The Party is Pleasant

Women in their 20s playing teenagers gather at night while an insane serial killer is on the loose. You can guess what happens next in 1982's Slumber Party Massacre, a slasher film in the heyday of slasher films. This one bears the distinction of being written, directed, and produced by women and, perhaps for this reason, there's no coyness or nervous energy about its titillating elements. That is nice and the film is altogether easy to watch but ultimately it may be a little too comfortable. It never manages to generate a real sense of anxiety or any especially exciting sexual energy.

Originally conceived as a feminist parody of the slasher genre by screenwriter Rita Mae Brown, it was made into a more sincere horror film by director/producer Amy Holden Jones. It retains a post-modern, tongue-in-cheek quality signaled immediately in the first scene of the protagonist, Trish (Michelle Michaels), waking up at home. She's listening to a radio show in which a woman winning a contest asks how much money the prize is--and replies with an angry, "What?!" when she's informed that the prize is a free t-shirt.

Later, during the titular slumber party, the only scene of guys peeping at girls is constructed with deliberate artificiality. Moments after the two guys approach the open window, the girls immediately gather into easy view and start undressing. The window frame emphasises the self-awareness of the film as a film designed for men to enjoy. As usual for post-modernism, what may have been intended as profound or intelligent is really just redundant. Yep, we're watching a movie, all right.

The killer, with the obviously significant name of "Russ Thorn" (Michael Villella), gets an obviously phallic weapon, a power drill. He's a particularly weak villain--the actor is never very expressive but he's never inexpressive enough to be a creepy Michael Myers type.

Trish starts the film by throwing away some dolls, obviously a symbolic coming of age gesture to which the film is obviously responding with the hideous rite of passage of an encounter with demented masculinity. But the film's heart is in the right place, putting a clear dividing line between healthy sexual play--such as the gratuitous nudity in a slasher film--and the mental aberration of a man whose fetish involves genuine harm to women. It's a shame the film couldn't manage to be as exciting as it was evidently game for being.

The Slumber Party Massacre is available on Shudder.