The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

The name strongly implies this will be a hyper-sexualized, sexist smut horror, and the topless woman in the first shot agrees. The radio is chattering in the background about an escaped serial killer, and mom and dad have to leave for the weekend right now and don't you dare throw any wild, alcohol-fueled parties while they're gone, young lady!

The cute girl in scene two abruptly has a hole drilled in her head, and scene three is 20 bra-less girls in tight t-shirts playing a sport that requires bouncing, after which the whole lot of them get naked for an undeservedly long shower scene. This movie is only a smidge longer than an hour, and they plan to make the most of it, I suppose.

A lot of sexploitation films in the 80s over-sold and under-delivered, dedicating title and cover art to scantily-clad women, but behind the title was a D-grade budget horror film with not but a hint of degrading a whole gender for a quick buck. This one might have the D-grade budget horror down, but it's also all-in on chauvinist exploitation, as promised. In a surprise twist, the chauvinists here, both writer and director, are women. This smut is brought to us by a self-professed lesbian feminist.

Our killer prefers killing with a massive drill. It looks like they couldn't afford to show a drill bit actually drilling into a human-like object, so the camera cuts away whenever he gets near and we have to make due with an off-screen shriek. They couldn't afford a soundtrack, either, so it's strangely silent much of the time.

It's actually impressive how mediocre everything is. The acting isn't good, but it's surprisingly not too bad. The sound mix is bad, but not terrible. The script is boring, but not awful. The slasher scenes and jump scares are textbook execution, but rushed. In fact, the whole thing is so textbook that it gives the feeling of being constructed from a How To Write & Film An 80s Slasher Film checklist. Complete with a "pizza, no anchovies!" order.

The titular slumber party is arranged and the checklist is dutifully applied: neighbor boys peering through the window ✓, slowly group-changing into revealing pajamas ✓, goofy younger siblings ✓, nosy neighbors ✓, scary sounds that are just a neighborhood dog ✓, power outage ✓, no actual plot or character development ✓. The nosy neighbor gets drilled in the head.

The first girl to violate her chastity gets a drill in the head, establishing to the others that there's a head driller about. They stick to the checklist: scream ✓, split up ✓, almost make a phone call before the line is cut ✓, remain in the immediate vicinity ✓, get stalked by unrealistically slow-moving man ✓, get drilled in the head one-by-one ✓. The boys get head-drilled first, so the women can have a bit more screen time.

After an insufficiently suspenseful climactic approach, Valerie, the girl-next-door, lobs the drill man's drilling hand off with a machete, a police siren is heard, and it abruptly cuts to credits. This was both the beginning and end of the career of the actress who played Valerie, who eventually committed suicide in despair. Not before filming the semi-sequel Sorority House Massacre II, which is, quite honestly, the series I thought I was starting when I started this one, but good that I accidentally started with the original. None of the other kids ever starred in a damned thing, but the lesbian feminist writer wrote 32 cat-themed murder mystery novels, and the director went on to co-write Beethoven (the one about the St. Bernard). In 2021, SyFy rebooted it as Slumber Party Massacre, written and directed by women again, so we'll have to see about that.