The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

"Hey, it's not the size of your mouth; it's what's in it that counts.", 25 May 2017

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.

5/10