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The Slumber Party Massacre

The Slumber Party Massacre

List Price: $9.98
Your Price: $9.98
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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Old School Slasher Flick!
Review: Slumber Party Massacre is one of the best all around slasher flicks. It's got everything fans of this genre would want to see. Plenty of cleavers and cleavage (so to speak) The plot is very simple and laid out quickly. Great film to watch late at night when there's nothing else to do. Watch it alone or with a group of friends and it's still entertaining. At this price it's definetly a must for your collection.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Slumber Party Massacre, 3 1/2 stars.
Review: Slumber party massacre is one of those typical slasher movies from the early 80's. While there are so many slasher movies that were being released during that year in the early 80's I found this one to be a bit decent. The story is very simple infact it has to many cliches like one of the girls walking alone in a dark room, a mental patient has escaped from an instatution and is stalking and killing some pretty girls from school using a big drill. Some scenes do have a bit of humor in them like one of the girls not noticing a dead body in the fridge, that was pretty stupid actually and onother scene involving a dead pizza guy to keep this film from being boring. There is also alot of nudity which is also typical of a slasher film, so if you are a fan of these types of films then you would probably enjoy this. The dvd doesn't have any special features except for three trailers, one of the trailers is from this film and the others are the two sequals which look better than the first slumber party massacre so I might check them out.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: As a social commentary, this is a mediocre film
Review: Slumber Party Massacre is really about the problems that teens in the 80s faced. It is sort of a cross between The Breakfast Club and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You can really feel for the girls in the cliquey basketball team. They are struggling with their emotions over the new girl in town while dealing with their immature boyfriends. How could anybody be expected to perform under such pressure? Yet they do!

The villian in this movie is subtle yet effective. He does not mince words (until the very end when he has a touching sililoquy that makes your heart weep) yet he is able to convey so much feeling and rage. I think it is his indiscriminate use of a very large portable drill in the seemingly random killings that does it. Oh, don't get me wrong, he is so versatile an actor, he is also able to use knives! My two favorite scenes involving him where when he was counting bodies in the trunk and realized that one got away. His grief was so palpable it almost made me cry. The other is near the tragic conclusion when his drill, really his symbol of manhood, was cut in two. You could tell that he was effectively dead at that point because he had no reason to live. Shakespeare himself could not have created a more tragic scene.

I think this may have won one of the more obscure 1982 Oscar awards: The Best Use of Portable Power Tools.

If you like this review, you should like this movie!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Sleazy slasher classic
Review: The early 1980s were a great time for the slasher film genre, as every hardcore horror fan knows, and one of the best of these efforts was a nasty little gem called "Slumber Party Massacre." Thanks to the wonders of DVD, we can revisit such gruesome shockers whenever we want to without trudging off to the local video store only to learn that they don't carry anything other than "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th." Remember those desperate days? I essentially quit watching horror films for several years because I couldn't find anything decent in town and was unwilling to spend thousands of dollars on out of print VHS tapes. Not anymore. Now I can plunk down a few dollars and walk away with Joe D'Amato's finest, peruse at my leisure any of Dario Argento's grotesque gialli, relive the awesome experience of watching that girl and her digestive tract in Lucio Fulci's "The City of the Living Dead" (widescreen with awesome sound no less), or systematically work my way through the prime years of the American slasher film. The latter category includes the juicy cut of warped depravity that is "Slumber Party Massacre," an all-American jaunt into the deepest recesses of a genre that rarely seeks to do anything beyond slice and dice its characters in imaginative ways.

What you have here is your standard "nutcase escapes the loony bin and goes on a rampage" horrorfest. Hardly original, I grant you, but in this case highly effective nonetheless. The Mark David Chapmanish fellow in "Slumber Party Massacre" turns out to be the bug eyed Russ Thorn (Michael Villela), just your everyday upstanding citizen who used a drill to dispatch a bunch of poor souls back in the day. Now he's on the loose and determined to start working again just as soon as he can find a new consignment of victims on which to ply his skills. We come into the film at a local high school, where a bunch of female basketball players plans to throw a slumber party that very night. Just in case you're not smart enough to know these are athletes, we see the hardworking gals putting in some serious time on the court with Coach Jana (Pamela Roylance) before hitting the showers. In the locker room we meet the most important character, the new girl in town Trish (Michele Michaels), and a few of the snobbier members of the team. Trish wants to go to the party but isn't sure she will fit in. Besides, she angered some of her fellow teammates by performing well on the court.

Meanwhile, Thorn is already claiming his first victims. He kills a blonde repairwoman right under the noses of a couple of dorky guys on the school grounds in a nicely executed scene before stalking Linda (Brinke Stevens) in the locker room after school. Or was it Linda first and the blonde second? No matter, really. The two crimes serve the purpose of establishing how utterly dangerous this chap is with tools. He picks up a twelve-inch drill along the way, which will act as his primary method of destroying the human race one woman at a time. Then comes the slumber party with all its adolescent antics. The girls giggle, cackle over their guy friends, and nearly get into trouble with the neighbor who drops in to check on them. Thorn turns up to take part in the fun, working his way through the nosy neighbor, turns the pizza delivery guy into a sieve, and wipes out several other minor characters. Trish pops into the picture for a variety of reasons. One, she lives right across the street from the slumber party. Two, her annoying Joanie Cunningham wearing hot shorts sister Courtney (Jennifer Meyers) encourages her to partake in the festivities. Three, the movie wouldn't work without a courageous heroine arriving to save the day. The conclusion turns into a real bloodbath, what with the discovery of all those bodies and the showdown between Thorn and Trish.

"Slumber Party Massacre" works so well for one simple reason: this is a movie that is all about atmosphere. After all, the gore really isn't spectacular, not comparable in anyway to what we've seen in gorier slashers like "The Prowler," or your typical Italian gorefest, or a number of other extreme films. And the acting, with a few exceptions, is corny and what you would expect from a low budget horror film. No, this movie succeeds because of darkened rooms, darker streets, pitch-black backyards, and the relentless, single minded stalk and slash methods of Russ Thorn. He's a truly frightening lunatic dedicated to the proposition that every living being within his reach should perish horribly at the end of a sharp instrument. Thorn remains silent for most of the picture, but provides one of the most humorous scenes in the film when he finally speaks and we find out he sounds a lot like Truman Capote with a bad head cold. After you stop laughing at this point, you realize "Slumber Party Massacre" wins the day. Even the picture transfer on the DVD, a rather grainy and dark transfer, lends a certain panache to the proceedings.

Extras. Filmographies for some of the actors, trailers for this film, "Slumber Party Massacre II," "Sorority House Massacre II," (which cribs footage from this movie!) and a widescreen picture transfer find there way onto the disc. I don't think we'll ever see all the slasher films of this era come out on DVD, but that shouldn't stop us from appreciating what we get. Watching films like this one leaves me nostalgic for the old days, before shot on video productions and cheesy CGI effects replaced good old fashioned hard work. Give this one a go soon.


Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Let's get things straight....
Review: The name of the movie, the cover of the box, and especially all these reviews, might lead you to believe this is some kind of softcore porn movie. I may very well be the only person on earth to say this... but this movie DOES NOT have TONS of nudity in it. As far as I can tell, it has four of those scenes. A girl getting dressed... the girls showering, the girls changing for the party, and a girl making out with her boyfriend (he feels her nude breast). There is also a male [rear] shot in a magazine, but I won't count that. There is no actual "sex scene" or anything so I can't help but wonder why all these reviewers can't help but talk about the nudity. I'm a huge horror buff, and have seen alot more nudity in other 80's flicks. I can't believe this movie is somewhat "famous" for it.
The nudity that it does have IS definitely gratuitous (while the girls chat in the gym shower, the camera lowers and focuses and their butts for a while)
Now...as for the movie itself: it's kind of hard not to bash it, because it's not a horrible movie... but most of all it is NOT a good movie. This movie shows us how a flick can be cheesy in a bad way. It's like they just didn't try hard enough.
But I guess it's not a COMPLETE waste of time... especially considering how short it is... (77 min)

You have to be as open minded as possible.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Ultimate Driller Killer Thriller on DVD
Review: The ultimate driller killer thriller. Valerie is known as the goody-goody sweet girl of the girls basketball team, and Trish, the only member who likes her fails to invite her to a team slumber party across the street from Val's house; mostly due to pressure from the other 3 snotty girls in the clique. Of course the typical 1982 horror film stuff happens - the 2 jocks crash the party, there's drinking and pot smoking. Valerie is stuck home babysitting her younger sister Courtney. Little do they know, an escaped nut named Russ Thorne followed the girls home.....with a big cordless drill - and you know what happens next! One of the girls and her boyfriend disappears when making out in the garage; the pizza delivery guy, already dead, falls through the door when they open it. The phone line has been cut, so the team coach swings by when things are already getting crazy. Valerie looks through her window and decides to check things out for herself. This movie is kinda cheesy and predictable, but it's kinda scary the first time you see it. If you're dumb enough to NOT defeat some nut with a drill, then you deserve to die LOL. Supposedly this movie was written and directed by feminists. I liked the movie, and it's recommended to see once only for a casual horror fan.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Eh, not worth the trouble.
Review: This film may be worth a rental, but it's really not remarkable. There's some good quality nudity through out the whole movie, which perhaps is it's best selling point, but the killer is so stupid and the direction is so dull that I wouldn't recommend spending a buck on a rental, if that. There are a lot of fake jumps placed in the film which never work, and half of the stupidity in the movie isn't even laughable. You just sort of roll your eyes at it.

It's not much of a massacre really and the slumber party could really use a good sweaty pillow fight. Maybe if Corman had directed instead of produced we would have had some good cheese!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This movie rocks!
Review: This is a great early 80's slasher flick with lots of gratuitous nudity and violence. The plot never falls into the unbelieveable, and is not boring for a moment. I agree with that other reviewer that it foreshadows Scream by over 10 years by poking fun at its own genre while remaining true thereto. Despite the gratuitous nudity, there are many feminist themes here--watch the last scene! It's not the scariest thing in the world, but quite entertaining. Of note, by a used copy off of the Internet if you want to own it. ...

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Buy it for laughs....
Review: This is NOT a horror movie. Its a classic cheesy B movie from the early 80s that was supposed to be scary but I couldn't help but laugh! Actually I'm not sure if this was intended to be a serious horror flick or not but my friends and I watched this and we laughed all the way through the movie. One scene that stands out is when a pizza delivery man is killed right in front of the girls at their home with a knife in his back (or something like that) but rather than be afraid like LOGICAL people, they go ahead and EAT their pizza using the dead guy as a table! It was bizarre and ridiculous which is what made it comical. So that is the kind of movie, you'll be getting. I'm definitely not giving this 3 stars because of content. The movie is BAD, but it kept me entertained!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: ONE OF THE BEST PSYCHOPATH'S ON SCREEN!
Review: This is one of the best horror movies of the eighties. Hot chicks, and a killer with no motive, just total insanity. It's a must have for any horror movie lover!!


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