Review #309: Slumber Party Massacre III (1990)
October 2024 Horror Origins Review #26- Slumber Party Massacre III (1990)
I am very conflicted about this movie. On one hand I think the story and characters are probably the best in the series, but on the other hand, it's chock full of some idiotic moments that really kind of ruin it. Let's see how I feel by the end of the review. It should be noted that this movie leaves the killer's identity a secret for the first half (with several red herrings thrown in for good measure) so technically that's a twist that can be spoiled- while I do think this movie is worth watching I am going to spoil it, both because it's not kept secret for very long and also because I really want to talk about how it affects the narrative as a whole. So, fair warning, spoilers a-coming.
Slumber Party Massacre III has no connection to the previous movies (that I could find), and instead just features a new group of friends having a new slumber party until whoops, people start turning up dead. Could it be the weird guy (literally called "Weird Guy" in the credits) that's been spying on them from a distance? Nah, he ends up dead stuffed in a trunk. Could it be the weirdo neighbor who (as my wife pointed out) definitely jerked off in the protagonist's house while she was away? Nah, he's a peeper but he does get the police involved (not that it matters in the end). No, it turns out to be the hunky guy who graduated a few years ago and flirted with one of the girls on the beach- apparently he had some sort of sexual abuse in his past and I guess it's manifested as a murderous psychosis.
So, much of this movie feels like a carbon copy of the two previous films (the setup, some of the setpieces, most of the character interactions) and it definitely loses some points for that. Some of those copied moments get flipped a bit (like how in the first film the pizza guy gets killed- this time the pizza girl does get killed, but before that, one of the group's lesser-liked friends intercepts the pizza and uses it to weasel his way into the party) which definitely makes them feel fresh and fun, but much of the film still feels exactly like the same stuff I've watched for two days now, which is a huge bummer.
But the biggest change is the fact that not only is the killer's identity and motivation kept as a mystery at first (and not in the way that SPM2's killer was a "mystery" by being utterly nonsensical and incongruent with the rest of the film). Having the first part act as a Whodunit really breathed some fresh air into this movie- in fact I think this series should have kept going, but pivoted harder into making it more of a mystery each time to keep the audience guessing. But not just that; the fact that the killer actually has- dare I say it- character this time around really makes it feel like I'm watching an actual movie instead of just a bunch of blood and boobs like we got the last two times. I remember reading in the trivia for SPM1 that the killer "based his character on a peacock" which like... okay I guess, but was there really any "character" to speak of? The man had basically no lines, he pretty much just showed up and killed anyone who was within range of his drill. The second killer's "character" was just quoting songs and looking like a character from Grease while he killed people. This time, the killer has a tragic backstory, he tricks the other characters (and the audience) into following his lead, he's vulnerable to seduction and manipulation- he actually feels like, again, a character instead of just an actor holding a drill. I am SHOCKED at how low the bar was to make this feel like a real movie, but here we are.
So, I really really liked the role that the villain played in this movie. However, this movie has some DUMB moments that really ruined a lot of that goodwill. So often, the characters will have an escape and they just won't take it, or something incredibly lazy happens to stop them. One character is faced with an unopenable sliding glass door, so to escape the killer, she bravely dives head-first through the glass- but rather than having her limp away wounded by multiple lacerations (easy pickings for the killer, right?) she just dies. Jumping through the door outright killed her apparently. Moments later, the other characters go to escape through this same door (which makes sense- there's no closing that door, right?) but the killer has slid a table in front of it. Now, there's literally nothing stopping anybody from just climbing over or under the table to get to the door- in fact the characters begin to do this multiple times- but one time they see their dead friend (the one who died by door) and get so scared they abandoned this wide-open exit and instead run back towards the killer, and another time they decide to stay and fight instead of escape over the table. There's also a VERY long scene of the killer (who has been blinded, more on that in a moment) being talked down and seduced by one of the characters while the others watch from the sidelines. Despite this exchange taking multiple minutes, none of those side characters do anything of note- they could've taken his drill, they could have hit him over the head with something, they could have escaped through the broken glass door, they could have all gotten into one room so they could come up with a plan- but no, they do NOTHING until after the long exchange has ended, at which point they try to coordinate and end up attracting the killer's attention.
And, boy oh boy, we need to talk about bleach for a moment. Earlier in the film, a character apparently dropped the greasiest and sauciest slice of pizza ever made onto the carpet, and two of the characters spend some time trying to scrub at it with cleaning solutions to no avail. This is to set up a moment later, when one of the characters gets the bright idea to splash bleach in the killer's face to blind him- great idea, except before she does so, SHE POURS IT INTO A BUCKET OF WATER and then splashes the bucket into the killer's face. The very first time we ever watched this movie we had some friends over, and one of them (very rightly) yelled out "WHY DID SHE DILUTE THE BLEACH!?" The best answer I can tell is that the script called for the character to splash the bucket in the killer's face (with the earlier scene establishing the bucket did, in fact, have at least some bleach in it) but the director thought the audience might forget what was in the bucket and assume it was just water, so the decision was made to show her pouring additional bleach in. But in my opinion it backfired, now making it look like she diluted the bleach before using it as a weapon.
(Oh, and one more negative thing about this movie: I don't know why, but MANY shots in here are out-of-focus. I've checked multiple versions of the film and they all have this issue where a given scene will have half of its shots inexplicably be fuzzier than the other half, as if they were filming the movie using two different cameras and decided to intersperse both types of footage. It's not the end of the world but it was very distracting once I noticed it.)
Anyway, I'm still very conflicted. I think this is a great film with some terrible flaws, but I do think you should watch it.
Overall Rating: 7/10 Beer-Brand Beer
Nostalgic Rating: 9/10 Candle-Filled Armored Trucks
Freeze-Frame Bonus: There's a couple spots in this movie where we are briefly shown a newspaper article about the killer's uncle having committed suicide, and while watching I paused the video to try and read the article since I was genuinely curious if this movie had any connection to the previous films (and I thought if so, it would be very easy and natural to have the dead uncle be a character from one of the last two- maybe he was one of the cops that arrived at the scene of either movie). To my delight, however, the text was instead a bunch of unrelated typo-filled nonsense they didn't expect anybody to read. The first section is a bunch of illegible blurry text, but the rest reads exactly as follows:
The former wife of ex-Padre, was sent to jail for violating a child visitation orderand faces an additional 126-day jail sentence for failing to let her daughters visit their father. The wife was booked into the Sybil Brand Institute for Women in Los Angeles to serve a five-day sentence immediately after an L.A. Superior Court Judge found her guilty of one count of contempt of court. She was found guilty of a total of 43 counts, but Judge Frances Tothschild suspended a three-day sentence on those years. "That's alright, I'll just cheat this once, afterall they're not perfect either", "It's just a little white lie", "Oh who will it hurt, its my desision not theres, besides thier 'halos' aren't going to direct my life. It's nal persoa moirial desson." "Don'nt get evolved, youer litttl efufort couldn'tn help ay way," Starts out small and one little side step leads to another, oops we're way over here now! "Hey! These aren't the
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