Review #307: The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)
October 2024 Horror Origins Review #24- The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)
I don't quite remember the circumstances, but I feel like buying The Slumber Party Massacre on DVD was some kind of a milestone for me. Maybe it was the first movie I bought on Amazon? (I remember my first Amazon purchase ever- back when Amazon only sold books- was four copies of The Monster at the End of This Book, which I gifted to anyone I met that had never read it.) Whatever the case, I ended up with a copy of this movie, but didn't realize it was a Region 2 DVD (meaning it wasn't meant to be played on American devices) so I had to kajigger my computer's disc drive in order to get it to play. Ultimately I remember having more fond memories of the sequel but I still think The Slumber Party Massacre is a very fun film, doubly so if you have a group of friends to watch it with.
The Slumber Party Massacre has a fairly simple plot: a high school girl, Trish, is having a slumber party with some friends while her parents are out of town, but little do they know a drill-wielding serial killer is on the loose and plans to crash the party. Some boys show up to spy on the girls, the creepy neighbor is creepy, a new classmate that everyone picks on shows up to save the day, and eventually the surviving girls defeat the bad guy and then credits roll.
According to various sources, The Slumber Party Massacre was originally written (and at least partially filmed) specifically to act as a parody of teen slasher films, rather than just another example of them. However, the producers apparently either didn't get the memo or didn't care, and it was heavily marketed as the type of film it was meant to be making fun of; whether this is true or not, this film fits perfectly in with all of the others in the genre, though with some noticeable tongue-in-cheek twists and turns as it's clear that at least some of the people involved knew how silly this all was. (There are tons of incredibly obvious and by-the-book jump scares in here, the characters are shown multiple signs that the killer is on the loose and they tune them out each time, and so on.) It still falls victim to a lot of the pitfalls that the genre embodies, but you can tell everyone was having a good time making it and nobody in the film is really taking it too seriously.
One thing that I really like about this film is that it does away with any sort of pretense of mystery or misdirection. From the very beginning of the movie it's clear that the killer is just some guy (some guy that has already killed and plans to kill again), and there's never a point where they try to trick you into thinking something else is going on. The plot is incredibly straightforward- the only thing resembling subtlety is the many shots where the killer's drill is obviously a metaphor for a penis. And that's about as subtle as a sledgehammer.
The Slumber Party Massacre is exactly what you think it is: a cheesy 80s film with plenty of blood and boobs. Maybe at one point it was trying to be something more but looking back I don't think it really needed to be.
Overall Rating: 6/10 Dead Delivery Pizzas
Nostalgic Rating: 7/10 Basement Machetes
Filming Trivia: While trying to convince homeowners to let the production use their properties to film on, producer Roger Corman insisted they use the movie's temporary title ("Sleepless Night") because then "people would think it was a classy thriller."
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