Unseen Terror 2013: Day 17

Left alone to herself for the evening, a popular high school girl decides to throw a slumber party sleepover for herself and her friends at the house. She even invites the new girl from school, who after hearing some catty talk about herself, declines the invitation. That night, after the girls arrive, an escaped murderer with an affinity for power drills makes his way to the neighborhood with bloodshed in mind, and the only hope for survival may come in the form of the new girl from high school.

You know, I was shocked with how far I've come with this year's marathon, but somehow I've yet to look at a single slasher film from any decade. That changed with a viewing of one of the lost relics from the 1980s, The Slumber Party Massacre. With the recent string of "Killer Women" and "female power" horror films I've been viewing over the past few days, you might be wondering how in the world something with a title such as this could be categorized under either of those. And I'll confess that outside of a script written by noted feminist author and writer Rita Mae Brown, it really can't. I think I'm just running out of gas.

Plot-wise, the film isn't exactly trying to break new grounds, but Brown's original intentions were for it to be a parody of the then-burgening slasher genre. Not surprisingly, the film's producers insisted the film be played as a straight horror film instead. Given this choice, it does make it somewhat uneven in the end, but you can still get a feel for the screenplay's original intentions, even amongst the oodles of sleaze. And I feel that I should mention the sleaze before I forget, because this film doesn't waste your time giving what you want and remarkably fast. I clocked the first shot of nudity at approximately two minutes in and the first kill at about four or five minutes in, if not less. Whether this was Brown's choice or the choice of director Amy Holden Jones (who went on to write Beethoven of all films), I have no idea.

The comedic parts were also necessary to keep it grounded and from being too routine (great gag involving a refrigerator), and the women themselves, as hard to distinguish as they can be at times, do have some charisma in the lead up to the inevitable title massacre. Even by slasher movie standards, some of their age discrepancies are noticeable though. Speaking of our slasher, his choice of weapon for a large portion of the film's running time (a criminally short seventy-seven minutes) is a power drill, which I will have to admit is fairly cool. I've always admired the "simple, but effective" ideology when it comes to the mindsets of killers in cinema, though I'd certainly say that this killer's mindset isn't exactly the most complicated, as it seems he just simply likes to murder pretty, young people. Slumber's gore isn't off the charts either, but given its original intentions, this wasn't about trying to set records in that book. If you want crazy gore in your slasher films, you can still view films like The Burning and the Friday the 13th films after all.

In the end, The Slumber Party Massacre is a fun time if you're into these type of pictures, but those not crazy about slasher cinema might want to stay clear. The script is certainly better than it lets on to be, as are the performances from the main cast, but it definitely feels like this was marketed more towards the fans than anything else, or at least towards those more fanatical about the genre than anything else. I had a pretty good time overall, but that doesn't mean you will. I've heard very mixed things about the sequels that have been released throughout the years, but I actually wouldn't be opposed to seeing a concept like this remade down the line, with perhaps a similar writer in mind, but with the original intention of it being a parody being fully realized.

Tomorrow, we're actually back to the present (and revisiting the past) with CARRIE!