The greatest movie ever!

Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

RELEASED IN 1983 and written & directed by Mark Rosman Stoller, "The House on Sorority Row" chronicles events at a sorority house outside of Baltimore where seven girls responsible for an accidental death start dying one by one during their graduation party. The film borrows elements from "Black Christmas" (1974) and the French horror "Diabolique" (1955), like the unused swimming pool to conceal a body that later disappears. The first act is quite good, particularly the accidental death scene, which is well-acted for no-name actresses. Only two of the seven went on to a career in acting: The protagonist who plays Katie (Kate McNeil) and the slutty girl, Vicky (Eileen Davidson). Speaking of the girls, they present a realistic feminine smorgasbord with Morgan (Jodi Draigie) arguably being the most attractive. None of them, however, are anything to go gaga over (looks-wise, that is). What marred the film for me was the dubious writing. For instance, wouldn't the girls be perplexed at how a dead body mysteriously made it to the attic? What caused it to suddenly fall down the trap door? Why don't any of the girls look at the face of the corpse to verify its identity? Would a couple of girls who know very little about guns seriously enact a prank using a questionable mixture of bullets and blanks? If you can get past these issues, "The House on Sorority Row" is a decent early 80s' slasher with a worthy plot and pretty good production values. THE MOVIE RUNS 1 hour 31 minutes and was shot at Eltonhead Mansion in Pikesville, Maryland, with establishing shots done at University of Maryland, College Park. ADDITIONAL WRITER: Bobby Fine. GRADE: C

Full of eerie imagery, suspenseful murders and performers that are perhaps a tad better than you might be expecting, "The House on Sorority Row" is a subtle and slow-burning, but to me extremely effective slasher flick that is now one of my favourites, but for the longest time after I first ever saw it as a little kid all I could remember of it was that I liked it a lot, but nothing else except that an old lady was forced into a pool at gunpoint, and that it had a fat guy in said pool who says "I'm a sea pig!" And when I randomly got the cheap DVD that just happened to be it, it was the coolest thing as it got to the scene and I realised that it was the movie that'd been at the back of my mind for so many years. And it turned out to be a real diamond in the rough and my yearning to see it again was very well-founded. It's a very solid and entertaining slasher, one that I personally feel is very unfairly underrated and overlooked. I think it has a superb atmosphere of haunting dread and a level of sustained suspense throughout that I find quite brilliant. The cinematography is really beautiful and the look of it has a great use of shadow and light which gives it a certain weird crisp atmosphere that helps create a generous amount of creepiness. Its look is very sleek and bright-looking, but also shady and sinister. It's visuals help to set it apart and make it more distinctive from its more formulaic and forgetful brethren that were around in abundance at the time. The attic set is especially spooky with the children's toys and clown motif which is of course a little foreshadowing with the name "Eric" spelled out in toy blocks for a moment in the background. The film is also helped enormously by the score of Richard Band which gives it a lot of soul and depth that I don't believe it would've otherwise had. Just imagine it without the music. *Not* pretty.. There really isn't all that much to it, it is a very simple and straightforward venture and is definitely no gorefest by any stretch of the imagination, in fact with the killings it's mainly what you thought you saw, as it mostly cuts away or is done off-screen. So what? It's kind of got its own special thing going on and isn't just about waiting to see how many gruesome ways in which a bunch of random people running about can die! I mean yeah, obviously it's not a great deal more than that, but it's very well-written and tight in construction, with an engaging pace that flows nicely as well a strong compelling quality to its story that keeps me engaged the whole time and I've never got sick of it yet, I find it satisfying on all the levels that I think should count when it comes to a slasher movie. At least it tries to be a mystery by never completely revealing the killer and keeping you guessing until the end, and I love that about it, although as a kid I never quite grasped that it wasn't Mrs. Slater, even after they find her body.. I think it still does a good job of misleading the audience. And I found the group of girls likable and interesting enough, everybody had a good chemistry together, I bought them as friends. And although nobody was exactly brilliant or anything, to me they seemed like characters that actually had a little character or at least it was better than what you'd typically get from this kind of movie. I don't even mind the obvious dubbing of the puritanical house-mother, it's great fun to laugh at and it kinda makes the flick feel like a Japanese movie at points! The acting was good from pretty much all involved, with the big gaping exception of Jodie Dragie as "Morgan" who was a total airhead and had the acting talent of a porn starlet, which leads me to suspect that the only reason she was ever in the movie was perhaps because she was 'humping' Mark Rosman! The awesome moment when she blurts out: "How do we know she *IS* alive!?" is hands-down the most hilarious part of the movie and just has to be one of the all-time great terrible line-readings ever, it's that bad it's funny. Even Eileen Davidson chuckles at it on the commentary! No surprise at all that it's her only ever film credit. Take a bow, sweet Jodie! And Kate Mcneil was a good lead but I really couldn't stand her, she was so irritatingly goody-goody! Even though she's technically right about what she's saying, the way she delivered her lines just made her come off as a big 'ol stick-in-the-mud to me and she went a little overboard with the whole responsible one thing.. I thought she was great at the end when things get a little bizarre and she's all doped-up and lures the killer to the attic with the ominous musical jack-in-the-box just like his mother used to... And I still find the ending to be great and pretty unforgettable. When the jester unexpectedly lifts its head up is still one of the most chilling moments in horror movies for me. A little more jester would've been nice, but it's still an effectively intense climactic scene for the movie. And that's something else I love about it, the way it leaves things on a strangely satisfying ambiguous note where things are not looking particularly bright for Kate! Love this movie, I think it still stands as a superior little slice of this particular branch of the horror genre. Now "Get out of my house!" G'night folks!!

"The House on Sorority Row" is one of the finer examples of slasher films, a genuinely creepy and moody movie with a particularly ominous and mysterious killer. The story is one of those "prank gone wrong" deals: fed up with their crabby, odd duck of a house mother, Mrs. Slater (Lois Kelso Hunt), a group of sorority sisters decide to pay her back for spoiling their fun. When the prank results in Slater's death, the girls go out of their way to cover up their mess, not knowing that somebody else witnessed the whole thing from an attic window and is coldly determined to make sure THEY pay a steep price. Writer / director Mark Rosman, who amusingly enough went on to direct things like 'Lizzie McGuire' and "A Cinderella Story", started out working for director Brian De Palma, and brings a fair amount of style to his story, not content to go with some of the clichés of slashers. For one thing, he wanted his victims to be culpable individuals, and not get punished for such arbitrary things as premarital sex. He also was determined to have a downbeat ending unlike much of what we see in slashers, although his preferred resolution ultimately got cut down. Some good black comedy and tension arises over the matter of what to do with Slater's supposedly dead body; for example, the girls getting nervous over the possibility of somebody turning on the lights for the pool where the body was dumped. There's some real atmosphere and spookiness to some of the suspense sequences, some delicious hallucinatory visuals (after the last one standing has been given a sedative), and a killer whom we never really see; they're most often behind something or wearing a mask and/or costume. The extent of whatever problem they have is never given much detail, except of course for the potential for violence. There's a mild bit of gore, although nothing in the way of bare female flesh. The acting is better than usual for this sort of thing, with co-stars Kate McNeil, Eileen Davidson, and Harley Jane Kozak going on to success in both movies ("Monkey Shines" for McNeil, "Arachnophobia" for Kozak) and soaps such as 'As the World Turns', 'Days of Our Lives', and 'Santa Barbara'). Hunt indeed has the right look for Mrs. Slater, although she would be dubbed in post production as it was felt her real voice wasn't intimidating enough. A big part of the effectiveness lies in the lush music score by ever reliable Richard Band. And the movie also shows, once again, just how incredibly formidable clown get ups can be in this context. Newcomers to slasher films are strongly advised to check out "The House on Sorority Row" and have some good chills. Eight out of 10.

Mostly a typical slasher flick from the '80s. In this case, a strict house mother is presumably killed by her tenants, a bunch of nursing students. Sure enough, they start getting killed one by one. As can be expected, there's some nudity - plus some drinking; remember what they said in "Scream" - and the strict lady's history eventually gets revealed. Although "The House on Sorority Row" isn't anything great, it's certainly enjoyable, and that's what counts. Seeing that the movie got filmed in Baltimore, I now wonder how it would have come out had either of Baltimore's famous directors (Barry Levinson and John Waters) directed it.Anyway, nothing special, but entertaining. Am I the only one who thinks that one of the girls looked like Carrie Fisher?