Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

So the first question of course: does the fact that women are behind the writing, directing and (most) producing duties of Slumber Party Massacre change things? Do we get any sort of feminist "statement" as if there's always some stamp of femininity that has to come whenever women come near something that (let's be honest though here) is a primarily male-dominated type of film? I have to wonder what might've happened had this come out just a little earlier, when Siskel & Ebert did their infamous "Women in Danger" special where they covered every sleazy, misogynistic piece of slasher movie garbage (whether any were of quality, aside from Halloween which, naturally, they praised as not those things, is questionable), since those were all made by hacks looking to score a buck off of women in houses or camps or wherever being slaughtered by total creeps. It's hard to see that those movies being made by men didn't have *some* kind of effect on what we are seeing, but does it suddenly make it kosher if a women is writing/directing a scene where teenage girls (who are really like 30 years old, let's face it) are taking their clothes off as if that's just what girls do around one another (locker room besides)? I think Slumber Party Massacre IS evidence of inclusion in the genre; women, clearly, can make just as tasteless and violent trash as the guys. Roger Corman, who helped produce the film, *was* someone who didn't see genre as any kind of barrier (I remember the first Corman movie I saw was Penelope Spheeris' debut, Suburbia, when I was an adolescent), and while he did ultimately take a script that was originally intended as a satire of slasher movies (by author Rita Mae Brown), there's some of that connective tissue poking fun and, really, revealing the sordid qualities as something to laugh at intentionally. And... sure, there's unintentional laughs as well. Or, to put it more simply, this is a lot of fun, regardless of who made it.One other question: does it have a running theme that makes it stand out from the pack of things that would've wound up on Siskel & Ebert's s***list? In one respect, there's one that's hard not to see: everyone is wrapped up in their own world in this story, to the point where it gets a lot of people killed. Right from the get-go, the first murder that happens in the *school parking lot* (seriously, is no one else around at all, where's Groundskeeper Willie?), the idea is 'well, I don't need to turn back and look', and it makes what could be a movie filled with nasty, unlikeable people and, at least in some part, *about* how people don't help until it's too late. The other key example of this, among some others, is when one of the teenagers (one of the guys, no less) goes over to the house across the street where our quasi-not-really-sorta Laurie Stroud, Trish (Michele Michaels), is watching a horror movie on the TV while her "younger" sister is on the phone in another room. Just when Trish goes out to see what all the "HELP! HELP!" noise is from outside - hey, why look at it sooner, it's a dumb slumber party she's not been invited to after all - it's too late.Oh, and of course there's the phallic imagery of the drill (one shot in one particular kill scene seems like the quintessential slasher- movie image outside of something from Halloween), though I'm not convinced that is intentionally some sort of comment. It certainly *could* be going that way, and if I find out later on a documentary or audio commentary how it was then I'll eat my words. But one of the things about Slumber Party Massacre to note is how it's clever AND not clever at the same time. There are too many jump scares in the first half (a cat? really?), and yet at the same time there's moments like when the sisters are in the house, one of them opens the fridge and a body is in there - she closes it, but opens it again, both times not seeing it as she's not looking (though we see it from the composition and placement of the frame). I think, ultimately, regardless of gender, the filmmakers know in some part what they were doing throughout this, and it's a movie that gets to (mostly) have its cake and eat it: it's both a shameless rip-off of Halloween while being kind of a tribute to it, poking some fun at the clichés of a killer with... issues stalking girls (and men too, he's not discriminating, he just, as he notes at his villain monologue, finds them... pretty), and the girls in the cast are all game and only a couple of them are genuinely not good, like the "younger" sister (seriously, she looks almost as old if not *older* than the older sister!) The climax may try to bite off a little more than it can chew, but by then if one is already in, then it's still an entertaining ride, and whatever that drill is meant to represent - honestly, Ferrara probably meant more symbolically in his Driller Killer than this, on the whole - it's an effective visual.In other words: can women direct and write slashers? Well... duh.

While her parents are away for the weekend, Trish invites a few of her girlfriends over for the weekend. Their plans include beer, weed, and pizza. Plans are interrupted, however, by an escaped mental patient with a very large power drill that he enjoys plunging into his victims. Girls in pajamas (or less) and a deranged killer – sounds like a good mix.I never realized the screenplay for Slumber Party Massacre was written by novelist Rita Mae Brown. Over the years, I've enjoyed her Mrs Murphy mystery series. I've read that she originally intended the movie to be a parody of the slasher genre, but the producers went ahead and made it a more serious movie. There's still a lot of humor in the film that I find quite funny – the refrigerator door scene near the end being one example. Also, knowing that this was originally meant to be a parody, it helps explain a lot to me about the killer and the rest of the movie. On his own, Russ Thorn is not very frightening – just odd. Some of his facial expressions in the finale are priceless. I haven't read through all the comments on IMDb, so I'm sure this has been endlessly written about, but exactly what kind of power source was he using with that drill? There was no power cord and I've never seen a battery powered drill that can maintain that much power for that length of time. It must have been one of those nuclear drills so popular in the early 80s. The giant drill also makes for a very unwieldy, noisy weapon. Not the weapon of choice when sneaking up on people. I'll bet this was most likely a leftover irony from the original script.Since its release, I think I've now seen Slumber Party Massacre three times. I enjoyed it much more this time, but still can't rate it higher than a 5/10. I think that had they gone ahead and made this a full- on parody, it would have been a much better movie.

After the training of the high school girls' basketball team, a group of players schedule a slumber party. Most of the girls agrees to go to the party. Meanwhile, the serial-killer Russ Thorn (Michael Villela) escapes from prison and comes to the school with a drilling machine in the beginning of his crime spree. "The Slumber Party Massacre" is a weak slasher, since the killer's identity is known from the beginning and the story is not original. In 1979, Abel Ferrara directed "The Driller Killer", where a serial-killer kills his victims with a driller. There are hot girls nude, but they do not save the movie since the story is lame. My vote is four.Title (Brazil): Not available on DVD or Blu-Ray

Originally intended to be a feminist parody of the slasher formula that was running rife post Halloween, The Slumber Party Massacre was tampered with so as to make a serious horror movie. So how come it's still hilarious then?Plot for what it's worth finds a bunch of teenage girls throwing a slumber party only to get menaced by some psycho with a power drill. Cue an excuse for nudity, tight fitting pants, some gore, a bad actor guy living next door, an awful 80s score that sounds like Harold Faltermeyer belching, and the killer's drill lamely portrayed as a penis extension.Devoid of shocks or suspense, film plays out as some ludicrous exercise in bad amateur dramatics. Even it 1982 the reliance on false scares were getting boorish, while the inability to not hide what is obviously coming around the corner in the next scene is just poor directing from Amy Holden Jones.Generic and predictable tosh that only succeeds in making you treasure the likes of Black Christmas and Halloween even more! 2/10