Movie Review: The House on Sorority Row (1983)

Okay, Netflix. We are going to start having a serious problem in our relationship unless you quit with the lying to me. You made me think The House on Sorority Row was going to be a great slasher. You said in your oh-so-deceptive description that "this gleefully low-budget 1980s horror flick features ample doses of sex and gore." Well, the sex part I don't really care about because I'm not a dude, but you were so totally wrong about the gore part. I'm only going to forgive you for this just this once because although the gore in The House on Sorority Row sucks (a lot), I really liked the rest of the movie.

Seven graduating seniors of the Pi Theta sorority decide to finally get back at their evil house mother Mrs. Slater when she refuses to allow them to throw a graduation party at the house. They come up with a horrible idea for a prank that ends with Mrs. Slater's death, which the girl's smartly decide to cover up. But either she didn't really die or someone else knows what they did because the girls start getting picked off one by one (in ways that are so totally not gory at all).

So for anybody with half a brain, you can figure out the end of the movie pretty much from the very beginning. A title card says it's 1961 so this must be a flashback to the house mother's life. She has a back-alley baby basically and we're led to believe that the child died but it's pretty obvious that it didn't and that it's going to grow up to be the person who kills all the sorority girls. I mean, DUH. And of course, he also ends up being a deformed mongoloid like Jason whose mother has hidden him up in the sorority house's attic all his life. Annnnd, also like Jason, he sees his mommy killed by the girls and gets revenge and kills them. He also wears a mask. His name is Eric.

But I didn't really mind that I basically knew who the killer was from the start. I had a good time watching these sorority girls (whom every complains about not being as "hot" as sorority girls should be, but fuck that) try to deal with the situation. Speaking of the situation - children, NEVER try to hide or cover up an accidental death. YOU WILL DIE FOR IT. Just sayin'. I actually liked all these characters, though I was fully prepared not to, and the ones that I didn't really care for are thankfully pushed to the wayside anyway. There are some recognizable faces such as Harley Kozak, of Arachnophobia and Parenthood fame; Eileen Davidson has been on both Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless; and our final girl Katherine is played by Kate McNeil from the genre classic Monkey Shines. They all play their roles in House on Sorority Row well, and though they each to play to some sort of slasher character cliche, they are good enough actresses to pull it off. This could very well be the only 80s slasher I've seen where I do actually like the main characters - especially when they are all girls. 

The plot continually surprised me by not going the predictable way and throwing different stuff at me from time to time. There is a lot of stealing from other films, though - Diabolique, Friday the 13th, Black Christmas - but that's to be expected I guess from an 80s slasher. One thing that I really liked they did was the scene after Katherine is given the drugs by Mrs. Slater's doctor. Sitting in an armchair, she has this funky hallucination of dead Mrs. Slater and her dead sorority sisters standing in the open French doors, with Slater's can spinning on the ground by itself. Is this scene out of place in this movie? I don't know, but I loved it, and it looked really good. The one stupid-character-idea move I hated was after Jeanne is first attacked by Eric and she escapes and gets inside where she runs into Katherine. Katherine is all, "Oh you were just attacked and he could still be nearby? Stay here by yourself so he can finish the job" - then she leaves Jeanne and goes to help or whatever. Soon after, Jeanne is killed (she's the one with the head in the toilet). Bah! Such an annoying stupid character move. 

Now, the biggest downside of The House on Sorority Row is the death scenes. They suck. They're boring. The gore is nonexistent. Eric uses his mother's cane as the instrument of death, but he was hardly as inventive with it as he could have been. There's a stabbing through the throat and one through the eye and one fantastic shot of a head in a toilet - but that's about it. Two deaths are off-screen and in another, where Liz gets her throat cut, there is no blood. How can you slit somebody's fucking throat and not have there be blood?! So lame.

The House on Sorority Row is definitely better than its remake, which I hardly remember seeing at all, and more than on par with some similar films released during the same time period. It severely lacks in the gore department and the ending is frustratingly ambiguous, like they just gave up or something, but the acting is great and I liked where the plot went. Good movie.

Movie Review: The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

This movie, and its sequels, was one of those 80s goodies that just wasn't at my disposal for the longest time, so I never cared all that much about getting around to seeing it. And Slumber Party Massacre, despite the ambitious title, is not something I'm going to call a "classic." I liked it a lot though, and it is without a doubt a great example of all those formulaic 80s slashers movies.

Eighteen-year-old Trish decides to invite some friends over for a slumber party one night when her parents are out of town. The pretty, new girl Valerie, who lives next door to Trish, is invited to the festivities but declines to take care of her younger sister. It's going to be a long night for all of them, though, because a crazed murderer armed with a power drill is in the neighborhood - and he wants to join the party.

One of the cool things about Slumber Party Massacre is that it was both written and directed by women (not the same woman, though). The uncool thing about this is that I couldn't detect a woman's influence hardly anywhere in this movie, with the exception of one scene. I mean, in the first few minutes there is a tit shot as Trish changes her clothes in her room, and then not too long after that, there is a bevy of teenage flesh on display when the girls take showers after playing basketball. Like, of course there's a shower scene. The director even lingers on a shot of one girl's flat ass for a really unnecessary amount of time. And there are more boobs to come later in the movie. Feminist? I don't think so.

Anyway, the storyline here isn't all that bad so there was at least some thought put into making the movie a bit more plausible than some of the other slashers at the time. I mean, the situations just never seemed as farfetched, even though there is a bit of humor sprinkled throughout. Like when one girl gets hungry during their ordeal and they all approach the dead pizza guy cautiously with their knives to get at the delicious pie - that was kinda funny. Valerie running up the stairs with the band saw still plugged in was another good bit. But the humor almost doesn't make sense in this movie. It's subtle enough that you'll get it if you're paying attention but for the most part the movie is rather serious and trying its hardest to be all scary and creepy. So I don't see the point in making it funny unless it's trying to make some point I don't get or to be a comment on something that I don't really care about.

The power drill-loving killer is a rather cliche escaped crazy guy who looks like a guy you'd run into at the Home Depot. I always knew to never trust a guy in a jean jacket. Anyway, I thought it would annoy me that they don't hide the killer's face through most of the movie - probably 'cause that's what I'm used to from these slashers, you know - but it becomes pretty clear that who this man is doesn't matter in the least. He's just a guy using a very obvious phallic symbol to attack women. So the only "feminist" moment I can see is when Valerie comes after him with a big 'ole machete and chops off a part of his drill. Yup, friends, she emasculated him. Hard to miss the subtleties there.

If there is one thing I can say about the other characters in Slumber Party Massacre, it is that they all seem to be suffering from a case of selective deafness. You know what that is, right? It's when the people in a horror all seem to have perfectly normal hearing in everyday situations but for some reason can't hear or ignore those sounds which are most important - like for instance screaming... or the sound of a power drill. This happens several times throughout the movie - first when the boys ignore the phone repair girl being killed in her van, then when the other girls in the house can't hear Diane's screams or the car horn honking several times, then when Valerie can't hear that one guy pounding on the front door - you get the idea. Stupid deaf people in horror movies are about as annoying as just plain old stupid people in horror movies.

So to end this somewhat incoherent and non-flowy review of Slumber Party Massacre, I'll say that I liked the movie. It's got some characters that aren't too annoying (for the most part), a pretty good body count, and it was created by two chicks. A nice, nostalgic look at 80s slashers, and there are better ones out there, but this one is mostly a good time and deserves its place in the cult favorites section of the horror genre - but still not really a "classic."

Movie Review: Slaughter High (1986)

Slashers from the 80s are more than a little guilty of being way too formulaic and not doing a very good job at getting the formula right. A lot of them do work, though, either because they manage to add in a little something different and exciting to the formula, or because it's just so much fun to ridicule people in 80s movies. The hair is usually enough to get a chuckle out of me. Slaughter High seems like it's kind of trying to be different here, but um... it's really not.

Marty is your typical science nerd with glasses who can't go one day in high school without somebody tormenting him. A group of the popular kids decide to play the ultimate prank on poor Marty, who ends up burned, disfigured, and crazy as a result. Years later, the popular kids return to the school, now abandoned, for a little reunion. What they don't know is that Marty is their host - and this will be a reunion they may not survive.

Right at the beginning, the filmmakers do things all wrong. The prank is played out far too long, for one thing. It does allow the audience to get to know both Marty and the rather large group of friends that torture him lets us see how horrible and cruel their crime was, but we needed to see more scenes of them in the present rather than in the past. We need to see how these people have changed since high school, if at all. That way we can at least have some kind of sympathy for these douchebags. Alas, it seems that when they all get together again, these guys are still rather unlikable and they also don't seem to give a crap about what they did to Marty. Shocking, I know.

So anyway. Carol, Frank, Joe, Stella, Nancy, Skip, Shirley, and later Susan (seriously... too many characters there) show up at the old alma mater for the reunion and soon realize that they are the only ones there. They enter the cobwebby and dirty old building and eventually find a room that's all decked out for the party - complete with all their old lockers, holding an item that they each thought they had lost years ago. Marty's locker is there too. Hmmmm, I wonder what that means. Nothing about this situation seems to bother them - like why no one else was invited to the "reunion," or why a reunion would be held in the high school if it was abandoned in the first place.

The kills aren't that bad and there are a few inventive ones. The first guy gets it when he drinks a beer with acid in it and his stomach explodes outward. Shirley, the Asian chick, gets blood on her from this and when she decides to take a bath (um, a bathtub in a school? Sure. Why not?) and the water suddenly turns to acid too which proceeds to melt her body. She actually tries to turn off the water while still in the tub instead of like, trying to get out, which would have been my first thought. There's also death by lawnmower blades, drowning in a pit of what I can only guess to be poo, and an electrocution while Stella and Frank are enjoying some coitus on a bed in another room (um, a bed in a school? Sure. Why not?). Basically, they all die and you don't care because you don't like any of them and they do all kinds of stupid stuff, so really, they deserve it.

The one cool bit in Slaughter High was the choice of joker/jester mask and hat for Marty the killer. It's actually really freaky looking, and reminds me a bit of a clown, which we all know is the scariest thing on earth. But that's about all that Slaughter High has going for it. The characters are too unlikable and annoying - even Marty, whom we're supposed to have a bit of sympathy for, is just a frustrated dork who goes completely insane. The performances are even worse, with some of the most uninspiring dialogue and delivery I've heard in a long time. The camera work is sloppy and there were several scenes that were almost completely pitch black. Most reviews seem to hope that the prank sequence in the shower was pitch black too. Why do men always have a freak out when they see another man's weenie in a movie? I mean, every time I see boobs, do I go, "Oh gross, another chick's tits! Ew, get it off the screen!" No. You know why? Because I'm more mature than that. And because the human body is beautiful.

Believe it or not, this was a British movie trying to pass itself off as American. And in some places it doesn't translate well at all. All the events of the film take place on the eve of April Fool's Day, and the murders don't start until midnight on the morning on the holiday. Two characters have a conversation about how they only have to survive until noon on April Fool's Day because the jokes stop at noon. Huh? Since when? In America, we'll prank your ass all day, we don't stop at noon. But that seems to be the rule in several countries throughout the world, including the UK.

Anyway, lame movie. I'll check it off my list of culty 80s slasher movies, but it's not my favorite. It could have better if they tried harder - or if some of these guys took an acting class or two - because the story has real potential, although the whole prank-gone-wrong revenge story has been done a couple times before. Nice try. Do better next time.

Movie Review: Happy Birthday To Me (1981)

Yet another movie that I saw years and years ago and have completely forgotten about since then! I remembered some key scenes from the movie but honestly, the bulk of it was pretty much all gone. Oh, my brain, do I try to put too much information in you at one time and you just decide to throw the old stuff out? Well anyway, Happy Birthday To Me is back in my brain now.

Virginia Wainwright is the newest member of Crawford Academy's "Top Ten," an elite clique of the richest and most popular students at the school. A few days before her birthday, Virginia's friends start disappearing one by one, murdered by an unseen foe. And Virginia suffers confusing blackouts at the same time, causing her to believe that she may indeed be the culprit. Is she murdering her friends and not remembering it, or is it someone else?

The entire movie can be quite confusing at points. Our main character Virginia is already suffering from memory loss as a result of a tragic experience involving the death of her mother. We only learn truth as she does. She is undergoing therapy and we later find out that she's had some kind of brain surgery. Okay, so she can't really be trusted. Then when her friends start disappearing and dying, Virginia loses chunks of time which is confusing to her and the audience.

Overall, no one in this movie really knows what the hell is going on. Virginia doesn't know what the hell is going on. Her doctor doesn't know what the hell is going on. Her dad, the cops, and especially her friends don't have the slightest clue (and at times, they don't even seem to really care) why these kids are dying, who's doing it and why.

Now, boasting the tagline "Six of the most bizarre murders you'll ever see" is pretty ballsy and a large plate to fill. I'd say this movie gets a thumbs down in that respect. Getting stabbed in the stomach with hedge clippers? No. Not "bizarre." Rather boring, in fact. Bizarre is the kind of weird shit that happens to people in the Final Destination movies. Catching your scarf in the wheel of a motorcycle is a little better but not much.

One of my favorites definitely has to be the famous shish kabob death simply because that kind of rules and because it inspired that awesome poster. Better than that though, in my opinion, is the guy who gets the barbell dropped on his neck. I was expecting it to just crush him and him gagging and stuff, but no. It drops down all quick like and we get a nice spattering of blood. Good scene. The next best one is the murder of the doctor with a fire poker. This one is interesting from the sheer amount of blood that comes out of the man from only a few whacks with the poker. Blood just covers one wall of Virginia's room; it's really a little excessive but cool at the same time.

Pre-Saw III, this film also gives us a great brain surgery scene, where a piece of Virginia's skull is cut out, showing a nice, bloody and bulging brain underneath. Yuck. My only question: How did her hair grow back so fast?

The famous ending to the film, where it is revealed that Ann is the killer and has been wearing a Virginia-mask to do the deeds, feels like it was tacked on at the last minute. And some stories on the internet will tell you that it indeed was tacked on, replacing an ending that made sense with story - probably that Virginia was the killer and had just gone psychotic. For what the rest of the movie sets up, Virginia being the killer does make the most sense, but then I think a good chunk of the movie's fame comes from the twisted ending.

Two things are really wrong with the ending, though. One is the obvious: that mask bullshit is about as believable as leprechauns. Ann just puts on a mask and she suddenly looks seamlessly like Virginia? Really? Especially when Ann's got those weird, perfectly straight and big teeth? Me thinks no. You really have to suspend some disbelief to deal with these shenanigans. The other thing is Ann's incredibly lame motivation. If I haven't said it yet, I'll say it here: I cannot stand killers with lame motivations! The whole half-sisters with Virginia being the better one that everyone cared about or whatever... no. Just... no. I don't believe it and I don't like it. Get a life.

Though it's a jumble of confusion all the way around (that scene with Virginia and the other dude in the bell tower? How weird was that?), Happy Birthday To Me has entered the hearts of the cult-lovers of the world, and for the most part, it's pretty good. It's different enough from the typical slasher mold to get noticed and give audiences something fresh.

Movie Review: Waxwork (1988)

Waxwork is yet another movie about a wax museum. Much different than House of Wax, obviously, but a fun story and a good time to watch.

Mmmm, plot: A group of college students are invited to the exclusive opening of the Waxwork museum by the strange magician proprietor. The wax displays all contain iconic monsters and gruesome death scenes, and also have the power to transport the viewer to the world that they portray. If you are killed in the display, you die in real life and become a part of the display forever. When his friends go missing inside the displays, one of the kids is determined to find out the truth about the man who runs the place.

Waxwork is not a perfect movie, but it is totally off the chain. A completely rad, tubular horror comedy that could only have come out of the 80s. Indeed, this is one of the reasons I love that time period so much - exploitative horror was kind of  gone but sophisticated horror was yet to come. In between, we got movies like this. Which is awesome. I only wish I had been a teenager or something in that time so I could have grown up with all these movies, instead of crazily trying to play catch-up now in my 20s.

I wasn't really expecting that much gore or any real excitement from this movie, but most of it was a pleasant surprise. Some of the kills toward the end happen mostly offscreen - disappointing, yes, but there are some earlier scenes that are worth checking out. When China enters the world of the vampire, she eats raw meat at a banquet, and then stumbles upon the body of the victim used for dinner. He's tied to a table with most of the flesh from his legs missing. Yum. There's also people being ripped apart - always nice - and a midget being fed to a huge Little Shop of Horrors plant. You gotta love that.

Everybody's favorite part is probably the Night of the Living Dead scene. The main guy gets thrown into the zombie display and he's transported to a a black and white filmed cemetery, being chased by rotting zombies reminiscent of the classic film. The camera work is even like NOTLD, with lots of low angles and such that identify it.

There are tons of references to other horror films here that I really don't need to repeat them. Classic monsters abound, and there is also a cute little homage to the hand with a mind of its own from Evil Dead II. I only wish that we had gotten a better look at all the displays because I know I probably missed some good stuff. Only a few of the monsters and their displays are really highlighted and that's a bummer. I really wanted to see what was going on with the one where the guy has a gas pump shoved down a girl's throat.

What I don't get about the movie is Lincoln's whole set-up and plan for his wax museum. So the whole complicated story is this: Lincoln took some kind of trinket from 18 of the most evil people in the world from all different times in history, used them in his displays, and then needed another 18 people to go into them get killed and complete the displays. Once this was accomplished all of the evil people would come to life again and create chaos or whatever, which I guess is what he wanted.

What doesn't really make sense here (at least to me) is that his displays contain some known figures from history, like the Marquis de Sade, but most of them are fictional monsters, like vampires and werewolves. Although there have been movies that mix the monsters, I've always been of the pure mind that these monsters have their own worlds with their own rules and mythos. Not a big deal, though. Kinda weird however that Lincoln would consider a mummy one of the most evil people ever and not like, you know, Hitler or something.

The climax is fun and hilarious. The two main people whose names I can't remember decide to finally burn down the Waxworks and hopefully stop Lincoln's plan. They don't succeed before Lincoln can find two more victims, and all holy hell breaks loose when the monsters come to life. Wheelchair guy and a huge group of people storm in and they all get into a knock-down-drag-out that is freaking gut-busting.

David Warner as Lincoln was the only really recognizable face to me, only because he's in one of my favorite movies of all time, The Omen. Michelle Johnson as China looks vaguely familiar but I can't place her and it's going to bug me all day. There is the occasional cheesily delivered line but it all adds to what is an almost perfect combination of horror and comedy. The scene where the nerdy girl is being whipped by de Sade - and apparently really enjoying it - is a bit awkward and goes on for a bit too long. The girl playing Sarah is very good in this scene however. Wouldn't be surprised if she went on to have a great porn career after this.

Again, not the greatest movie, but it's still rad.

Movie Review: The Prowler (1981)

The Prowler seems like one of those films that got lost and forgotten in the myriad of slashers released in the 80s - movies that came in the wake of classics like Halloween and Friday the 13th. And to some degree, it sort of deserves to be lost because in some ways, The Prowler just isn't that great. It falls victim  to the cliches of a lot of slashers - an empty storyline, one dimensional characters, etc. - BUT there are some places where the film succeeds, which has maybe saved it from obscurity over the years.

A plot of hack-n-slash: A soldier returning from World War II receives a Dear John letter from his lady, Rosemary, saying she's tired of waiting for him and has found a new man. This rightfully pisses soulja boy off, and he gets revenge by murdering the two of them on the night of the Graduation Dance. Cut to the present - well, 1981 - and the dance hasn't been held in Avalon Bay since the murders. This year it's back, and someone apparently has a problem with that because a "prowler" is stalking kids at the local college dorm and murdering them in gruesome ways.

The story is as thin as a piece of rice paper and never really tries to make any kind of sense. The characters are not interesting at all and you never care all that much when they are disposed of. I figured out who the killer was pretty much as soon as he showed up on screen, and the filmmakers never even really try to make anybody else a red herring. It's too obvious. So then his reveal at the end of the film is not dramatic or shocking but sadly anticlimactic. And his motives never make sense, either. I still don't get it. I did like that the sheriff was played by Farley Granger, though. That was awesome. Loved you in Rope, dude.

Watching all of the bloody and violent deaths in The Prowler, I'm immediately struck by the high quality of the effects. They truly stand out in this film because of how well they are done - and after I watched the film I found out why. Yes, that master of horror makeup Tom Savini (if his name was in the credits, then I must have totally missed it) was the mind behind the film's impressive prosthetic work. And it's a good thing they had Tom for this film because the director and editor seemed to like using lots of unnecessarily long lingering shots on the death scenes, which would have turned out much worse if the makeup hadn't been as effective.

Let's highlight these death scenes, shall we? The first one is Rosemary and the BF getting pitchforked (yes, it's a verb now because I want it to be) while they're making out. You don't see much in this scene, but don't worry, there's more to come. Then that one chick's boyfriend gets a knife through the top of his head which penetrates all the way to under his chin. It gets even more gruesome when his eyes pop open and all you see are the whites. Shudder! The only weird thing is that it takes him a really long time to die even though he gets stabbed directly in the BRAIN. Then the girl taking the longest shower in the history of the world gets pitchforked in the gut. This death is the best one, I'd say, because again, the director likes to linger and the shots of the pitchfork in her chest look very realistic. Thumbs up. 

The second best looking death is the throat slashing of the girl in the pool, which was awesome because he doesn't just slit her throat all quick like. No, he freaking saws that thing into her neck until the blade is almost all the way in, without the shot cutting away at all. Good blood spurting and good prosthetics. Although with the lingering thing AGAIN, there is a very strangely composed shot of the girl's dead body underwater that goes on for way too long, as if something was going to happen - but didn't. It's just weird. Back to the gore, the near-ending of the film gives us one fantastic head explosion courtesy of a shotgun at point-blank range. Nice!

This movie rips off way too many other more superior horror flicks and never once manages to do anything remotely original itself. The music sounds like Friday the 13th at times with the high, screechy noises during those oh-so-scary parts; the killer is a slow moving, emotionless stalker like Michael Myers; and the ending is pretty much completely bitten from Carrie. This annoyed me the most. The music is, again, almost exactly the same as from the ending of Carrie, with the slow, pretty music as Pam walks into the room which immediately escalates into high pitched chords as soon as the guy in the shower reaches out and grabs her arm. And what was the point of this ending anyway? Was this a dream, like in Carrie? Are we really supposed to believe that the guy in the shower could still be alive? And will somebody please turn that shower off because it's been running all night and you are wasting some serious natural resources right there!

Two more random questions: How the fuck did the killer's pitchfork break just by Pam pulling on it?

Why can Final Girls never get out of a door that is locked from the inside? Flip the lock, you stupid bitch!

I'm coming down on The Prowler a lot, but it kind of deserves it. It's an okay set up for a slasher flick that's been used in one way or another in other films, but this one doesn't have any good characters or plot progression to make it interesting. The no-name actors aren't terrible in their roles, which helps the film immensely, but the too-simple story and odd editing choices are mostly what hurt the film. I'd say watch this to admire Tom Savini's gore work - it's still good even by today's standards - and don't expect to be scared or shocked by anything else you see here.