The Slumber Party Massacre

A pretty tepid entry in the realm of Eighties slasher cinema, The Slumber Party Massacre at least delivers what the title suggests — a massacre at a slumber party. As Edgar Allan Poe proclaimed, “Only this, and nothing more.”

A serial killer, stalker, slasher guy named Russ Thorn (vaguely sounds like a teacher I had in high school), who is portrayed by actor Michael Villella, walks around with a power drill whacking high school chicks. We aren’t really given a reason behind his relentless slaughter, except that maybe he couldn’t get a date growing up. Something along those lines.

Anyway, he escaped from a mental asylum for the mentally ill and goes about in slaughterific fashion, dispatching the young love in a manner most decidedly mental. Again, no background, no motivation, no urban legend of a past sin or indiscretion or some such inveigled against him as a wee psychotic tot. No. Just a dude sans mask skulking around with that damn Freudian power drill — a substitute you-know-what symbolically ripping through flesh, skin, and bone.

Trish Devereaux (Michele Michaels) decides to throw a slumber party. Full stop. Somehow, just writing that sentence bored me. (How in the hell am I supposed to get six hundred words out of reviewing THIS flick?)

A bunch of her friends (well, a few at least) come over, along with a couple of horny dudes who look more like frat bros than high school heartthrobs, also come (har-har) after pulling some straight Ted Bundy 1975 peeping-Tom shit. I’m not certain what happens after that. This damn movie is like a fuzzy night of dorm-room drinking games in 2002. The next morning, you know something interesting might have occurred, you’re just not sure what and who with.

A guy named Mr. Contant acts as a pseudo-comic human MacGuffin, creeping around creepily like the pervert next door, with a meat cleaver, cutting garden slugs in half so he can mail them to starving children in France. (Okay, I made that last part up, but we have to pad this damn thing out somehow.)

Previously, we got a scene with our high-school Mutt and Jeff walking cluelessly by a van wherein a female telephone service worker (or something) is pounding on the glass in desperation after being trapped there by the murderous Mr. Thorn and his killer driller. It’s a nice moment — a comic moment, a blackly humorous and, dare I say, inspired moment. And it’s damn near the only moment in the entire film you could imagine audiences reacting to, beyond a glazed-over look and a stifled yawn.

The vast majority of films of this nature can boast a few gruesome special effects — I could swear that there was a moment where the Thornster gets his hand sawed off into a bloody stump while out on the lawn and near the pool. But I may be mixing it up with another scene, from another film, or even one of the eighteen graphic novels I’m currently making my fat, nerdy way through. I think Thorn dies floating in the pool. I think.

I must have experienced a psychogenic fugue while viewing this film, because virtually none of it has stuck with me. That’s a bad sign. The Slumber Party Massacre is aptly titled because I must have been unconscious or asleep while it was unspooling (well, I mean, streaming).

A subplot revolves around the girl across the street, Valerie (Robin Stille, a forgotten Eighties scream-queen horror actress who committed suicide in 1996), babysitting kid sister Courtney (Jennifer Meyers), but I don’t recall why this is significant, and all the characters sort of blend together here, along with the scenes, sets, situations — and none of it ever really rises above the murk to any great degree.

So unmemorable is this picture I keep forgetting I even watched it. And, amazingly, it spawned sequels and spin-offs, like Sorority House Massacre and Cheerleader Massacre, and maybe Prep-School Bloodbath for all I know.

The screenplay was written by Rita Mae Brown, feminist author of books, many of them, including Rubyfruit Jungle (I’m guessing that’s a million light-years from The Slumber Party Massacre). All I know about her besides whatever Wikipedia — that absolutely one hundred percent accurate, verifiable, nay, dare I even say, unimpeachable internet resource — tells me is that she was the author of a cast-off book I found in a doctor’s office or hospital lounge that she co-authored with “Sneaky Pie Brown.” I’m guessing that was her cat.

Why such a respected novelist would stoop to writing such dreck as this is the real mystery, but regardless, at least the filmmakers got the title right. This flick isn’t much of a party, though. It is one hell of a snooze.

Nighty, nightmare, negligee. Over and out.

The Slumber Party Massacre Full 1982

My book: Cult Films and Midnight Movies: From High Art to Low Trash Volume 1

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My book: Silent Scream! Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, and Edison's Frankenstein--Four Novels.

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