Delta Theta Die

Year: 1992

Director: Jim Wynorski

Cast: Robyn Harris, Melissa Moore, Stacia Zhivago

Run Time: 1 hour 17 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

90's horror often gets a bad rap, despite enduring successes like Scream, The Blair Witch Project, Silence of the Lambs, and The Sixth Sense. But if there's any year that most fully exemplifies the post-apocalyptic bleakness that many associate with that period, it's 1990 (the year this film was produced, though it wouldn't receive its ignominious direct-to-video release until two years later). '89 was the year that the subgenre died its most unambiguous death (like supernatural killers and comic book characters alike, slashers would soon return from the grave afresh, but at the time it seemed like an outright impossibility), but slashers kept plugging along, unaware, dying off one by one in the following years much like their typical slate of victims. Even the strongest franchise icons petered out well before Scream's 1996 debut.

But where there's a will there's a way. And where there's a hormonal teenage audience there's Jim Wynorski. Perhaps best known for his terrifically campy Chopping Mall in 1986, Wynorski quickly found refuge in exploitation cinema in the waning light of the 80's. The discovery that altered his career rivals even Einstein's in cultural significance: Teenage boys will pay money to see boobs no matter how crappy your movie is.

So this is where we find him at the turn of the decade. At the helm of a sequel to a film that had no earthly reason to be revived, 1986's Sorority House Massacre, which, if you remember, was already an alarmingly shoddy piece of work buoyed only on the strength of one gut-splittingly hilarious dress-up montage.

The 80's are very important to me.

Sorority House Massacre II is a cash-in plain and simple, such a desperate little dirt grub that it was willing to rake in even the infinitesimal amount that could be garnered from following a film that was hardly a smash at the box office. Written in a week and filmed in probably less, SHM II is a triumph of slasher depravity. With a bucket of karo syrup, enough softcore actresses to fill out five lace nighties, and an empty house ready to go, Wynorski set out to make hisself a movie.

The plot goes like this. Five members of an unnamed sorority set out to spruce up a house in which a man murdered his family several years ago. These nubile young ladies are Jessica (Melissa Moore), a leggy blonde who is dating a guy named Eddie (Mike Elliott), who only appears in one scene when he drives the girls up to the house and yet receives an inordinate amount of fanfare in the credits; Janey (Dana Bentley), a mischievous type with a bob so large and thick it could only have been harvested from the Sheddings Bin at a Cher concert; Linda (Robyn Harris), an Australian girl who is marginally smarter than the rest; and Suzanne (Barbii) and Kimberly (Stacia Zhivago), two sets of breasts with women reluctantly attached.

After attempting to contact the man's spirit with a Ouija board (they do exactly zero work on the house during the course of the film - but with so many showers to take, tequila shots to drink, and shoulders to massage lovingly, can you blame them?), they begin to die one by one. Is it the ghost of Old Man Hockstedter? Or is it the creepy neighbor Orville Ketchum (Peter Spellos), who eats raw meat out of a bucket and likes to breathe loudly onto things?

Alright, I'm warning you now. I ask you humbly to please not take out your rage and anger on my blog or upon my person, but... I am going to spoil Sorority House Massacre II. The ghost did it.

Parker Bros. strikes again.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Sorority House Massacre II is that there is a distinct lack of sex. I know that's not usually a concern during in-depth analysis of cinema, but here it is certainly a curiosity. This is a film that performs the dazzling feat of displaying all five main characters' breasts in a span of less than three minutes, yet doesn't include a single male character that sticks around long enough for them to bang. In fact, it's almost distinctly asexual, its preferred mode of exploitation being watching a group of "pretty" girls going through the motions of a routine horror picture, but without the added protection of clothes.

For the entire second half of the film, the entire cast prances around the house in bras and underwear - or, in Janey's case, a gossamer jumpsuit so tight you can see her endocrine system.

Her body is so constricted, all the extra mass had to go to her hair.

In this regard, if you can overlook the sleaziness of objectification, the film is actually quite charming in its sheer desperation to titillate. The only survivor of the previous massacre is now a stripper and we are forced to sit through her entire dance before she gets a chance to speak. Girls flash one another as punchlines to jokes. A staircase is placed exactly right so we can see each girl's butt as she flounces into the attic. And - my personal favorite - when the girls realize they're in danger, dialogue along these lines occurs.

Vixen #1: "Oh no! We left our clothes upstairs!"

Vixen #2: "There's no time! We'll have to go without them!" 

They then proceed to do absolutely no escaping because it's raining outside and Wynorski certainly isn't paying them enough for that.

An actual photo of the SHM II casting call.

Overwhelming tawdriness aside, the film has absolutely nothing else to recommend it, at least from a technical standpoint. From a good-bad movie standpoint, however, it's almost inimitable. Each element of the film's mise-en-scène is crappy to a hilarious degree, though perhaps not an eminently watchable one. Let me explain the full spectrum of crapiness that penetrates Sorority House Massacre II to its very core with a quick breakdown.

• Sound Design: Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the dialogue track for the film was recorded over the phone on a stormy night. Every character sounds tinny and about a mile away from the screen. And the foley work ranges from eminently unimpressive to cartoonishly absurd. My favorite moments are when the rambunctious sound effects collide with the gaudy exploitation to create such sterling moments as a girl soaping up her butt in the shower with the sound of someone wiping a squeaky window with a rag, or a stripper (yes, there are two distinct striptease moments that take place away from the main action) rubbing her breasts on a pole with the sound of two balloons squeaking together.
• Gore: I think it's perhaps too much to ask of the film that it have its gore game together, but typically a slasher film is a showcase for the best FX artists and breasts in the business. The breasts here are so rampant that they form a massive conglomerate that dominates the film, eliminating the need for great gore to tantalize the already sated ideal audience. So what we're stuck with is an endless series of girls getting stabbed with a hook in silhouette. At least there's enough ineptitude to keep the less boob-concerned audience members going - notably the obvious shadow of a ketchup bottle squirting the blood onto the wall.
• Acting: I won't spend too much time taking potshots. It's not like the performers were hired for their talent or asked to perform at any level beyond arching their backs and saying the words on the page. But as Robyn Harris gets going, she illuminates the screen like a firework with a spastic, volcanic display of over-the-top camp. She's like a marionette of Eva Longoria with the strings cut, flopping wildly around the screen with manic intensity and perfect hair.

Pictured here, left, in a more sedate moment.

At least Sorority House Massacre II makes spasmodic attempts at humor, like in the house's address (6934 Langdon) or a series of funny newspaper headlines. It tries just hard enough to be funny that the more embarrassing elements (Orville uses a cop's gun to shoot a villain while he's still holding it; a fight scene plays more like an improv troupe pretending to sword fight) could conceivably be explained away by "oh, it's a parody." I don't buy this for one Karo syrup-soaked second, but it's a genius insurance policy.

Because the movie is far too cheap to even attempt to reach an average level of cinematic quality. This fact is belied both by the run time (of the 77 advertised minutes, 6 of them are credits) and, well, the rest of the film. A flashback of Old Man Hockstedter killing his family is just recycled footage from The Slumber Party Massacre with the names and situations changed. The facts that it's not even the same house, any person with enough love for slashers to watch this piece of crap has already seen SPM, and that they pretend two clearly different actresses are one girl are brutally ignored in favor of getting in more kills as swiftly and cheaply as possible. Nevermind that there's already a Sorority House Massacre to pull footage from. No, that's just what they'd be expecting us to do.

I haven't even mentioned the nonsensical cop subplot, which brings us to the aforementioned strip club in search of answers about the potential killer. What tipped these cops off about the new danger five years later and why they aren't actually going to the house to help the girls remains a mystery. Perhaps the filmmakers wanted to preserve ambiguity and ignite the imaginations of young home audiences, preparing them for the unknowns they will soon face in their own post-high school careers. 

Or perhaps the movie is just a piece of crap.

Sorority House Massacre II is a piece of crap.

Seacrest out.

Killer: Hokstedter's Ghost in Jessica's (Melissa Moore) body

Final Girl: Linda (Robyn Harris)

Best Kill: Jessica's death - getting stabbed in the neck - is the best both because it is an actual gore sequence and the fact that she sprays enough blood to fill a tub.

Scariest Moment: There are actresses for whom this film was their only option to have a career.

Weirdest Moment: Orville pulls the key to the basement out of his underwear.

Champion Dialogue: "No one puts a finger on my diviner."

Body Count: 8; including three kills repurposed from Slumber Party Massacre and not including Orville Ketchum, who is stabbed repeatedly, strangled with a chain, has his neck snapped, is shoved into a toilet, and shot multiple times before being possessed by a ghost.

1. Coach Jana is gutted with a drill (SPM).
2. Kim AKA "Cecily" is stabbed in the gut with a drill (SPM).
3. Diane is impaled with a drill (SPM).
4. Janey is hooked in silhouette.
5. Suzanne is hooked in silhouette.
6. Kimberly is killed offscreen.
7. Jessica is knifed in the neck.
8. Linda is shot to death. 

TL;DR: Sorority House Massacre II is not good at all, but genuinely hilarious in its straightforward chintzy depravity.
Rating: 3/10
Word Count: 1867
Reviews In This Series
Sorority House Massacre (Frank, 1986)
Sorority House Massacre II (Wynorski, 1992)

Census Bloodbath: Back To Skull - Day 5

Year: 1986

Director: Carol Frank

Cast: Angela O'Neill, Wendy Martel, Pamela Ross

Run Time: 1 hour 14 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

And here we are at the final day of our university slasher marathon. I hope that everybody who started school this week has had a chance to settle in and figure out which classes they can skip and still get good grades. We welcome this new sense of jadedness with Sorority House Massacre, an overwhelmingly lazy and tawdry slasher from 1986.

Although it is one of only three (so far) slashers in Census Bloodbath that were directed by women, Sorority House Massacre holds in common with its predecessor and loosely-franchised namesake The Slumber Party Massacre (Carol Frank cut her teeth as the director's assistant on this feature) the fact that it is perhaps even more chintzy and exploitative than its male-directed peers.

Sorority House Massacre is by far the worse of the two, not only for appearing so late in the game, but also by losing the thin veneer of quasi-feminist quasi-parody that Slumber Party Massacre boasted, causing it to be a worthy entry in the subgenre. No, this film is a routine slice and dice picture, the female director adding about as much to the slasher formula as a nice face adds to an Abercrombie bag. It's great that you have it, but it ain't gonna be showing up in the frame.

Not when there's some good, clean massacring to be done.

This film also shares with Slumber Party Massacre the guiding light of an uncredited Roger Corman, who undoubtedly lent to the production its ineffably cheap "shot in three days" atmosphere. But hey, there's more than enough time to complain after the plot is laid out. And what a simple post-Nightmare plot it is.

Beth (Angela O'Neill) is a young woman with a butch haircut who makes the inarguably terrible decision to stay with the Theta Omega Theta sorority over the course of an unspecific school break. Being in the house triggers strange dreams within her, dreams of the same house in a different time and a mysterious killer chasing after her.

Her supportive Flesh friends include Tracy (Nicole Rio), a boy crazy, slightly insensitive girl who is dating the horny jock Craig (Joe Nassi), whose motto seems to be cojones ergo sum, for the entirety of his existence is predicated on the existence of his penis; Sara (Pamela Ross, also of 1989's Moonstalker), a fashion-backward pop psychology enthusiast who is dating Steve (Thomas R. Mustin), whose only scene in the film involves him ditching her to go rafting; and Linda (Wendy Martel), a down-to-earth girl who's friendly if a little ditsy and who is dating Andy (Marcus Vaughter), the nerdiest nerd to ever nerd the nerd and the second by that name this week.

Also there's John (Vinnie Bilancio), the requisite blind date character who exists solely to get in Beth's way while she hallucinates about bleeding picture frames and dripping knives and whatnot. These dreams eat up an alarming amount of the run time, padding a film that - even in its finished state - is only 74 minutes long.

There's more fruit on Sarah's outfit than there are minutes in this movie.

I'm going to go ahead and SPOIL this movie because the plot is dismayingly obvious (a dramatic twist near the end reveals... Beth's middle name). An escaped mental patient and our villain for the evening, Bobby (John C. Russell), is Beth's brother, who killed her entire family in this very house when she was a child and is returning to finish the job. I'd like to move on because this killer just isn't very interesting.

He kills in uninteresting ways (many of his victims are stabbed in the back with a minimum of blood - my guess is that they only had one good prosthetic and were determined to utilize it as many times as possible) and he stalks Beth in uninteresting, plodding, repetitive beats, both in dreams and in reality. The climactic chase sequence plays like a glitch in the matrix, with the girls repeatedly running upstairs and blocking the door with a bookshelf, discovering the killer, running downstairs to try to unlock the door, discovering the killer, and so on and so forth ad nauseum.

Although Bobby does manage to leap through a second story window at one point, so he's not all bad. 

Just the parts that aren't his calf muscles.

So, back to the cheapness, like I promised. Thanks to its presumably rushed production schedule, Sorority House Massacre falls into an unofficial franchise I like to call the Boom Mike Apocalypse series. There is so much exposed equipment on the edges of the frame, it honestly feels like the set is getting smaller and smaller, threatening to crush the actors if they don't finish the movie in time.

Perhaps that's the reason why the sets are so barren. What's the point of putting more than one piece of furniture or decoration in a room if it'll all be smashed to smithereens by dawn anyway? You'd think that the money they saved by not putting any decorations on the stark white walls (except for in one room, which is the absolute opposite - an ocular explosion of hair metal posters and hot pink) would allow them to afford to buy their prop knife somewhere other than Party City, but you would be wrong.

I mean come on! There's just no room in the budget. Look how many salaries they have to try to get out of paying!

Obviously Sorority House Massacre isn't a good movie. That's immediately evident from the title (and from the preceding paragraphs, but who reads anymore, amirite?). There's quite a few fun elements available for bad movie enthusiasts, though not nearly enough to recommend the film to anyone other than the most masochistic horror movie viewers.

But if you're up for it, Sorority House Massacre delivers a sexy saxophone dress-up scene that plays like a montage from an after school special except with 800% more naked breasts, some pretty cool creepy dream imagery, a sex scene in a teepee, an boy who seems more irritable than scared when his girlfriend is murdered, as if he were more concerned about bloodstains on his clothes, and a girl who announces she's going to venture out alone to fix the electricity and then turns on a lamp so she can grab her coat and head outside.

It's just fun enough to not feel like a waste of time, but it's too dumb, cheap, and inconsequential to rise above even the lesser Back to School fare like The Dorm That Dripped Blood.

Killer: Bobby (John C. Russell)

Final Girl: Beth (Angela O'Neill)

Best Kill: Tracy's death - being stabbed in the chest - is exactly choreographed to best display her ample bosoms. You gotta love that kind of shameless energy.

Sign of the Times: Although there is a dress-up scene that is shot like the background of a Cyndi Lauper music video, I'm gonna have to give the final prize to this screenshot I grabbed. It's got everything - the inexplicable "middle-aged businesswoman" ensemble, the fruit-patterned crop top. The Billy Ray Cyrus hair. It's like the entire decade distilled into one vile, poisonous, colorful liquor.

Scariest Moment: After stealing a car, the killer gets on the 5 freeway, heading South. The traffic occurs offscreen.

Weirdest Moment: I am pretty in love with the teepee sex scene.

Champion Dialogue: "I remember lime Jello."

Body Count: 9; not including the family that dies repeatedly in flashback/dream sequences.

1. Walkman Orderly has his head smashed against the wall.
2. Store Clerk is stabbed in the gut.
3. Andy is stabbed in the gut.
4. Tracy is stabbed in the boobs.
5. John is stabbed in the back.
6. Craig is stabbed in the back.
7. Sarah is stabbed in the chest.
8. Linda is stabbed in the back.
9. Bobby is stabbed through the throat.  

TL;DR: Sorority House Massacre is shoddy and cheap, but on occasion enjoyably dumb.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1335

Reviews In This Series

Sorority House Massacre (Frank, 1986)

Sorority House Massacre II (Wynorski, 1992)

Census Bloodbath: Back To Skull - Day 4

For the crossover review of this film over at Kinemalogue, click here.

Year: 1984

Director: Larry Stewart

Cast: Daphne Zuniga, Vera Miles, Clu Gulager

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

As we venture out further and further into the murky depths of university slashers for our Back to School spectacular, things - as they are won't to do - begin to get a little hackneyed. Although I remember enjoying the 1984 sorority slashfest The Initation the first time I watched it, after about 50 of these reviews, the sheen wears off just a little.

The Initiation is a perfectly serviceable slasher with an all-star cast, but five years into the slasher boom, the flop sweat was beginning to stain the screen and it couldn't recapture the magic of similar films like the markedly superior The House on Sorority Row. 

It's at the very least better than Hell Night.

"Delta Rho Chi, Never Will Die."

This is the soon-to-be ironic motto of the local sorority, of which only 4 out of 15 pledges remain. Alison (Hunter Tylo) is your typical sorority girl - boy crazy, gorgeous, and ready to toss out full frontal at the drop of a hat. She is not the focus of our story. Megan (Frances Peterson) is the vile pledge trainer, drunk on sex and power. This is not her story. Marcia (Marilyn Kagan) is affable and demure, haunted by the taunting of the Greeks who mistake her innocence and purity for virginity. She's oh so close, but no, this is not her story. Kelly (Daphne Zuniga) is a warm-hearted pledge, the daughter of wealthy couple Dwight (Clu Gulager) and Frances Fairchild (Psycho's Vera Miles). She has lately been having dreams about a mysterious incident in her past, in which she watches her mother and father having sex in a mirror and stabs her father before another man bursts in, who then gets burned alive in a  fireplace. Whether this is a dream or a repressed memory she can never be sure, having suffered from amnesia and completely losing everything before age 9.

A-ha.

Was anybody keeping track of how many times I mentioned sex in the character descriptions? The Initiation occupies an awkward space between "at least the sexual characteristics are more varied than 'horny slut likes to bang bang'" and "this is uncomfortably dark and morally dubious." Honestly I would have preferred good old erotic exploitation to the nightmarish house of horrors that makes up about 50% of our characters' sexual development.

The "parents having sex" thing was a given, but "molested by a violin teacher" is patently not. Far better films than The Initiation would come unpinned tackling that particular topic, but this film - being what it is - careens wildly like a roller coaster car in a Final Destination movie. The Initiation handles its delicate topic in an outrageously clumsy way, suggesting that all the girl in question needs to soothe her troubled psyche is some vigorous porking.

Of which there is much to be had at Delta Rho Chi.

Sexual politics aside, The Initiation is a decent bit of fun in the immediately post-Nightmare era, one of the last gasps of non-supernatural slashers. Although the clumsy mishandling of its erotic elements plunge the film like a stone in the river of my esteem, The Initiation provides something a little different, just enough to pique my interest. 

Written by soap opera veteran Charles Pratt Jr. (whose CV includes 300 episodes of All My Children, 387 General Hospitals, and 304 Santa Barbaras), it's no accident that the plot pulls out all the soapy stops, replete with sexy dream therapists, hidden family secrets, amnesia, and SPOILERS [Evil Twins.]. The man deserves an Oscar for the "Repressed Desires" theme party alone.

But try as it might with all its lather and antics, The Initiation suffers from a lethargic first half, where it insists on being a bad college psychological drama rather than a bad soap opera slasher, which is a much less punishing thing to be. Luckily the second half delivers. When the pledges find themselves trapped in Kelly's father's mall during a prank gone wrong, the kids play in the stores, screw around with boys, and are offed one by one by a mysterious killer in creative, rewardingly drippy sequences.

For a slasher fan, it doesn't get much better than this. Perhaps it's best if you don't think about it.

The acting isn't great. Zuniga, though later she became a fairly medium-sized celebrity, is not in her best form, and James Read as her dream therapist/quasi-boyfriend lets his eyebrows completely subsume his persona. It's like watching two caterpillars battle for domination over an impassive, fleshy battlefield.

The kills aren't great. An impalement with an arrow fails to line up both sides of the appliance properly - either that or Megan has a small wormhole located just above her gallbladder - and some of the makeup shows its seams.

But there's a party full of glitter, 80's teens (by far the most likeable horror ensembles) get to play around in various mall stores doing their 80's teen thing (which, although I can't understand it for the life of me, includes doffing your top for twenty seconds, then going roller skating), and there's more blood than a lot of its peers and that adds up to a lot, ramping up the absurdity factor.

All in all, The Initiation is not the worst piece of crap I've ever seen. But I've already seen two better films this week, so I'm not going to toot its horn more than it deserves. It's a fairly entertaining movie, but as sorority flicks go, there have been way better offerings both before and after this one. If you find yourself loving The House on Sorority Row or other low budget titillators like The Slumber Party Massacre, maybe this film is worth your time, but otherwise I'd steer clear of it.

Killer: [Terry Fairchild (Daphne Zuniga)]

Final Girl: Kelly Fairchild (Daphne Zuniga)

Best Kill: I'm partial to harpoons and mid-coitus mayhem, so Ralph's death by harpoon gun while he's on top of Marcia is by far a standout.

Sign of the Times: Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to meet Heidi. Raise your hand if you're shocked she never made a movie outside of the 1980's.

Scariest Moment: The opening nightmare sequence is hellish, rapidly edited, and massively disorienting.

Weirdest Moment: Ralph shows up to a party dressed as a penis.

Champion Dialogue: "It's like looking for the meaning of life in a donut hole."

Body Count: 10

1. Nurse Higgins is stabbed to death with a trowel.
2. Dwight Fairchild is stabbed in the neck with a trowel. 
3. Todd is stabbed in the chest with a trowel.
4. Andy is hit in the head with an axe.
5. Megan is shot in the chest with an arrow.
6. Chad has his throat slit offscreen.
7. Allison is stabbed to death.
8. Ralph is harpooned in the back.
9. Marcia is killed offscreen.
10. [Terry is shot through the chest.]

TL;DR: The Initiation is an uneven, but pleasantly bloody and soapy affair.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1170

Census Bloodbath: Back To Skull - Day 3

For our podcast episode about this very film, please click here.

For our interview with Mark Rosman, the director of this film, please click here.

Year: 1983

Director: Mark Rosman

Cast: Kate McNeil, Eileen Davidson, Janis Ward

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Just like the classic slasher killers, school keeps rising from the grave again and again to haunt us. My educational franchise is currently in its 16th and hopefully final installment, which is why we are celebrating this week. And there's no better way to approach university slashers than diving into a classic subject of the genre - sororities.

A house full of partying girls obviously has a lot to offer to the slasher formula and it's no surprise that producers found the Greek system to be a fertile field to till, starting with Black Christmas in 1974 and ending with the heat death of the universe. Our selection for today is The House on Sorority Row, not the first sorority film out of the gate, but one of the best.

I'll drink to that.

The film opens with black and white footage (tinted blue by producers, who were evidently afraid that the lack of color would cause the young audience's eyes to implode, as if MTV wasn't already doing a good enough job of that) of Dr. Beck (Christopher Lawrence) operating on Mrs. Slater (Lois Kelso Hunt) during a traumatic birth. Beck mutters something mysterious about this being the last one and Mrs. Slater screams for her child.

CUT TO: 24 years later, and the obviously perturbed Slater is the house mother of a sorority on the local campus. She is showing signs of age, relying on a metal cane with a carving of a bird at the head to get around. Slater is outraged to find out that the girls are planning a graduation party on June 19th, the day she usually shuts the house down to be alone on the anniversary of the birth. She responds venomously, leading the girls to counter her verbal attack with a prank involving setting her ornate cane on an inner tube in the middle of the never-cleaned pool and pointing a gun at her, forcing her in.

As you can imagine, this doesn't go over well and Slater is shot, forcing the girls to scramble to cover their tracks as the party begins, dumping the body in the pool and praying nobody discovers her until they can figure out what to do in the morning. As the party begins, a menacing killer begins picking the seven implicit girls off one by one with Slater's sickeningly sharp cane (sharp as in lethal, although it is pretty stylish to boot). Is it Mrs. Slater, not quite dead? Or is it something far more sinister?

The seven sorority girls provide us with nearly our entire platter of Meat, so let's spend some time getting to know them. There's Liz (Janis Ward), a soon-to-be stewardess with a fear of flying; Jeanie (Robin Meloy), a mousey girl who is prone to hysterics; Diane (Harley Jane Kozak), a down-to-earth girl who is going into law school; Stevie (Ellen Dorsher), the smartest of the bunch and the one many of them turn to for guidance; Morgan (Jodi Draigie), a ditsy blonde who gets soused more times a week than there are words in this sentence; Vicki (Eileen Davidson), the wicked and vain leader of the septet, the girl who suggested the prank in the first place; and Katherine (Kate McNeil), a shy girl who's unsure about what to do with her life although she does know she wants nothing to do with this body-hiding business. This combination of reluctance to comply with the group and character traits that might be found in a script outside of the exploitation genre mark Katherine as our Final Girl as clearly as if they had painted a red target on everybody else's foreheads.

Although that neck accessory does the trick nicely.

Did y'all notice that I had to trot out four whole paragraphs just to get through the basic scenario? The House on Sorority Row is tricky like that, providing a great deal more working beneath the surface than your average bear. It's no great intellectual classic, this film. The characters tend to be paper-thin and as interchangeable as pegs on a Lite Brite board, and the setting is there for the reason that it gives us a chance to watch girls change (Morgan's sheer gossamer top certainly caused several young boys in the audience to hit puberty then and there).

But this is a movie that very literally portrays the process of guilt tearing a group of friends apart. A terrific panning shot across a dance floor links all seven girls together, blaming them as a unit for the murder of their house mother even as their reactions and motivations for keeping the secret vary wildly. 

This isn't the only time that The House on Sorority Row acts like it's an actual piece of cinema. It's by no means a terrific film, but that doesn't mean it can't be a great slasher. Writer-director Mark Rosman (who would go on to direct to Hillary Duff films, so it's up to you to ascertain which career direction is more terrifying) works hard to separate his film from the pack with a strong visual language and kinetic editing, providing some of the very best scenes of tension in a film of this mint.

Because, despite all the limitations of the genre, Rosman's film actually succeeds in creating and maintaining a consistent sense of dread, whether it's in an attic door slowly creaking open over a hapless Morgan or Jeanie cowering in the bathroom stall as the shower heads turn on one by one, filling the room with noise and steam. The Final Girl sequence especially benefits from a full-steam-ahead approach to visualizing the mental condition of a harried survivor through cross-cutting, color palette, and composition.

And creepy clowns.

This flick is filled to the brim with childhood memorabilia and toys, notably a clownish jack-in-the-box and a colorful ball, both eliciting a sense of the deep trauma lying dormant in Slater's psyche and reliably tapping into the inherently creepy aspects of playthings that have no children to play with them. 

So despite any flaws in the acting (Draigie forces dialogue out of her mouth like she's performing a verbal Heimlich maneuver; McNeil is only intermittently convincing, swinging between naturalistic guilt and lolling, drowsy fear), production design (a "cemetery" looks like a barely spruced-up golf course), and sound mix (the mixing of the party music - provided by the incredibly underrated band 4 Out of 5 Doctors - is exactly as amateurish as my first student film), The House on Sorority Row soars thanks to a stylish atmosphere and solid thematic material.

The ending is terrific [In an impressively thorough twist, Slater's mutant son Eric (Charles Serio) is performing the killings in revenge for his mother's death] and the gore - though far from being an out-and-out bloodbath - delivers in a satisfying way. The House on Sorority Row has the essence that makes all of the best 80's slashers. Namely, fun characters, loony dialogue, creative kills, a great location and setup, and an all-encompassing sense of fun interspersed with surprisingly scary moments. It's no Nightmare on Elm Street, but it has a head on its shoulders, which was something altogether uncommon in the ripe old year of 1983.

Killer: [Eric (Charles Serio)]

Final Girl: Katherine (Kate McNeil)

Best Kill: Jeanie is decapitated and the killer leaves her head in the toilet.

Sign of the Times: The band that plays at the party is called 4 Out Of 5 Doctors and this is their song. (I apologize for the, er, unorthodox choice of background. I didn't make this video.)

Scariest Moment: In a film with an appealingly large number of actually effective moments, one of the best is a hallucination Katherine has after Dr. Beck sedates her.

Weirdest Moment: Girls at the party gossip about a cute boy, intercut with footage of a greasy nerd winking at them. Maybe it's an 80's thing.

Champion Dialogue: "I wanna thank you for helping me become what I am today. Wasted."

Body Count: 9; also a parakeet and a water bed.

1. [Mrs. Slater is shot to death.]
2. Bobby's Friend is stabbed in the throat.
3. Stevie is stabbed in the face.
4. Morgan is impaled.
5. Debbie is hacked to death.
6. Jeanie is decapitated.
7. Liz has her throat slit.
8. Vickie is hacked to death.
9. Dr. Beck is hacked in the chest and falls off a banister.

TL;DR: The House on Sorority Row is a surprisingly thrilling, visually solid slasher.

Rating: 9/10

Word Count: 1426

Reviews In This Series

The House on Sorority Row (Rosman, 1983)

Sorority Row (Handler, 2009)

Census Bloodbath: It's My Party And I'll Die If I Want To

Year: 1986

Director: William Fruet

Cast: Martin Hewitt, Ralph Seymour, Elaine Wilkes

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I gotta tell you, I love slasher movies as much as the next guy. As long as I'm sitting next to a mirror and the next guy is also me. What I'm saying is I freaking love slasher movies. I mean, I'm doing this project because I desperately needed a productive reason to watch 300 slasher movies in a row. 

But 1980 is killing me. I have five movies left to finish off the year and move on into the Golden Age in 1981, but it's getting harder and harder to motivate myself to watch another crappily shot, abhorrently tedious proto-slasher. Especially because the next film on my list, Christmas Evil, is one that I have previously seen and detest with every fiber of my being.

Don't get me wrong. I love terrible movies with all my heart. But the movies I've been exposing myself to lately have reached such a nuclear amplitude of suckage (only rarely straying into "so bad its good" territory) that it's hard to approach the next couple of films with a smile on my face.

That's why I needed a shot in the arm to rejuvenate me for the long haul. And 1986's Killer Party, directed by Funeral Home's William Fruet and written by Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter's Barney Cohen was the perfect film to turn my attitude around. 

You could say it really lit me up.

Not so much a film as a collection of detritus that was dislodged from the back teeth of the 80's, Killer Party begins with a cheesy movie-within-a-movie which quickly transitions to a music video-within-a-movie in which real hair metal band performs their real (terrible) song "April (You're No Fool)" as zombies attack a drive-in theater. 

This occupies the first ten minutes of the film and is pure, unabashed Filler with a capital F. And it is gloriously 80's. I mean, look.

The frame cuts off above her leg warmers and roller blades.

This tremendously bizarre sequence turns out to be but an appetizer before the main course. You see, the parts of Killer Party that aren't obvious filler or completely drowned in 80's fashion and synthpop are few and far between. In fact, they may all be on the cutting room floor.

In the grand tradition of many a slasher film, we soon find ourselves in the middle of pledge week for Sigma Alpha Phi at Brigg's College. Three best friends make up the entire pledge class, revealing either the sorority's terrible reputation or the movie's mediocre budget. But let us not concern ourselves with that, for the girls we get are handfuls enough.

There's Phoebe (Elaine Wilkes - in a very sad turn, her IMDb trivia reads "former actress"), the most enthusiastic member of the bunch; Vivia (Sherry Willis-Burch, whose only other film role was in 1981's Final Exam), the nerdy blonde with a penchant for orchestrating cruel pranks; and Jennifer (Joanna Johnson), who is reluctant to endure the tortures of the wicked and glittery pledge mistress Veronica (Alicia Fleer), but whose firm resolve is melted once she meets the charming and handsome Blake (Martin Hewitt), a brother from Beta Tau.

Can you blame her?

For the ensuing 50 minutes, the film follows the pledge week shenanigans and romantic travails of these girls as well as the horny nerd Martin (Ralph Seymour, who we'll meet again soon in Just Before Dawn); Veronica's boyfriend and Beta Tau president Albert Harrison (Woody Brown), who is referred to by his first or last name depending on whatever mood the writer was in at the time, leading me to believe for the majority of the film that he was two different people; Big Bee-Boy (Howard Busgang, aka the chubby prankster from Terror Train), the... chubby prankster; his accomplice Little Bee-Boy (Jason Warren, who would later appear in the Canadian Dungeons and Dragons slasher Skullduggery); also there's Melanie (Terri Hawkes) and Sandy (Laura Sherman) two sorority sisters who are always mentioned in every other conversation despite having a collective 45 seconds of screentime, who I only mention here because not only was Terri Hawkes the mean girl in Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II, but she's freaking Sailor Moon. SAILOR MOON. This girl's a superstar.

The film pauses only briefly to remind people that this cheerful college romp has the word "Killer" in the title as the house mother Mrs. Henshaw (Pam Hyatt) and snooty professor Dr. Zito (Paul Bartel, who also appears in Chopping Mall and Trick or Treats - a Census Bloodbath hat trick!) - named after the director of the other big slasher by screenwriter Barney Cohen, don't think I let these things slip past me - wander into the abandoned frat house on Greek Row and meet their untimely deaths at the hands of a mysterious murderer.

Also holy crap do you see how much slasher royalty went into the making of this film? I mean, it sucks and all. But it sucks in that specifically 80's way that is so endearing. It warms my heart.

Among other things.

Nevermind that the first hour is occasionally dull, entirely bloodless, and totally unnecessary. It's so full to the brim with signifiers of the decade (including a deadpan synthcrap song that mindlessly repeats something about this being the best days of our lives for what feels like twenty minutes) that it is an ocular and aural experience not to be missed.

Towards the final half hour of the 90 minute film, it suddenly remembers that it's supposed to be a slasher movie and the girls and guys host a big April Fool's party in the abandoned building, the site of an accidental pledge murder twenty years before. The movie gets increasingly frantic to create a decent body count by the time the credits roll, to the point that the final twenty minutes are just a rapid-fire series of brief (and unfortunately bloodless) kill sequences in which they cut to a random person, have the murderer waddle in encased in a bronze deep sea diver outfit and nonchalantly slaughter them, then cut directly to the next, hastening to waste not a single moment of precious screentime.

The real fun begins when it turns out that SPOILERS Jennifer has been possessed by the spirit of the long-dead pledge boy and proceeds to do Exorcist style wall crawls while making everything in the house emit smoke and rattle around. It wouldn't be a post-Nightmare without an awkwardly shoved in paranormal element, now wouldn't it?

Not that I mind.

Now, let's make this super duper extra clear - Killer Party sucks. It's too demure and mangled by the MPAA to have fun gore moments, it's too careless to tell a legitimately intriguing narrative, and Joanna Johnson can't even muster a decent "shocked" face when the movie throws her into its boo-machine. I swear, she plays every scene like she just woke up from a nap.

But the combination of random hair metal, unpredictable sorority nonsense, and lackluster acting from an enormously appealing slate of attractive slasher alumni with the never-ending catalogue of cheesy outfits and scenarios, all wrapped up with a truly magnificent poster makes me feel right at home. And I really needed that.

Killer: Alan the Dead Pledge in the body of Jennifer (Joanna Johnson)

Final Girl: Vivia (Sherry Willis-Burch), but not for long

Best Kill: A fat boy in a bumblebee costume is impaled with a harpoon through his... rectal region.

Sign of the Times: Literally every outfit, character, and song featured in the entire film.

Scariest Moment: The possessed Jennifer crawls up the wall, her tongue lolling.

Weirdest Moment: How do I even decide? It's a toss up between the full hair metal music video that opens the film and the part where Vivia is making out with Martin and she screams "OH! TOUCH ME, MARTIN!" while pointing at her elbow.

Champion Dialogue: "I gargle with musk."

Body Count: 10 people clearly die; my body count does not include a woman who dies in the film within the film or the rest of the partygoers whom Vivia claims have died, only four of which we see pointedly strewn about.

1. Mrs. Henshaw is beaten to death with a paddle.
2. Dr. Zito is electrocuted with a wire.
3. Pam is impaled with a trident.
4. Veronica is hit in the head with a hammer.
5. Albert is guillotined.
6. Virgil is dismembered and stuffed in a fridge.
7. Fat Bumblebee gets a harpoon up his ass.
8. Thin Bumblebee gets a harpoon through his mouth. Not the same harpoon, I hope.
9. Blake is drowned in the tub.
10. Jennifer/Alan is staked through the heart with a fencepost.

TL;DR: Killer Party sucks, but it's the kind of suck that makes me glad to be alive.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1478