Fatal Pulse is a remarkably mediocre 1980s slasher film.

Let's say you're a coed living in a sorority house. In the past three days, three of your sorority sisters have been horribly murdered. Would you go out jogging alone at night? No, only one of the many dumb characters in Fatal Pulse would do that.

Any of you who follows my reviews (as if anyone actually does that) surely knows my great fondness for '80s slashers, including more than a few of the really bad ones, but I'm afraid even I have to come down pretty hard on this one. As much as I love the '80s, I have to admit it wasn't perfect. Amongst all the great hairstyles, for example, there were a few that were downright hideous -- likewise with the music, as the decade's musical greatness makes the few examples of bad '80s music sound all the more painful.

Fatal Pulse somehow manages to capture most of the few bad elements of the 1980s -- heck, it even throws a talent-challenged adult film actor (but not Ron Jeremy, thank goodness) into the mix as a hapless homicide detective.

So let's see. Someone is killing coeds from the AOK sorority house at the rate of one per day. We can only hope that Lisa (Michelle McCormick), the prettiest of the bunch, isn't near the top of the killer's agenda (although that attitude may change after an hour or so of her whining theatrics). Never one to let a crisis go to waste, Jeff (Ken Roberts) decides it's the perfect time to try and win Lisa back (after having dumped her for her slutty, recently deceased sorority sister Stephanie). That doesn't go over too well with Jeff's ex-best buddy Brad, who wants Lisa for himself.

Could Jeff or Brad be the killer? Or could it be Ernie (Joe Estevez), the weird Vietnam vet who actually lives in and takes care of the sorority house? What about the professor Jeff works for? I figured out the killer's identity very early on, but I can't say the film makes it all that obvious (which is one of the few good things I can say about an otherwise terrible script). All we really know about the killer is that he enjoys ripping girls' tops off before doing them in.

With Brad being some kind of refugee from a bad student production of Grease, you would think he would be the most annoying character in the film. You would be wrong, as Jeff's buddy Mark (Blair Karsch) takes annoying to a whole new level in what may be the dumbest scene in slasher film history (believe me -- you'll know it when you see it). As for Ken Roberts, I think he must have been born with a wooden spoon in his mouth, as his performance makes an Al Gore commencement speech seem exciting -- actually, I could say the same thing about the script. No one in this movie comes out looking very good, with the exception of McCormick, but that's only because she's so good-looking. At least we can all be grateful that Karsch never again disgraced the cast list of any other movie.

Even dedicated fans of 1980s slasher films will have a hard time finding good things to say about Fatal Pulse. It's actually rather surprising that a slasher film could be so incredibly boring.