Apparently you’ll sweat blood. That is unless you’re being mauled to death by a frozen barracuda or having your head caved in by the deranged, paraplegic ghost of the current gym manager who has conveniently regained the use of her legs in the afterlife. If you ever needed an excuse to skip the gym…well, this isn’t it, but it reaffirms what we’ve all come to know in our souls – if you’re an attractive, scantily clad lady in the vicinity or paranormal phenomenon, you’d better start running.

DEATH SPA (1989)
Genre: Horror 
Director: Michael Fischa      
Rated: R
Buy the DVD

Starbody Health Spa is the hippest gym in town boasting a strict dress code; if it’s not Lycra and giving your anal passage a good flossing, you’re not getting in Friend. And that would be unfortunate, because you’d miss out on the Mardi Gras party of the century! At the gym. In the same rooms that are filled with clients during the daylight hours, sweating all over the place. What could possibly present a more alluring prospect on a Saturday night? Actually, a lot of things, with a vat full of sanitizer topping the list.

It turns out someone else thought the idea was just as unsanitary and in the week preceding the party, accidents begin to happen and quickly turn fatal. It all begins on Monday when gym manager Michael’s girlfriend enjoys a midnight sauna in the empty spa. As soon as she’d draped naked over the bench rubbing herself all over, you just know the proverbial is going to hit the fan and lo, the billowing clouds of steam being gently syphoned in are replaced by scalding chlorine tainted jets and oh heavens! The door is locked tight! Laura does the only sensible thing a blonde can think of when finding themselves in such a pickle and karate chops the pane of glass in the door before executing a perfect backflip and passing out.

On Tuesday a sabotaged diving board slips its earthly bonds for a few glorious moments, springing free thanks to a couple of loosened bolts and almost clobbering a spandex clad swimmer to death on its plummet back to earth. Things really heat up on Wednesday when we enter the fantasy world where women really do cram into communal showers ten at a time, lather up their teats and talk sass about the mens. Inevitably, all that steamed clam results in yet more casualties when the tiles on the walls start hurtling off and adding a ceramic touch to the shower.

Elsewhere in the gym, a chest press didn’t get the memo and assaults a man of all things. The deadly attack occurs when the machine is in a resting position, inexplicably bursting one side of his ribcage while he screams and starts spurting blood all over place with no consideration for his fellow gym bunnies. And to round off the day, a women in horrifically ugly underwear that isn’t even a sports bra gets a random metal spike in the back of the head before being stuffed into a locker and surprisingly never found. However, nothing can stand in the way of Mardi Gras! The club remains open and people just keep filling the halls, like lambs to the slaughter.

The police are baffled and spend the rest of the movie tailing Michael, concluding that he was the most suspicious character at Starbody Health Spa. Did I mention that Michael’s dead wife damaged her spine in childbirth, got pissed about it and decided that the best way to handle her new disability was to wheel out into the garden, douse herself with gasoline and light up? Or that she and her brother David were twins with a ‘special’ connection and now David, who uses the security cameras to watch the patrons, is wearing her lingerie and talking to her in his bedroom mirror? Oh, and Michael’s partner in the club teamed up with their lawyer in a bid to force him out of the business by any means necessary? Yep. Michael is definitely up to something.

A devilish cocktail of deviant machinery, corporate sabotage, haunting and possession get thrown together and topped off with a dash of gore and a hella lot of boobage in this unconventional murder mystery. Find out whodunit in Death Spa.

We dare you to buy Death Spa on DVD!

Author Gamer Girl is a podcast co-host on FrontTowardsGamer Radio  and has churned out a couple of guides at gamesradar. It is highly recommended you follow her on Twitter.
Previously in Poison Popcorn: Dollman. See previous Poison Popcorns right  fucking here!