THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE

Dead teenager template

It was 1981, and Roger Corman was disappointed. He'd always made pictures on the crest of every wave, cashing in on a hot film trend at just the right moment. Yet here he was, at the height of the slasher flick cycle, and all he was making was Alien knock-offs like Galaxy of Terror and Forbidden World.

Fortunately, he had in hand a script by feminist mystery author Rita Mae Brown entitled Sleepless Nights that would do nicely. Just then, editor Amy Jones came to him pleading for a chance to direct her first feature. Corman handed her the script and the assignment on the spot.

Spooky synth/organ music by Ralph Jones, somewhat reminiscent of Halloween's score, sets the tone for terror while clashing with the sunny California locations. A newspaper headline announces the escape of a homicidal maniac and the heroine takes her top off, all within the first two minutes. Is it a coincidence that all the parents in the neighborhood are leaving for the weekend, or are they skipping town to escape the coming carnage?

Trish (Michelle Michaels) doesn't care. She's taking advantage of the situation by planning a slumber party. Cut to the gym where Trish meets her friends. Following Brown's feminist outlook, the girls are not cheerleaders in this flick, but members of a basketball team. The cast is full of handy, capable women, who hold traditionally male positions and talk about sports. The men are all ineffectual weaklings and sex objects -- aside from the killer, who turns out to be an incubus of some sort.

While the team plots the party during their first gratuitous shower scene (shot more leeringly than any male director would dare), escaped maniac Russ Thorn (Michael Villella) invades the neighborhood, skewering a telephone repairwoman (Jean Vargas) with his big portable power drill. Brown makes sure her symbolism is lost on no one, choosing the most phallic weapon imaginable for her villain to penetrate his victims with -- same category of power tool as Abel Ferrara's Driller Killer, but much bigger.

The symbolism doesn't stop there. Jones fills up the screen with sharp edges from broken dishes and red liquids (even Kool Aide) at every opportunity.

Thorn moves on to the school in search of another victim, as unlucky Linda has forgotten her history book. This sequence, actually quite suspenseful, was reportedly written in at the last moment. Actress Brinke Stevens, in her first speaking role, had to leave the company for another commitment before the party begins. Jones made sure she got her chance at a bigger part before she left. Stevens stuck in the minds of fans, and became a Scream Queen legend in a string of genre shockers.

With the first kills out of the way, Jones settles into a second act full of fake scares -- "buses" as they're known, after the jump-inducing vehicle in Cat People. Coach Jana (Pamela Roylance) hears a noise in her closet. It's the cat! Trish's new neighbor and teammate Valerie (Robin Stille) hears dogs knocking over the garbage can. It's dogs knocking over the garbage can! (Notably, the production didn't have the money to show the dogs, only the garbage.) Everyone is shown to be a bit edgy, reacting to every little offscreen noise as if it's a psycho killer stalking them in a horror movie.

Brown continues her rundown of the list of slasher flick clichés. As soon as the party is underway, the boys (Joseph Allen Johnson and David Millbern) show up planning to scare the girls. This one goes all the way back to Dave Hewitt's 1966 spook show MONSTERS CRASH THE PAJAMA PARTY. But first they grab a peep through the window, catching the gals in the middle of some slut dancing, to which they whisper something about being dead and in heaven.

Enough nonsense. At last the lights go out and the heads begin to roll. In scenes lifted from Scream, the garage becomes a particularly dangerous spot. As the girls become aware of the carnage, they try to call the police, but find the wires cut. The boys decide to split up and run for help, guaranteeing their doom. In one nicely done scene, Val watches a slasher movie on TV, which is cross cut with one of the guys getting knocked off outside.

This brings to mind a mind-numbing facet of Slumber Party Massacre and all the Massacre pictures to follow. These incredibly messy and noisy murders take place, yet sometimes people in the next room can't hear them. Then the killer manages to mop up the evidence before anybody can come in and find it -- unless they're meant to come across a big scary murder victim tableau. One victim is run through with the drill, then hung up in a closet inside a dress bag all within 40 seconds. Amazing.

There are a lot of good gags among the scares. In one classic scene, a pizza delivery boy (co-producer Aaron Lipstadt) arrives as a corpse. The terrorized teens decide to munch on the pizza anyway. Food is food, right?

Not all the laughs are intentional, though. At one point the girls are startled by a cracking coffee pot Trish left on the hot stove. Realizing her mistake, she picks it up in her bare hands to show everyone.

Well, luckily the girls realize that they can't rely on men to help them and the sisters unite to face a common foe. Thorn manages to pull off a few tricks, taking out as many as he can, but the girls keep coming at him and eventually bring the ol' boy down. And our killer's motive for stalking and slaying a house full of high school students, when he could have easily moved on to easier prey elsewhere? He mumbles something about them being "pretty" and "loving them" and "you know you want it" -- you know, the typical Ted Bundy stuff. And here I was theorizing all sorts of stuff about him being the secret dad of one of the girls or something.

Sometime during production, somebody decided to change the title -- first to Don't Open the Door, then to the famous moniker it now bears. Neither sounds all that original, but then, that's not what they were going for, was it?

The disc comes with a SPM trailer, as well as trailers for SPM II and Sorority House Massacre. A talent biography section has bios for Corman (who had little to do with the actual productions, but gets his standard bio on all the discs), Stevens, Roylance (TV's Sarah on Little House on the Prairie), Mari and Millbern, but none for any of the actors with larger roles.

Villella popped up in the Wild Orchid movies, trying to out creep Mickey Rourke. Jones continued her reign of terror by directing Love Letters, then writing Beethoven, The Getaway, and The Relic. Robin Stille continued to act in occasional films like American Ninja 4, before taking her own life in 1996.

SPM is available separately, or in a 5-DVD boxed "Massacre Collection" with parts 2 and 3, along with the two Sorority House Massacre movies. All are presented in fresh new widescreen digital transfers -- except for the SHM films which are presented full screen -- and all are bargain priced.

Psycho killer; heads roll; blood; p-star Stevens.

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The Movie Madness section and its contents are ©2007 Brian Thomas