The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

1982’s The Slumber Party Massacre is a prime example of the generic 80s slasher film. It’s chock-full of oversexed teenagers and lame excuses to get those same teenagers naked and/or dead. You know, all the cliches and tropes that typified the genre and, eventually, of which audiences eventually grew tired.

Or is it? Directed by Amy Holden Jones, who re-structured a script called Sleepless Nights by Rita Mae Brown, it was originally supposed to be a parody of slasher films. As a result, some of the humor in the film is intentional. And, honestly, that’s why I enjoyed it.

The set-up is hardly original. Supposed high school senior Trish (Michele Michaels) wakes up on a Friday morning as her parents are leaving for the weekend. (I say “supposed high school senior” because the actress playing Trish looks to be at least 26 years old.) She goes to school and announces to her friends that she’s having a party just for “the girls,” her equally overage-looking friends Diane (Gina Mari,), Jackie (Andree Honore,) and Kim (Debra De Liso.)

As the characters go about their business preparing for the party, we hear snippets of newscasts and see newspaper headlines about an escaped serial killer. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to piece together what’s going to happen.

And, just as quickly as you can solve that brain bender, the body count starts to rise. One unusual aspect of this movie is that the killer (Michael Villella) isn’t shrouded in mystery or given any backstory. He’s plainly visible from the beginning of get-go. His choice of weaponry, a long, cordless industrial drill, is a not-so-subtle phallic symbol in a film full of women. Intentionally funny? Or not? You be the judge.

And while it might sound like I have some sort of contempt for the movie’s simplistic approach to the material, I don’t. It’s refreshing to see a slasher movie that’s this self-aware. It moves along at a brisk pace, delivers the goods, features some hilarious dialogue, and doesn’t try to be anything that it’s not. Except about three-quarters of the way through, there’s a visually brilliant, tightly-edited sequence hinting that director Jones is just playing with the audience. She could do much more with this material. She knows it and she wants us to know it too.