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Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

Dir: Amy Holden Jones.

Now pay attention! This plot is complicated!
A loony with a huge electric tool decides to kill some high school jocks and bimbos. You know the drill….

Trish (Michelle Michaels, who's career high had to be as Chuck Bronsons secretary in "Death wish 4") invites four girlfriends over to her house for a slumber party, as her parents are away.
'Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth' new girl Valerie (Robin Stille, who tragically committed suicide in 1996) declines the offer to get nekkid, smoke pot and eat pizza and stays in to baby-sit her obnoxious little Sister, Courtney (Jennifer Myers).
As per the norm for these flicks, a couple of lame brain jock sorts decide to spy on our bubbly, bouncing, body count babes and giggle a lot at the plentiful jiggling breasts on show.

Little do they all know that an escaped nutzoid with a huge powerdrill, named Thorn (Michael Villella), who went on a murder tour in 1969, has decided to use their luscious female forms as 'drill fodder'…

 

Due to the short running time, this flick at least moves at a satisfyingly fast rate, packing in plenty of murders and bare flesh.
That the leering camera work is being Directed by a Woman (Amy Holden Jones who would go on to write those family friendly "Beethoven" movies!), and the script that gets the girls as naked as possible, as often as possible, is also by a Woman (Rita Mae Brown who famously 'served' up 'love' to tennis 'ace' Martina Navratilova), means the normal argument of 'sexist male filmmakers exploiting Women' can not be used in this case.
No…it's Female filmmakers exploiting Women, and the results are just as satisfying!

The opening murder is effective due to Thorns sheer nerve, but quite how he then moved the poor girl into a dumpster while parked in the middle of a school yard in broad daylight is indeed a mystery.
The other killings vary from the quite graphic (a nice, chunk spraying drill in the back/through the shoulder attack) to completely off screen. The main splatter (and a damn fine example of blood soaked, over the top mayhem it is) is saved for the 'I ain't never gonna die' face off between the survivors and Thorn.

Thorn himself is also one of the most base psychos the genre has seen. He has no real background, no direct motives, no personal history and doesn't say a word until the end.
Villella has nothing really to do but stare in wide-eyed madness at his intended prey. And the all denim get-up he wears is a major mistake, if the genius David Lynch had difficulty in making denim scary with 'Bob' in "Twin Peaks", then Ms Jones has no chance.

The characters are the normal non-entity types, with the girls only being recognisable from one another by their varying breast sizes. The Male teens are just what you would expect. All cheeky grins, nudge nudge, wink wink sex comments and lame practical jokes. The only character that sticks out is a bizarre neighbour. He calmly walks into Trish's house because the door was open and (instead of knocking and calling out) proceeds to walk around upstairs! Ultimately scaring the crap out of Trish. Why he decided to 'explore' upstairs and not downstairs first (where she was) is anyone's guess.
Me? I reckon he was partaking of a bit of underwear fondling.
At night he creeps around the garden with a huge meat cleaver, chopping up the local snail population (even slamming it down mere inches from one girls head), but no one seems to mind on little bit. Neighbourly love is such a sweet thing.

The script is silly and cliché. But this type of flick is meant to have a simplistic script, we're here for the meat (both of the bared and the bloodied variety) and do not want anything that requires more than two brain cells to comprehend. Just pass the popcorn.

To my shame I have to say that I enjoyed "Slumber Party Massacre" a lot. It's plain, simple, right to the (drill) point slasher entertainment with almost no padding to get in the way of the exploitation goodies. Nudity, violence, gore and dumb characters for us to laugh at.
That's Exploitation folks!