Sorority Party Massacre

Now if you are looking for a good bad horror movie this is your movie but if you are a fan of bad horror movies you already know that any horror movie that has ron jeremy in it is a good bad horror movie. That's why I gave it a generous 5 stars. That being said, I watched this movie because I wanted to watch college kids dies. I literally looked up "movies where college kids die" on Google and this wasn't the movie I was looking for. I wanted realistic deaths and gore but this movie wasn't that. It WAS a good bad horror movie but that's all it was.

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.

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.

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).

"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.