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Film: Slumber Party Massacre II
Year: 1987
Director: Deborah Brock
Writer: Deborah Brock
Starring: Crystal Bernard, Jennifer Rhodes and Kimberly McArthur
Review:
This was a film that has been on my list to see for a while. I’m not entirely sure when I realized that this was a trilogy of films. I didn’t see the original until getting into horror movie podcasts and using them to fill in blind spots. The first was one that I enjoyed, but I also didn’t love it. It is a fun romp for sure. I have an interesting connection to this movie that I’ll get into, but I selected this for having a woman writer/director, as well as a majority of the cast being women.
Synopsis: Courtney Bates (Crystal Bernard), the younger sister of Valerie, and her friends go to a condo for a weekend getaway. She can’t get rid of the haunting feeling that a supernatural rockabilly driller killer is coming to murder them all.
We start this with a montage of sorts. What I like here is that we’re getting images from the original movie as well as foreshadowing things. The person having this nightmare is Courtney. The synopsis does well in filling in who she is. She lives with her mother, Mrs. Bates (Jennifer Rhodes). They’re trying to hold it together with Valerie now being committed to a mental hospital after surviving the events of the original.
It is from here we meet her best friend and bandmate Amy (Kimberly McArthur). We also get our first musical interludes as they sing a song playing on the radio. They stop and a car pulls up next to them. Driving is Matt Arbicost (Patrick Lowe). He has a crush on Amy and she’s shy about it. She does invite him over to watch her band practice.
The rest of the band are Sheila Barrington (Juliette Cummins) and Sally Burns (Heidi Kozak). Matt shows and goes off with Courtney. She invites him to a weekend getaway the band is doing, going to Sheila’s dad’s new condo. The problem is that she needs to get permission to go herself. When she approaches the subject to her mother, she lets her down easily. The reason is that she wants them to go visit Valerie. Courtney does get her to change her mind, allowing her to go.
Her nightmares continue and seem to get getting worse. There is also a guy in them, who is credited as the driller killer, played by Atanas Illitch. She knows that the man who attacked her, her sister and their friends died. Joining the girls are two other guys, T.J. Meyers (Joel Hoffman) and Jeff (Scott Westmoreland). What should be a fun weekend turns into a nightmare for everyone, not just Courtney.
That is where I’ll leave my recap and introduction to the characters. Where I want to start is that this film is a lot of fun. I wanted to give that credit first. It doesn’t make the most complete sense, which is a bummer for someone like me who looks at the story first. There is a decent set up though. The build to this slumber party, away from where everyone lives. It isolates them, raising tension. I’m not the biggest slasher fan, but having a simple set up like this works to build atmosphere.
Now that I’ve set that up, let me talk about something I haven’t even brought up yet. This is a borderline musical. Not only do we have a few different music numbers of Courtney and her band singing, but when the driller killer shows, he sings songs while he stalks his victim. This is partly where the comedy comes from. I’ll be honest, I don’t love it while simultaneously being entertained by it. The killer is singing an almost ‘rock-a-billy’ style of music. His look was funny and credit to Illitch for the charisma to make it work. What I alluded to originally is that he is a member of the Illitch family who owned Little Caesars pizza. They also oversee the Detroit Red Wings and Tigers.
Something I’ll then go into is that when I judge slasher films, you need either good characters or kills. I’ve already said I like Illitch as the killer. Let’s go into the rest of the acting performances. Bernard is solid as our lead. She is unstable, as you would expect, from surviving what she did. Rhodes works in the small role of her mother. I’d say the same for Cindy Eilbacher as Valerie. McArthur, Cummins and Kozak work as the other members of the ‘slumber party’. Lowe, Hoffman and Westmoreland as well. They’re all caricatures, but with how zany this is, they work.
That will then take me to filmmaking. Now something I wasn’t fully expecting was how surreal this is. It feels influenced by MTV and more like a music video. We get a decent number of musical numbers. These aren’t great, but it has charm to it. The cinematography captures the isolated location of this condo. That builds tension. Then having this killer stalking them with a guitar/drill combo. That’s something else that adds to the comedy. The practical effects were fine. If they played this straight, I think it could be scarier. As it is though, I see what they’re going for and it fits.
In conclusion, this film isn’t necessarily for me. This is a comedy/horror slasher that is off the wall. Despite this not being something that is normally my wheelhouse, I did have fun. There are things that I wished would be shored up. One of them is how this killer just appears. I don’t love the amount of dream sequences this uses, but with the surreal approach that this has, it does work. The acting isn’t great. It fits what is needed though and I did enjoy the caricatures of characters that we got. That fits the satirical nature. The music isn’t my genre, but it made me smile. The practical effects were solid. If you come into this with an open mind and roll with it, it is a fun ride to go on.
My Rating: 6.5 out of 10