Mandy Lane (Amber Hearst) is the walking dream of all boys in her high school. Just about every single one of them finds her angelic virginity (hey, I didn't write the script!) irresistible. She tends to keep her distance from them, though. When she finally agrees to visit a jock party, she takes her slightly nerdy friend Emmet (Michael Welch) with her, who promptly convinces one of her admirers that the best and easiest way to impress Mandy would be to jump to one's death. Which the guy promptly does.
Nine months later, Emmet and Mandy aren't on speaking terms anymore, instead she runs with a somewhat wilder clique of rich idiots, although she still is as pure as the white winter snow.
When the clique goes on a druggy weekend in the country, they are stalked by a shadowy figure who murders them one by one. Oh, who might the killer be?
Mandy Lane is a film that has some problems finding a distributor outside of Germany, a somewhat curious state for an American film made with American money that is really quite nice.
Sure, it is a teen slasher, but a very well-made one. Since the budget didn't allow to cast the typical modern horror movie TV teen idols many mainstream horror titles are plagued with, the script is able to at least touch on a few things modern slashers ignore: the teenage years as wilderness, teenagers are taking drugs (oh noes!) and so on. All of this isn't explored all that deeply, but treated realistically enough to make the (more than solidly acted) characters a lot more deep than one is used in the sub-genre.
Plot and twists should be surprise to no one, I think, but most of it is handled in such a way that knowing what will happen doesn't take away from watching it.
Mandy herself is a very interesting character in her being used so heavily as projection surface for the demands and wishes of other people I have my doubts there is anything like a "real her" there. In this, the film stands very much in the tradition of classic exploitation movies, who never had a problem with treating their female protagonists as objects while at the same time criticizing the objectification of women.
So, subversion is still alive.
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