The Slumber Party Massacre Review

I’m not sure how things happen in horror sometimes. When I was 11 years old I first started seeing advertisements for this movie and the subsequent sequels. I always thought the posers were cool, especially the sequel material. I thought these movies were porno films, then one fateful night, I watched one, and was impressed greatly at the time. Fast forward 20 years and I sat down to watch The Slumber Party Massacre with my old eyes and was not exactly thrilled with how this film puts up a brick, but at the same time, slashes through several mediums to make one hell of a slasher film.

The movie is about a young woman and her friends throwing a slumber party. They have a full house to themselves but the neighbor is constantly checking in on them. They are all plotting different things, mainly to try and get some action from guys, but instead end up having to deal with a crazed mad man that is killing with a power drill. That’s it; the majority of the film is a dark grained film with lots of low lighting, nighttime terror and a crazed mad man who remains behind the camera until the end. This was very much like an Argento film in many ways, only with less laughable moments and no Goblin soundtrack.

I enjoyed the music; it really ramped up the tension from time to time and made for great moments during the serial knock offs. The visuals aren’t that great, lots of grain, low budget, and it’s evident there wasn’t any care in regards to lighting placed, and that’s just a genre thing more than anything else. The killer gets his way until the end, and showcases a spree of mayhem that should’ve made a franchise player, but instead, we just get a solitary storyline. The guy on the covers for the posters in the sequels are unlike this killer, which is interesting to note.

The Slumber Party Massacre is a good representation of what the genre films were at the time. It’s not a great movie, it’s not going to change your views, and it’s hard to watch at times. The violence on women is trumped up high on this one, and the comedic points are not at all what was originally intended. In fact, the writer’s were trying to make a parody instead of a pure genre film, but we see here presented a slasher. I don’t recommend it, but if you must own everything, go for the box set.