When I was a young boy, my mom and dad would take me to the local Blockbuster. As soon as they arrived, they would drift towards the new releases and drama sections where they would inevitably pick out a handful of movies that I was most certainly not allowed to watch with them. But I didn't care. A trip to Blockbuster meant a trip to the horror section, and that was good enough for me. Oh, I would never be allowed to watch any of the movies that filled those special shelves. For me, the covers were all the entertainment that I needed. This was back when horror movies had awesome, provocative, and sexy covers of half-naked women covered in blood cowering before monstrous killers and unspeakable demonic creatures reached their rotted hands towards naive, impressionable youth. And of all of the box covers that fascinated me, Amy Holden Jones' The Slumber Party Massacre was my favorite. It was the first box cover that I would visit whenever we went to Blockbuster. It became a kind of unholy pilgrimage that I looked forward to a little more than a boy my age probably should have. So imagine my delight when Netflix announced that this film had become available for streaming on their site! I turned off the lights, put on some headphones, and watched this artifact from my youth. Oh, the film itself is terrible. If somebody were to distill and concentrate the essence of the slasher film, The Slumber Party Massacre is what would be produced. It doesn't have a plot so much as a parade of cliches strung together via brutal and bloody death scenes. Tons of random nudity? Check. A plethora of attractive, young female victims? Check. False jump scares? There are a ton of them. A Final Girl? It's got you covered. Perhaps the most amusing thing about this film was that it was actually written by prominent feminist Rita Mae Brown as a humorous critique of the slasher genre. So imagine her surprise when the studio New World Pictures bought her script and decided to change it into a straight slasher film? Anyhow, you might notice a low score at the end of this review. That's because despite my nostalgia I am forced to be impartial towards the films that I see. The Slumber Party Massacre is by no means a good film. But then again, it wasn't exactly made with the intention of being showcased in the same theater as the works of Bergman and Antonioni. So, despite my low score, know that this film remains a treasured part of my childhood...even though I didn't see it until I was almost 23.
4/10
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