The return of Smash-Mouth following the events of End Zone, this time he’s out for revenge against the cheerleaders involved in the death of his mother.
Written by L. Ray Hobbson from characters by Warren Q. Harolds and directed by August Kane this slasher sequel from the 1970s is missing a reel so it’s a bit hard to fully review its story, but from what is available, it’s a decent slasher from the early days of the sub-genre and thus would fall into the proto-slasher category and it does set some of the rules for slashers later on. Here, a group of cheerleaders meet up at a cabin as adults to make peace and reminisce, once there, the killer who decimated their football team in high school shows up for revenge and all kinds of mayhem ensues. As a film, it’s entertaining, the view on the 1970s here is a fun and the fact that it was shot using what they had available on a low budget gives it charm 50+ years later. The writing is pretty much as expected for an early slasher with a few fun flourishes. The directing is on par with the writing, making it a fun watch for what is currently available of it.
The cast here is a bit on the lesser-known side of things with actress Percy Wynn in the lead, giving a performance that had it been more seen by wider audiences would have set her up as one of the friend Scream Queens, before Olivia Hussey as Jess in Black Christmas, before Adrienne King in Friday the 13th, basically, she would have been one of the first and needs to be recognized as a trailblazer here. Her performance is just the right balance between sweet and badass. Playing one of the cheerleaders who lure her to this cabin is Dahlia Dimont as Mary. Dimont plays bitchy-potentially-pure-evil quite well here and viewers will want to see her get her comeuppance. Dimont’s performance is a fun one for sure. The film’s main villain, its slasher killer is played by Mikey Smash in the available parts shown in this film. In the rest of the film, rumor has it that William Mouth is who played Smash Mouth, but that footage is lost and his performance cannot be judged here. Mikey Smash for his part does well under the mask and is a decently brooding killer.
The look of the film here is great in terms that it has aged decently well. There is some artifacting of course and some of the scenes have more damage than others, but overall, the image quality is still quite high considering the film’s age. The film doesn’t have any CGI as per usually given it’s from the 1970s and the practical effects are more than decent. Yes, they are older, but also they prove that practical wins over computer generated effects when it comes to watching a film that is older. The work here is clearly low-budget, but it’s still fun to watch this many years later.
End Zone 2 is a fun slasher for which it would be great to find the ending as it would definitely help close the story and it would help put to rest the questions about the presence, or absence, of William Mouth as Smash Mouth. The switch of actor is something that is highly debated and something that the documentary The Once and Future Smash digs into.
