. No more "purple stuff" for me, homies, I'm ready for Sunny D!

Our garden-variety stock characters (from the uber-annoying "funny" guy to the slut to the...other slut) soon arrive at the slopes for some of the aforementioned young-people type activities. Before you can say "Cowabunga, dude!", however, the killer (looking like the Winter Olympics edition of the black clad killer in Night School) starts doing his slalom of death!

One by one the illicit 'boarders are dispatched...and I must admit, I was entertained. Characters were killed in ways that frequently made me laugh, from the giant icicle-through-the chest to the poor girl who accidentally hung herself from the chairlift. Much time passed before anyone found her body, so the audience gets treated to many a shot of her lifeless body spinning in the cool winter breeze as it hangs from the lift...there she goes, up one side of the mountain and back down again. Maybe it was the late hour or merely the heat of a July night affecting me, but lawd almighty, it filled me with glee.

So what's the final verdict on Shredder? Hmm. That's a tough one. Well, I can't honestly say that it's a good movie, and though it's a nice throwback to the slasher heyday of the 80s, the tongue is firmly planted in cheek here. Most likely, Shredder could be classified as a horror/comedy...and while I'm not usually a fan of that sub-genre, I was damn entertained by this flick. On one hand, the acting isn't very good and it's certainly not scary. On the other hand, however, the blood flows freely and some of the kills have that "ooh, cringe" factor. It's oddly fun and there's even some wonderful lines, like my favorite: "I'm not gay, I'm just horny!" And boy, after watching this movie, I feel more in touch with Generation Y than ever! In fact, it's quite possible that I myself live only to shred now.

Before checking out Shredder, I prescribe a healthy dose of beer and/or some brain softening via exposure to intense summer heat...then crack open a Sunny D and enjoy! I give it 5.5 out of 10 eternally dangling hos.