Slumber Party Massacre Does Not
Waste Valuable Time

Written by BHM Contributor Michael Saunier
June 29, 2007

Release: 1982
Directed by: Amy Holden Jones
Written by: Rita Mae Brown

Starring:
Michelle Michaels as Trish Devereaux
Robin Stille as Valerie 'Val' Bates
Michael Villella as Russ Thorn
Debra Deliso as Kimberly 'Kim' Clarke
Andree Honore as Jackie

Back in the 7th grade my best friend and I rented a flick that he assured me featured FULL frontal nudity, or he so elegantly put it “bush”. The promise of seeing a woman in all of her glory was all it took to get my hormones into a feeding frenzy and we took Slumber Party Massacre home for the next 3 days.

Slumber Party Massacre did not have the full frontal as promised by my liar of a friend, but there was a cornucopia of breasts and quality horror to more than make up for his betrayal.

Slumber Party Massacre is about a group of high school girls on the basketball team who get together for, you guessed it, a slumber party…without parental supervision. What the girls do not know is that there is an escaped mental-patient/killer is on the loose. There are countless news flashes on the radio, but nobody seems to notice.

The girls expect a typical night of girl talk, underage drinking and (or course) pot smoking - but escaped mental patient Russ Thorn drops by uninvited with his portable drill to spice things up a bit. This isn’t some little handheld drill you would use to tighten screws but a two-handed industrial piece of machinery capable of some gruesome renovations on the girls’ faces.

Slumber Party Massacre knows what it is and makes the most of it. It is a slasher film in the vein of Friday the 13th and Halloween, and even plainly steals some of Halloween’s classic shots like the one through the windshield when Michael Myers drives up behind the girl walking home from school. One aspect of the many popular slasher films of this time that Slumber Party Massacre did not borrow was having the killer wear a mask or some kind of costume. I was actually disappointed about this and felt that him having a mask would have helped make him more terrifying, but at the end when he speaks his creepiness comes through loud and clear.

Slumber Party Massacre only runs 77 minutes and doesn’t waste time on pointless deviations from the plot to fill up time, which is very refreshing. The dialog is wildly funny at times and the overall acting is decent since they keep it simple and stay away from the overdramatic crap that comes off as hokey.

One scene that had me rolling on the floor was when Jeff and Neil, two boys who show up to prank the girls and end up staying, are in a room coming up with a plan to protect the girls after finding out a killer is outside. The scene is so odd and homoerotic that I had to make a mental note to include it here in this review. The other dialog that is meant to be funny is actually humorous in both a campy and normal way.

I found it very interesting that Slumber Party Massacre was produced, written, and directed by women, one of whom being Amy Holden Jones, the writer of Mystic Pizza and the Beethoven series. Who would have thought that the woman who wrote the gore and sex fest Slumber Party Massacre would have also written a lovable family comedy centered on a St. Bernard dog?

Slumber Party Massacre isn’t groundbreaking or epic in any sense of the word but it is undoubtedly fun to watch and floats near the top of the slasher film cesspool. That’s all that matters.  Questions or comments about Slumber Party Massacre?  Contact us!

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