Slumber Party Massacre (4 Stars)

"You're pretty. All of you are very pretty. I love you. You know you want it. You love it".

This is my 11th horror film in November 2019. I've owned it on DVD since 2006, but I watched it on Amazon Prime today in stunning HD. The opening scenes have a lot of dirt on the picture, but most of the film is in much better condition than the copy I own.

When the script for this film was first written, it was intended to be a feminist parody of slasher films. Various rewrites removed the parody elements before it was finally released in 1982, but a few traces still remain. The words spoken by the killer that I quoted above, the only words he speaks in the film, are a mockery of the words spoken by abusive men the world over. His weapon of choice is a power drill, a phallic symbol if there ever were one. In the final scene one of the girls cuts his drill in half. Ouch!

The killer is an escaped convict called Russ Thorn, who has returned to his home town after serving 13 years of a life sentence for murder. He kills a telephone repair woman and steals her truck, and then follows a schoolgirl home when he overhears that she's planning a slumber party while her parents are out of town. Four hot young girls in a house, longing to be satisfied by his long, hard drill. He can't resist!

The girls are in their final year of school, aged 18, so that makes it possible for scenes of gratuitous nudity. It's not only the killer who's stalking the girls, there are also two horny schoolboys peeking through the window while the girls undress. We just know that they're going to be the first victims, don't we?

I admit it, I would have been peeking through the window as well. When you're a teenager your feelings of lust are too strong for your feelings of guilt to keep you away. Even though my teen years are far behind me, I'd still stand watching until I'm caught... or until I'm pierced by a power drill.

I wasn't consciously counting the number of deaths, but if I remember correctly eight people were killed, four male and four female. The pizza delivery boy was killed as well, and he collapsed into the house clutching his box. That led to the most amusing scene in the film. One of the girls said she was hungry and ripped the box out of his dead hands. She opened the box on his back to eat the pizza. She justified it by saying "Life goes on".

"Slumber Party Massacre" isn't a classic slasher movie like "Halloween", but it's still become  a cult classic. There's nowhere as much suspense as in "Halloween", but in its favour, it has more pretty girls. Some people love it, others think it's silly. I'll give it a generous four stars.

Success Rate:  + 14.4