Tamara

A big-time nerdy chick with a crush on her English teacher and a penchant for all things witch-y, gets killed by mistake, but suddenly reappears in school, dressed like a whore and pissed at the dudes and dudettes who put her in an early grave. Short skirts, chopped-off ears, English teachers with boners and a whole lotta unoriginality ensues!

This has gotta be one of the easiest movies to review, if only because it’s basically a mixture of a number of other films, but obviously, without the originality of any of them. Take CARRIE, slap it up with some I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and SHE’S ALL THAT, a touch of MAY, a hint of MEAN GIRLS and even some THE CRAFT for the kids, and you’ve got yourself the concoction that is TAMARA. Is it original? Not in the least. Is it fun, campy and gory? Yeah, pretty much. In fact, if that’s pretty much what you’re looking for in your slasher movie, this one is likely to jack you up, especially since its kills are particularly bloody and disgusting, its lead player is an extremely sexy (read: slutty) looking babe, the film doesn’t go much longer than the hour and a half mark, and for what it’s worth, it actually made me give half a shit about a couple of the characters, which is a rarity in films of this sort. In fact, when the movie started up with its focus on all of the stereotypical “mean jocks” and “slutty anorexics”, I was rolling my eyes with dread for what was to follow, but once things got going around the half hour mark (it did take a little too long to get revved), it was fun to watch Jenna Dewan strut around in the shortest skirts ever invented by man, with bras sticking out of her shirts like they were the new “in thing” (then again, they probably are!!).

The murders were also pretty gory, especially the one that we actually premiered on our own website a month or so ago, featuring a boy who takes a knife to parts of his body and cuts and cuts and cuts. Mr. Blonde has nothing on this guy! In fact, if you’re a little weak in the stomach, you might want to turn away during that scene. A couple of other kills were also fun, and things didn’t get too complicated, so there weren’t many plot holes, but I can’t say that I appreciated the fact that Tamara sorta disappeared during the film’s last half hour, as two of its three final confrontations, didn’t even feature our hottie star (this made sense in terms of the film’s storyline, but the film is called TAMARA for a reason, man…we wanna see more of the girl!). I also appreciated its conclusion, which wasn’t all happy-go-lucky like it could’ve been, but a useless scene immediately following the film’s actual resolution, was stupid and obviously injected into the film for reasons other than the completion of the storyline (i.e. the studio likely asked them to slap that in). All in all though, this is likely to be enjoyed much more as a DVD rental, but it’s got enough bloody stuff in it, as well as one hell of a sexy lead, to warrant a quickie trip to the theaters, if campy, unoriginal slasher-sluts-from-hell flicks are your kinda jive. That said, the film’s major cockteasing and lack of nudity is inexcusable, so maybe you should wait for video just to teach them a lesson! I’m so confused…Tamara…is that you fucking with my head?!?

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian