This week's Thursday Thriller is Slumber Party Massacre.
I'm getting straight to the point because that's exactly what this film from 1982 does. It was produced by Roger Corman, and it features a lot of boobs and murder. It's about a girl named Trish (Michele Michaels) whose parents go out of town for the weekend, so she has a few friends over to drink beer and smoke dope. As luck would have it a homicidal pervert named Russ Thorn (Michael Villela) just escaped and he kills off most of the barely dressed, nubile beauties with a power drill. The bit is about two feet long. The symbolism isn't exactly subtle.
The whole affair might sound a bit sexist until you consider a woman named Rita Mae Brown wrote it, initially as a parody of slasher films, and a woman named Amy Holden Jones directed it, steering it back toward the serious. The result is a satisfying slasher flick with a lot of funny moments. And boobs. Did I mention the boobs?
What I like about it is the action keeps moving. You know how slasher films sometimes get bogged down in building a psychological profile of the killer, often dealing with some childhood trauma and a lot of tedious flashbacks? Not the case here. All you need to know about Russ Thorn is that he's an escaped killer. There's not even an explanation where his drill is plugged in, because that would be boring. It clocks out at a lean 77 minutes.
The focus is instead on the killer's intended victims, who receive a fair amount of character development, especially the new girl in school Valerie (Robin Stille), who, instead of attending the party, stays home across the street with her Playgirl-reading little sister Courtney (Jennifer Meyers).
Slumber Party Massacre is full of misdirections, pop scares, funny moments, scary moments, gory moments, and girls showering. It delivers exactly what the title promises and doesn't try to be anything else. It streams on YouTube.
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