Spring Break Massacre

Spring Break Massacre (2008) is a movie I recently watched on Tubi. The storyline follows a group of sorority sisters who get together one night for a sleepover. It just so happens there's a serial killer on the loose that night and the the ladies are the perfect target.

This movie is directed by Michael Hoffman Jr. (Girls on Dead) and stars Reggie Bannister (Phantasm), Sarah Minnich (Army of the Dead), John Shumski (The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.) and Linnea Quigley (Return of the Living Dead).

The storyline for this as well as it's characters and subplots are fairly cliche. The cinematography is fairly poor and as for the background sound effects, well, they tried. The acting and writing is bad and in a lot of way this feels home made. The female characters are well selected, fairly hot and there are some good nudity scenes, but not enough to make this worth watching.

Overall this movie is terrible, even for horror enthusiasts. I would score this a 2/10 and strongly recommend it.

I'll try to be brief, and not give SPRING BREAK MASSACRE any more attention than it deserves.

SPRING BREAK MASSACRE could be described as an homage to SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE, in the sense that the distributors went to the trouble to imitate that film's video box art. Apparently they felt that was as much effort as homage required. This makes sense, once you realize that the filmmakers thought that the actual making of a horror film required no more effort than finding a roomful of inexperienced actresses willing to do nude scenes, then filming them running around screaming.

The tacked-on presence of 80s horror stars Reggie Bannister and Linnea Quigley in the film is obviously meant to be the big bone thrown to horror fans. Instead, seeing them in such an amateur production just inspires sadness.

Cynical productions such as this only exist to snatch up the money of unwary horror fans who think "Well, how bad can it be?" Trust me, the answer is "Way TOO bad." SPRING BREAK MASSACRE isn't even worth a couple of bucks just to check it out (trust me on this one; when I was young I too was a "show me" kind of fan). It isn't "so bad it's good". It's just a piece of crap to be forgotten.

If you're the kind of viewer who likes incredibly bad acting, home video cinematography, and lots of planted good IMDb reviews, then SPRING BREAK MASSACRE just may be the movie for you. If, on the other hand, you expect a film to fill a full 76 minutes (including blooper padding in the closing credits) without insulting your intelligence, then you may want to look elsewhere.

Years ago, a girl and two guys are hanging out. She's going to party later with her girlfriends so she tries to kick them out. One of them pulls out a knife and kills her. At around that time the pizza delivery guy walks in on the scene of the murder. The suspect is sentenced to jail.

In the present a cop and a fed discuss some crime at a crime scene, a girl is a survivor. And in long flashbacks we learn what happened. Some kids (some look actually pretty old to be college kids) hang out during spring break at a lake. The guys of course want to spend time with the girls. But the girls have other plans--a slumber party. It will take place at Heather's house. Her father left for a couple of days and a creepy neighbor offers to help if she needs anything. The guys in the meantime spend time at a bar and argue whether to visit the girls anyway.

It's not long before the creepy guy starts stalking the girls, the lights go out, and some of the guys end up killed. Some of the cops in the meantime vanish and someone helps the killer from the intro escape from jail. More killings ensue and we find out eventually who's behind all of it.

Spring Break Massacre is the worst of the The ____ Massacre movies. It's fatal flaw is its atrocious look. The movie looks pale, dark, out-of-focus, which is not the way you want to go when this movie is all about attractive girls. Oddly enough, the deleted scenes look better than the actual movie. So it doesn't look like equipment is the issue but a conscious decision to make this movie look lousy.

Speaking of girls, most of them are attractive, in particular Sarah Minnich and another actress who's name I don't know, she's the girl on top on the cover.

Audio and re-recording also has issues. The story is alright though and shows some effort. Acting by the more experienced actors is good (audio problems don't help though) and Minnich does also a solid job. Several other actors don't do a solid job.

I'll give The Spring Break Massacre 3 stars. One for the lovely Sarah Minnich, who is attractive and can act. Why hasn't Hollywood given her more and better roles? One star for the little bit of nudity. One more star for the story that deserved a much better production.

A homemade indie slasher from Iowa, of all places. This one is really poor and throughout features stilted acting from the non-professional cast, a heck of a lot of small talk and hanging around, and a lot of deaths kept off-screen for budgetary reasons. It's entirely dull and without merit, and not even the presence of a couple of '80s veterans, Reggie Bannister and Linnea Quigley, can help.

Definitely the best line in the movie.

I'm a bit unsure about exactly why this movie was made. I gave it an extra star simply for putting some $$$ in the pockets of Linnea Quigley and Reggie Bannister, even though they may be too embarrassed to put it on their resumes. Still, we all have to eat. Even Reggie must have a mortgage payment.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. This is pretty bad. Most of it looks like a home movie and there's no sense of atmosphere like you would see in the original "Massacre" series. (Take your pick..."Sorority House" or "Slumber Party" or some other.) You're never scared and you don't really care what happens to this bunch of d-bags.

I have to give special attention to the sound. The music score is pretty bad and often wildly inappropriate. As an added insult, the post-production sound is extremely obtrusive. (Check out the dialogue around 15 minutes into the film. The sound is great...just like in a studio. Unfortunately, the actors are playing volleyball at a lake.)

I would avoid this. Watch the originals. It's not even for completists.