Sorority Party Massacre

With a name such as "Sorority Party Massacre" then you know that you will either be in for a very cheesy and campy slasher movie, or you will be in for a hilarious spoof on the slasher genre. With that in mind I sat down to watch "Sorority Party Massacre".

Bad mistake...

I managed to sit 45 minutes into the ordeal that is known as "Sorority Party Massacre" before I gave up on finishing the movie and just got up to find something else to watch. The storyline was just unfathomably boring and slow paced, and in those 45 minutes that I endured very little, and I do mean very little, had happened at all. And I totally lost all interest in watching the rest to see what happened.

Slasher movies have a tradition of being cheesy and low budget, but this one is the crowning on the cake. "Sorority Party Massacre" turned out to be a very, very boring movie.

The characters in the movie were characters that you hardly cared for, and you didn't really care if they lived or died. As in contrast to movies such as "Friday the 13th", where it is not just a matter of if they will die, it is a matter of how they will die. Such was not the case with the cardboard cut-out characters on parade in "Sorority Party Massacre".

I had hoped that seeing Richard Moll in a movie such as this might actually have helped the movie along, even if just a cameo. But I frankly don't recall seeing him here or remembering him here.

This is a movie that I have no intentions of returning to finish at a later point in time, because the movie just never appealed or spoke to me in any way.

As an incurably devoted fanatic of 80s horror, I always get hopeful and slightly excited when encountering a new film with a typically eighties title and plot description such as "Sorority Party Massacre". And I guess I'm not the only one, neither. Especially the past 10-15 years, there have been loads of remakes of 80s classics, horror flicks that are supposedly set in the 80s, or at least generate a throwback to the lifestyle and atmosphere of that wondrous decade. Alas, though, with almost every attempt they make, one must face the painful and irrevocable truth: genuine 80s movies could only be made in the 80s, and they are gone forever.

"Sorority Party Massacre" is a bizarre piece, and a wildly uneven and chaotic flick. The opening sequences seem to be another weak imitation of Wes Craven's "Scream" that narrowly caused my eyes to start rolling. But then, most of the film turns into a deliberately tongue-in-cheek and light-hearted parody of the entire slasher genre, and even though it was quite bad and amateurish, I must admit it was enjoyable and often hilarious. All the clichés and stereotypes are here, in XXL-size I may add, and there's gore, nudity and absurd killing methods aplenty. It often remains an over-enthusiast but inept fan-boy movie, mind you. For example, the montage to show lewd the bunch of sorority queens are, or the little clips to illustrate just how ill-tempered Detective Watts is, are clear indications of how writer/director Chris Freeman desperately wants to demonstrate how cool he is. But hey, we can sure live with that, but then the finale truly screws up things completely. It isn't easy to come up with a strong climax and original culprit-revelation, I'll gladly admit that, but some of the twists here are too many, and too dumb.

Apart from a handful of randomly hot young actresses, "Sorority Party Massacre" has two or three decent B-actors (Ed O'Ross, Richard Moll), and a bunch of people that used to perform in totally different types of films/TV-show, but somehow managed to make a new career out of appearing briefly in lousy horror productions. I'm referring to Kevin Sorbo (wasn't he Hercules?), Leslie Easterhook (how do you go from "Police Academy" to Rob Zombie movies?) and Ron Jeremy (he just turns up everywhere, I guess).

Sexy college girls endure gore galore when a psychotic killer with a taste for sorority sister torture arrives. But when this party gets started, will they receive an advanced degree in extreme horror?

Staci Layne Wilson of Dread Central pins this as "an incompetent, messy mish-mash of Scream, Student Bodies and 'Reno 9-1-1.'" Well, that about sums it up. Thanks, Staci!

While there are some decent scenes, and a few actors who deserve a bit of credit (and many who do not), this just amounts to a lot of nothing. I mean, even for a film called "Sorority Party Party", it is pretty disappointing. Next, the same writer-director is bringing us "Bachelorette Party Massacre", which I am sure will be more of he same tripe.

What a great start this flick had. okay, it was a bit of a rip-off of Scream (1996) but still it worked out fine. Then came the opening credits but once the real flick started it was downhill with Sorority Party Massacre.

Once after the opening credits we do have Kevin Sorbo (of Hercules fame) in a talking scene and it goes on and on but it should have been funny which it wasn't. Once the girls are introduced it looked fine again but then again the acting went below zero. There's here and there a spot of nudity but it just didn't work. It should have brought us back to the old eighties slashers but sadly it doesn't. The comedy didn't work and the girls didn't do anything except teasing.

Once the killer comes in there's no gore to spot only a bit of the red stuff. It's weird that Ed O'Ross did agree to take part in such a disaster. The editing was okay and the score did work but that the only positive thing I can say about this massacre.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 1/5 Story 1,5/5 Comedy 0/5

This film begins with an attractive college student by the name of "Holly Fanning" (Casey Fitzgerald) getting lost while driving to a small lakeside town in California where she hopes to participate in a sorority contest. Unfortunately for her, while trying to ask for help at a remote house, she encounters a serial killer who murdering his victims in unique and horrible ways. The scene then shifts to Los Angeles with Holly's father, "Captain Dan Fanning" (Kevin Sorbo) of the Los Angeles Police Department, asking one of his agents named "Detective William Watts" (Thomas Downey) to go to that small lakeside town to investigate his daughter's disappearance. Upon getting there, however, Detective Watts soon realizes that, not only is the local constable "Sheriff Barney P. Lumpkin" (Ed O'Ross) totally incompetent, but that a serial killer has been operating there for years without anybody even noticing it. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that, although this movie started off reasonably well, it started to unravel about halfway through--and then completely fell apart at the end. To that effect, if it was intended to be a comedy, it wasn't funny. Conversely, if it was intended to be a horror film, it lacked any real horror as well. That being said, I consider this to be one of those films that could have been better with competent direction but, failing that, I have to rated it accordingly. Below average.