Cherry Falls
"Holy hymen, Batman. They're killing virgins!"

Mmm, Michael Biehn.

Take one violent, sex-themed horror flick, chop it up (if you'll pardon the pun) many times over to try to please the MPAA, then give up on it ever making it to the theater altogether and stick it on basic cable, and you have all the ingredients of the impotent Cherry Falls.

I think this movie, at least at some point, wanted to be ironic or profound or maybe even satirical. But, well, it's not. It's mostly just boring. Much of the humor attempts to be puckish, but winds up being puerile instead. The premise -- a twist on the horror movie rule of thumb that if you have sex, you're doomed to die -- is that someone is killing virgins in Cherry Falls, Virginia. (As ubiquitous Oz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer would say, "They've really mastered the art of the single entendre.") Jody Marken (Brittany Murphy) plays our high school heroine, a proponent of the theory that "abstinence makes the heart grow fonder." Unfortunately, her boyfriend is no fan of the Just Say No philosophy, and early in the film the two break up when he wants sex and she refuses. Jody's overprotective father is Sheriff Brent Marken -- a dour-faced Michael Biehn, whose only change of expression for much of the film involves jaw-twitching and muscle clenching.

"So umm... I don't want to die. Let's go have sex."

Oh, but what muscles. For those fans of genre, Michael Biehn is the poster boy of What Might Have Been. He's hot, he's sexy, and he's traveled across time for Sarah Connor. What more could a young genre fangirl want to make her heart go pitty pat? (Or other parts of her anatomy, for that matter.) Unfortunately, Michael has made some inauspicious career choices and has lately been relegated mostly to character roles, usually psychotic evil character roles that involve a lot of over emoting and eye rolling and that end in a spectacularly overdone death scene. It's kind of become his trademark. His raison d'être, if you will.

Here, Michael Biehn plays Brent Marken so stoically, so tightly wound, that you could bounce quarters off his jawline. Also, he wears a goofy hat. His performance is so serious that his character becomes flat and the few moments when he loses control -- thanks, in part, to the growing certainty that his own past may be the cause of the events of the present -- seem jarring rather than disturbing. That's a problem with this movie. I don't know if it's a product of all the editing and reshooting that was reportedly done, but it leaves a lot to be desired in the logic category. It also can't decide who the protagonist of the piece is. It wants to focus on the young, chaste Jody but her feelings and motivations are all but ignored so she's nothing but a cardboard caricature of the scream queen. It's also dedicated to the mysterious past of the community's pillars of society, Sheriff Marken and his crony the overbearing Principal Sisler. As a result, the story meanders, never gaining much focus.

"Oh God, no! Anything but the MPAA!"

Jody takes solace in school, filled with stereotypical teens of the Breakfast Club type as well as the sensitive, nerdy, and, if you'll pardon the obvious, effeminate English teacher, Leonard Marliston (Jay Mohr), on whom Jody has a bit of a crush. The presumably grisly murders (it's hard to tell when all the gore's edited out) of three teens throw everyone into a big tizzy. The kids react with typical teen horror and glee; the adults react with predictable degrees of shock and chagrin when Sheriff Brent realizes all the victims are virgins. Inexplicably, Sheriff "Close to the Vest" Marken calls a town meeting at the high school to inform the parents that someone is Out There Killing Virgins!

Jody -- who's at the school to ostensibly discuss a paper with the "dreamy" Mr. Marliston -- and a Carl Bernstein-wannabe named Timmy (played deliciously over the top by Keram Malicki-Sanchez, who wears his flamboyant gayness like his overdone makeup -- he looks like a reject from Duran Duran) eavesdrop on the meeting, which turns into an all-out brawl after some parents toss around a few "your daughter's sluttier than my daughter" barbs.

There's more non-tension when Timmy (who may be familiar to some from his turn on Buffy as creepy Freddy Iverson in "Earshot") leaves to call the school paper and tell them to "stop the presses" for the breaking news (how many presses do they have? It's Cherry Freakin' Falls) and ends up another victim -- stuffed in a locker with the word "virgin" carved into it. Jody finds him and ends up running from the killer -- who's not-so-convincingly (or practically, for that matter) disguised in a dress, high-heeled boots, and a big bushy wig. (One look at those calves, and you'll know who the killer is. Unless, of course, you were surprised when Jason was the killer in Friday the 13th, part 8). One wonders how this killer can see anything through that Sasquatch-like mane, but Jody actually has trouble getting away, running into a chemistry lab filled with conveniently placed beakers to throw at the killer. She shrieks and throws things, which makes me want her to die already but somehow manages to incapacitate the killer long enough for her to escape and run straight into daddy's arms. And when they go to investigate, of course, the killer is mysteriously gone. (Glass test tubes and beakers apparently don't have the stopping power of a good pump action rifle.)

Word of the killings, and the killer's apparent motivation leaks out, the kids freak out, and their solution is to throw a great big "pop your cherry" sex party to eliminate themselves from the pool of victims. That's right, folks; the message of this movie is "sex will keep you alive." And one wonders how it ended up on cable.

Next he could try Rocky Horror.

Filled with lame misdirections -- from a disturbing father/daughter sexual vibe, to the obsessive jealous boyfriend who hates his mother and can't decide if he wants the have sex with Jody or not, to the bad wig that should convince no one -- this movie just never quite works. It doesn't help that they cast only two name actors and dressed one up as the good guy sheriff and then -- despite the aforementioned creepy hints at more than parental concern over his daughter's sexual activity and mysterious reactions to his daughter's sketch of the "woman" who tried to kill her -- eliminate him as a suspect fairly early on. That left the only other recognizable (read: talented) face of Jay Mohr to give me pause. And, I'm sorry, but the plaid jacket and geeky glasses were a... ahem... dead giveaway.

Yes, I've given away the identity of the killer. But believe me, it comes as no surprise. And frankly, if I didn't reveal this fact, I couldn't tell you about the best part of the movie. The first two-thirds of the film manage to limp along unimpressively, thanks to the lost shock value and the cast moving like zombies through the unfunny script. But once we -- and Jody -- learn that the Sheriff has a Big Secret involving the rape of a girl in his past and that this girl had a child as a result of this rape, things finally pick up some steam. And that's thanks mostly to Mohr. He seems to be the only person to realize how ridiculous this story is, and he takes his performance appropriately over the top. Watching him as he struts around in a sleeveless little black dress, threatens daddy and daughter, and runs screaming through a big orgy carrying an axe is probably more amusing than it should be. But it was certainly more amusing than the snoozefest that was the rest of the film.

Plus, Jay Mohr gets the dubious honor of joining the ranks of People Who've Killed Michael Biehn. This time, Biehn buys it with an axe, although most of the death scene is chopped horribly short (yeah, you can groan over that one). Biehn does get to over-emote some, though, in his big confessional about his part in the gang rape of Lenny's mother. So fans won't be too disappointed. And yes, there's a hint that Lenny and Jody could be siblings, though how Biehn's falling-down drunk character -- the fourth of four rapists -- could have had enough, uh, strength to participate in the rape, let alone enough, er, potency to be the one to impregnate her is beyond me.

The movie's ending has about as much oomph as the rest of it, meaning none -- with the killer ending up impaled (now that's ironic!), a clichéd "killer reanimated" sequence that surprises no one but the idiotic half-clothed teens surrounding the body, and our hero and her boyfriend clutching tenderly, reunited at last. In the end, the Cherry Falls run blood red to symbolize the town's lost innocence. And if I'd paid to see this thing in the theater, I'd be seeing red, too. But thankfully, all I lost was one not-so-precious Friday night.

DROOL FACTOR: Well, there's the Michael Biehn in uniform factor, obviously. And even the goofy sheriff's hat won't deter the diehard fans from drooling over his yummy, tightly clenched muscles. None of the young boys really stand out, but Jay Mohr certainly makes quite an impression. Even if he does look better than me in a little black dress.

GROSS-OUT FACTOR: Fairly nonexistent, thanks to the move to cable. There is that shot of the killer rubbing blood on one victim's lips and then kissing it off that's pretty stomach-churning.

STRONG CHICK FACTOR: Brittany Murphy screams entirely too much and makes too many stupid decisions to qualify. But did I mention Jay Mohr in the dress?

-- Mary Beth Nielsen

Cherry Falls went straight to cable on the USA Network October 20, 2000, but will be available on VHS January 30, 2001 and on DVD February 27, 2001. It is currently playing in theaters in the U.K., Germany, and Hong Kong.

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