Sorority Party Massacre

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.

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.

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.

"Sorority Party Massacre" was directed by Justin Jones, Chris Freeman and stars Ed ORoss,Kevin Sorbo,Richard Moll, Leslie Eastbrook, Louis Mandylor, Tom Downey, Marissa Skell, Eve Mauro, Yvette Yates, Adrian Kirk, Alison Mei Lan, Rebecca Grant, Casey Fitzgerald. The film is about a sorority house worth of girls out for some great P.R.as finalists, to become the winner of an exclusive grant.. (Or something like that). A detective finding his career as tragic as the sorority girls personalities is all that stands between the girls and a brutal killer.

"Sorority Party Massacre" is a cliché slasher comedy that knows it is a cliché slasher comedy. It plays up the vapid superficial aspects of bimbo meets death as if the film's very life depended on it. It is not a spoof horror comedy though because the darkness is and atmosphere of classic slasher horror is very well present in the film. However the ridiculousness of the characters and melodramatic "acting" is just too much to consider the flick a straight up slasher flick. At times it feels a little too "Prom Night III" and at other moments it is very "Sorority Row". The story is layered with typical sub-plots and explanations that can pass as long as you don't get too in depth with the film's story. The gore and kill shots are well done and very entertaining. This film is not a stellar work of slasher horror movie making but it warrants respect for the simple fact that it is a very fun, slasher comedy that brings the babes and the blood. It manages to capture the atmosphere and classic style of 80's slasher, as well as the campy comedy of satire. The film doesn't really bring anything new to the genre but it doesn't take anything from it either. I enjoyed the movie.

There's an opening sequence that suggests this is going to be a fairly standard horror movie with a madman offing sorority members. It has a charismatic actress, an interesting death, no hint of any humor, and... OK, granted, a plot that basically rips off Scream but at least makes it look like the film is headed somewhere. It's so completely not. The rest is a completely different movie. Suddenly it thinks it's a goofy comedy whodunit mystery, but it fails at everything. Instead of having an armchair detective trying to solve the mystery of what happened on this secluded island community, it has a cop who was suspended from his city job for being cartoonishly violent. Not very funny, right? Well, it just gets worse from there. The plot doesn't make much sense when you think about it. And, worst of all, there's no reason to care about any of these characters or anything that happens. It's just not any good, and wouldn't be without a total rewrite. Most of the actresses seem like they could have been pretty good with a decent script. Maybe next time the filmmakers can try making a horror movie instead of just pretending to be one to trick people into watching it.