John’s Old School Horror Corner: Killer Workout (1987), one of the most TnA-rich raunchy throwbacks I’ve ever seen

Pretty classy poster, right?

MY CALL:  Hardly horror at all, this was deliciously cheesy and raunchy to the point of hilarity.  Watch this to remind yourself of what it’s like to be a teenage boy.  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  Death Spa (1989), which was basically a failed attempt to duplicate this with a zanier plot, more attention to kills and effects, and way less TnA.  There’s even a scene when someone tags the gym “Death Spa,” perhaps influencing the title of the subsequent movie.  ALTERNATE TITLE:  Aerobicide.

Brace yourself for sweaty hard bodies, ass-choking leotards, hot pink tights and excessively inappropriate camera angles as we are introduced to Rhonda’s (Marcia Karr; Maniac Cop, Savage Streets) gym.  They’ve turned up the volume on the 80s-ometer warning us that they probably used more of the budget on the soundtrack than whatever we get in the form of special effects.

Nope.  That’s not a prostitute walking up to the Bunny Ranch.  That’s an aerobics instructor in her classiest uniform hitting the gym.

In the opening scene some naked chick is killed in a laughably violent tanning bed accident.  What seems to be the very next day a woman is brutally murdered in the women’s locker room shower.  Despite daily homicides people keep coming to the gym as if nothing happened and never seem to wonder what happened to their training partner.

She didn’t exactly miss her Zumba class because of the flu.

Now, let’s be real for a moment here.  Before we hit “play” we all knew there wasn’t going to be a good story and that there would be no character development.  We came to laugh as people get killed with random gym apparatuses.  And, given that this is very low budget 80s horror, we understood that most of these death scenes would occur off-screen after a shot of a hand holding a weapon and followed by someone spraying blood on the wall.  But what this flick lacks in knives cleaving sweaty cleavage, it makes up for with extra cheese.

We get our raunchy cheese, as any cheese connoisseur would have it, in a variety of forms.  There are the standard shower scenes along with the opening tanning bed scene.  But the real highlights here are aerobics montages to remind us that back in the 80s women pretty much dressed like hookers when they worked out.  We learn that the camera man understood his instructions loud and clear as we are bombarded by tandem close-ups of sweaty bouncing aerobic boobs, thong-wedgied butts and leg-spreading crotch shots.  No joke–the aerobic routines are more than a little slutty and there’s an inordinate amount of this.  Every 10-15 minutes it’s like the director was just filming hooker tryouts.  SIX TIMES we get these bouncy slut montages encored by a highlights reel during the closing credits. LOL.  We even see a scarred up burn victim’s bare breasts in more than one lengthy scene!!!  That’s an awful LOT of screen time for TnA even in a raunchy horror flick.

I have no clue what this move is called.  But I think I love it.

Yup.  This really happens in this flick…a lot.

But the cheese oozes all the way to the kills themselves like when someone is stabbed to death with a giant safety pin–and no, that’s not a typo, an over-sized safety pin!  Evidently that’s the killer’s weapon of choice.  In addition to the lame kills, there are some funny martial arts fights between a couple of meatheads.  They’re really going for it on the karate, too.  These goofy fights are complete with jump spin kicks and during one of them a bro gets stabbed with a rake.

These two bros are locked in heated fury in this bro-fu match.

Watch this because you want to roll your eyes, laugh and feel young and dumb again.  But, bro…seriously, bro.  Don’t watch this with your girlfriend or wife.  I don’t care how cool she is or how much she likes horror.  She will judge you every second of this flick’s running time and will be totally justified in doing so.  LMAO

I think the word you’re looking for is CLASSY.