Lost and Found: Slashdance

Based on the rad poster and VHS art for Slashdance (1989), you’d expect a deliciously raunchy slasher, right?

The poster promises underboob that the movie never delivers! Dammit!

Well, you’d be sorely disappointed. I was. The actual movie itself is an amateurish snooze, with barely any slashing or actual dancing. Sure, we spend most of the run time ogling sexy female dancer’s bodies—thank you, director person—but it’s usually while they’re swaying awkwardly in place during interminably long “rehearsal” scenes. I refuse to it call dancing! They literally just gyrate their hips and twirl a bit! I’m not complaining about the gyration, mind you! But for a movie ostensibly about a slasher offing dancers in a rundown Los Angeles theater, there isn’t nearly enough slashing or dancing.

That’s one helluva great riff on the Flashdance poster.

It’s a shame because with a name like Slashdance it ought to be a competent slasher movie, at the very least. And with a cast full of bad actors with hard bodies, it could’ve made for a decent softcore flick. No such luck, though. It’s more like a murder mystery/comedy, only with a murder mystery you don’t care about and “comedy” that isn’t funny. It is kind of appealingly wacky though, with a cast of weirdos that includes a choreographer who’s clearly a Friend of Dorothy who gets his jollies exposing himself to the female dancers. Then there’s Amos, a character so absurd, and played by a terrible actor who went on to become a forensic psychologist (!), that the less said about him the better.

When *Slashdance* isn’t padding the run time with gyrating babes, it’s padding the run time with establishing shots all over Los Angeles, even though most of the movie takes place inside a dingy, ugly theater.

The best thing the movie has going for it is star Cindy Maranne. She’s a total smoke show, so it’s a pleasure to watch her do anything, but the movie wastes her talents. She doffs her top once, but we only see her back! Still, she looks like a million bucks in a bikini, or in the thong leotards she wears while going undercover as a dancer to catch the killer. That last part sounds familiar.

As detective Tori Raines, Cindy Maronne offers glimpses early in the film of what might’ve been had her character been better developed.

Oh, Slashdance. Your name held such promise. Speaking of the name, is it Slashdance or Slash Dance? No one seems to know. For this movie, that feels fitting.

Slashdance is currently streaming on YouTube.