October Edition #11: THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE

Director: Amy Jones
Screenplay: Rita Mae Brown
Starring: Michelle Michaels, Robin Stille, Michael Villella
Release Date: 1982


This wicked little gem was released at the height of the slasher movie boom of the early 80’s and looked to capitalize on all of the boobs and bloodshed of its brethren while offering a slightly more feminist bent. That might sound slightly antithetical when discussing a movie about scantily-clad schoolgirls being menaced by a power tool-wielding madman, but somehow it just works, and it is a blast.

The movie gets off to a perfectly arousing start...

Trish Deveraux (Michaels) is a high school senior in Los Angeles whose parents are leaving town for the weekend, and so decides to invite a few friends from her varsity basketball team over for a slumber party, no boys allowed (though you know they’ll show up anyways).Unbeknownst to her, an escaped lunatic named Russ Thorn (Villella) has been stalking her and her friends and plans on taking each of them out, one by one, with the biggest goddamn cordless power drill you’ve ever seen in your life. It’s gonna be a night full of booze, boobs, and blood-soaked drill bits. In other words, one hell of a good time!

Trish and friends light up the last joint of their lives.

THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE is a prime example of a slasher movie done right, with just the right amount of atmospheric build-up to the tense scenes, extremely likeable characters, and a decent smattering of the ever-important red sauce. However, it is also a fantastic satire of the very genre it excels at. There is a healthy streak of very black humor running throughout this flick, and while it works perfectly as a horror movie in the HALLOWEEN mold, it is also never meant to be taken seriously. From the very outset, the score, while suitably ominous and brooding, is very heavy on the organ and theremin, sounding like something from a campy old Vincent Price movie, which is appropriate considering that Roger Corman is a producer here. All of the conventions we’ve come to expect from this type of movie are here, only amped up to great comic effect, such as the ridiculous shower scene in the girls’ locker room where the camera goes to great effort to focus on one particular girls’ ass for an uncomfortable period of time.

Apparently he's been reading this blog. Sorry, pal.

Probably my favorite aspect of this movie is the fact that it doesn’t fuck around when it comes to delivering the goods. Yes, there are at least eleventy pairs of tits within the first ten minutes, but the movie also bucks a few trends as well. Most slashers are structured as murder-mysteries, where we don’t know the killer’s identity until the final few minutes. At a slim 77 minute running time, this flick doesn’t have time for that bullshit. By the half hour mark we know exactly who Russ Thorn is and what he looks like, and the movie drops all pretenses of building suspense to become a non-stop kill fest, including the requisite penetration by drill bit, drilled out eye sockets, one extremely vicious stabbing, and a severed head or two. Thorn is actually quite menacing and extremely cruel to his victims, producing a very palpable tension, as all of the characters are generally likeable and it is upsetting to see them knocked off in such gruesome fashion.

If she starts crying before you've even started, you might be doing something wrong.

Believe it or not, but the girls are not total bimbos, as some attempt is made to give each of them a personality, though that kinda all goes out the window once the naked pillow fight scene kicks in. But hey, it’s all in good fun! As I previously stated, the entire movie is pervaded by a jet-black sense of humor, such as an amusing gag involving a dead body stored in the fridge that continually goes unnoticed.  The movie continuously pokes fun at itself with numerous clever lines, including my favorite bit when Thorn poses as the pizza guy he’s just offed and rings the doorbell. When one of the guys asks him what the damage is, referring to the bill, Thorn replies “Six…so far.” There’s another great bit in the shower scene when a girl in the background can be heard exclaiming “Wow, I swear your tits are getting bigger!” 

Don't whip it out in public, dude!

 And let’s be honest here, folks: the drill is a dick. There is nothing subtle about this, and the filmmakers never try to hide that fact. At one point Thorn is even shown in silhouette from behind, menacing the girls with the massive drill bit spinning between his legs. While this might all sound horribly misogynistic, it should be noted that all of the guys are dispatched far more graphically and slowly than any of the girls, all of whom do a fairly decent job of fighting back against their attacker. The men in this movie all die whimpering, while the majority of the girls go down fighting, which is more than can be said for most films of this ilk.

For your dead teenager storage needs, look no further!

The climax is a fucking treat, as the remaining girls team up against Thorn using a variety of weapons, including a badass scene where one of them attempts to take him out using a giant fucking buzz saw. Alas, it isn’t cordless, and it is too short to reach. In the end the final battle involves two faithful standbys: the stalwart butcher’s knife, and, of course, a huge-ass machete, another phallic symbol. Unlike Thorn, she’s got that shit under control and slices off the drill bit in one swipe, effectively neutering him. Needless to say, immense bloodshed ensues, and I had a huge grin on my face as the credits rolled.

Pfft! Mine's bigger!

THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE is a movie that I never expected to like. The title alone was enough to convince me that it had to be one of the stupidest movies ever made, but, and I hate to sound cliché, you really can’t judge a movie by its title, or its awesome poster art. This is one of the best slashers I have ever seen, and a wonderfully sly feminist parody of everything stupid the genre represents that comes highly recommended.

My Rating:

8.5/10