Slow pace in the most part of the movie.
... View MoreGood start, but then it gets ruined
... View MoreBlending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction
... View MoreBy the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
... View MoreOk so I'm going to start of with this, I did not like the dream sequences and the movie took WAY too long to get to the good stuff.Once the killer starts killing, over 75% of the movie is already over, meaning the kills are fast and each character gets very little screen time to run away or fight back.The killer is by far way more charismatic than the first one. This movie is FAR more aware than it's previous film of what it is. But as my title says, it's just funny after watching both movies in a row and seeing the change from early 80s to late 80s. Late 80s was in your face, was self aware, gelled hair all of the place, and much less forgiving. Very enjoyable just very slow for the first....hour and ten minutes or so...
... View More"Slumber Party Massacre II" follows Courtney, who survived the first film's events as a child, and now as a teenager is plagued by horrible night terrors in which the killer has reincarnated as a greaser armed with a drill bit-adorned guitar. She and her friends, who have their own band, go away for Courtney's birthday weekend to one of the girls' parents' condominium, located in an undeveloped complex out of town. Needless to say, the killer crashes the party.This is a film that I expected to hate based on the sheer absurdity of the plot synopsis, but I'll be damned in this isn't one of the more fun late-eighties slasher entries. It's patently ridiculous-everything from the killer's methods of dispatching victims to the corny rockabilly tunes he belts out as he stalks them. He looks like an extra from "Grease" crossed with a late-eighties Los Angeles hair-metal singer, but there is something bizarrely charming about the character."A Nightmare on Elm Street" was a clear influence here, and the film is chock full of overt references to other films, primarily in the characters' tongue-in-cheek names. Speaking of the characters, they are each wildly likable, and the performers are all attractive and have a spunky chemistry that makes the proceedings even more fun. The film is also surprisingly well-shot for a production of this caliber. At 75 minutes, the film is lean and mean, with most of the slasher action barreling onscreen around the 60-minute mark. The ending is silly, but somewhat ties up some loose ends as to why on earth the hapless teens are being stalked by such a ridiculous villain.In the end, "Slumber Party Massacre II" is logistically a much better film than it should be. The premise is absurd and its serves up the late-eighties cheese that a faction of slasher devotees live for. I couldn't help myself from enjoying all of it, from its most absurd elements to its most competent. 7/10.
... View MoreSlumber Party Massacre II is not the first Slumber Party Massacre - what on God's green Earth could be? - but it cuts its own distinctive style by being so adorably terrible that one can't help but admire it somehow. It has padding in its 75 minute run-time, and can do that since the girl friends around the main character have a band (the sister from the previous film, Courtney, of the main girl from the last movie, though damn if I could remember that even having just seen the first one two weeks ago, different actress by the way of course). It's also a movie where if there even *is* a serial killer is in question since it could all be in the majorly PTSD'd, nightmare-riddled Courtney's mind. If the first movie was liberally borrowing (one might say ripping off but no, heavens no, that's not the Corman way is it?) from Halloween, then this is liberally borrowing from the Nightmare on Elm Street films (a scene of Courtney in a bath-tub seems like it was lifted so hard from the first one its ridiculous, and I almost thought it would oddly enough take from the third one, which came out the same year, but not quite the case), and at the heart of it is the most awesomely silly killer I've ever seen in a slasher. Who is this killer? Try to imagine Quentin Tarantino hit his head on a sink and after he came to was tasked to write an 80's slasher movie - this is what he might come up with: Atanas Ilitch is having the time of his life playing this "Driller Killer", who would appear to be a psychological terror of Courtney's years after the first massacre happened, but is um... actually there? Is that a spoiler? The reasoning for why he finally leaps forward may actually make some sense is going by the usual (strict?) code of conduct for these kinds of movies - if you're a virgin, the moment you have sex is when you get it right through the vitals - and but in the moment it seems like it has only the slimmest rationale, and it fully becomes a "slasher", as in Ilitch's killer going after these innocent/obnoxious teens (some more than others), in the last act. Before this is a lot of gloriously dumb scenes; at one point, the girls have an actual pillow fight and some/most of them take off their clothes to do so, and on that immediate beat two of the guys in the movie look on through a window and say, "they actually DO do this!" Again, the songs take up a good number of minutes (without them this might barely make a feature-length run-time), but they're not the worst ever, just that kind of mediocre 80's rock-pop that Corman was able to buy for 10 cents. The performances are also what you expect, but what makes the movie stand out a bit is that the filmmaker - once again a woman, and Corman was good about hiring women to make his movies, regardless of artistry, Deborah Brock in this case - tries to ape at times another Corman alumni, Jonathan Demme; there are multiple scenes where characters look directly at the camera as if to us and speak (for example when one of the teens finally calls the cops, prematurely really, when Courtney is having one of her hallucination/nightmare freak-outs). What is this supposed to do? I am sure I still don't know.A lot of this is not good, and actually it's pretty terrible. What gives it the rating it gets is that it's a massively entertaining bad movie, one of those that sticks out among the multitudes of 80's slashers (and back then you could randomly throw a rock and hit a piece of s*** slasher movie); what is significant here is that the pace never slackens too much, the actors are mostly likable, the tone is appropriately silly (but not in a way where they're too knowing of it), and the climax is completely bananas as characters run through an unfinished building as the slasher/singer does his Rockabilly thing with his drill. It'd also be a total blast for a party movie night.
... View MoreThe Plot = After Vicki's friends were brutally murdered at a slumber party a couple of years ago she was admitted to an asylum. Her younger sister, Courtney is all grown up now though and is getting ready to leave for a slumber party weekend with her girlfriends. What she doesn't know is that someone is all ready there, waiting for them... or is it all in Courtney's mind?Naked girls in pillow fights, a killer with a drill at the end of his guitar and weird hallucinations, wow did this sequel change the story completely or what. The first "Slumber Party Massacre" was good, this sequel however is just too strange, It definitely ain't as good as the first one, I mean the dream sequences are just weird and the killer is far from scary to be honest I found him rather stupid He looks like he was pulled out from some 80s rock band with his leather jacket and very customised guitar. I guess they tried to make it a bit more original than the first one. Either way, It's is still a very entertaining movie and if you liked the first one, you will definitely like this one as well.
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