The Slumber Party Massacre

Plot

In Venice, Los Angeles, Trish Deveraux, an 18-year-old high school senior, decides to throw a slumber party while her parents are away. Their neighbor, Mr. David Contant, is given the job of checking on the girls. She awakes and gets dressed shortly before going to school. Meanwhile, Russ Thorn, an escaped serial killer, kills a telephone repair woman and steals her van. Trish meets up with her friends Kim, Jackie, and Diane. She invites the new girl, Valerie, to the party but she declines the offer. After school, one of their classmates, Linda, goes back into the school to retrieve a book but gets locked inside. She is attacked and presumably killed by Russ, armed with a power drill. As the party begins that night, the girls smoke marijuana and drink alcohol, while Valerie babysits her younger sister, Courtney, across the street. Two boys from school, Jeff and Neil, arrive and spy on the girls while they change clothes. Russ kills Mr. Contant outside with his power drill. Diane asks Trish permission to go with her boyfriend, and goes to his car to find him decapitated and is murdered as well.

The girls order pizza and, while on the phone with their coach, Rachel Jana, the girls answer the door and find the pizza delivery man with his eyes drilled out. The teens arm themselves with knives as Jeff and Neil run for help, but both boys are killed. Russ gains entry to the house and murders Jackie. Trish and Kim barricade themselves in Trish's bedroom, but Russ enters through a window and kills Kim as Trish flees. Valerie and Courtney enter the house to find Kim dead, and hide from Russ. Coach Jana, having grown concerned over the phone call earlier, arrives and is confronted by Russ, who disembowels her with the drill. Valerie chases Russ with a machete, eventually severing his hand before slicing his stomach open. Russ falls into a swimming pool and sinks beneath the water, only to emerge moments later and attack them once more, but Valerie finally kills him with the machete. Valerie and Trish break down in tears as Courtney looks on in shock.

Cast

• Michelle Michaels (credited as Michele Michaels) as Trish Devereaux
• Robin Stille as Valerie Bates
• Michael Villella as Russ Thorn
• Debra Deliso as Kim Clarke
• Andree Honore as Jackie Cassidy
• Gina Mari as Diane
• Jennifer Meyers as Courtney Bates
• Joseph Alan Johnson as Neil
• David Millbern as Jeff
• Jim Reid Boyce as John Raden Minor
• Pamela Roylance as Coach Rachel Jana
• Brinke Stevens as Linda Dawn Grant
• Rigg Kennedy as David Contant
• Jean Vargas as Mary (Telephone Repairwoman)
• Howard Purgason as Mr. Devereaux
• Anna Patton as Mrs. Annette Devereaux

Production

Conception

Author and feminist activist Rita Mae Brown wrote the original screenplay, titled Sleepless Nights, as a parody of the slasher film. Producers repurposed Brown's script to make a "serious" slasher film against her wishes.

Amy Holden Jones, a film editor, and they shot the scenes at their house over a weekend for $1,000. She showed the result to Roger Corman, who agreed to finance the film. Jones had to turn down a job editing Steven Spielberg's E.T. (1982) as a result. The soundtrack was composed on a Casio MT-40.

Filming

Filming began in the summer of 1981. The film was shot on location in Los Angeles, California, mainly in Venice.

Release

Box office

Distributed by New World Pictures, the film premiered in Los Angeles on September 10, 1982, and was given a limited release in New York City on November 12. It grossed $3.6 million at the box office on an estimated budget of $220,000.

Critical response

The Slumber Party Massacre received mixed reviews from critics. Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote of the film: "The Slumber Party Massacre is just the usual cavalcade of corpses, all of them dispatched by a maniac who wields a power drill. At the end of the movie, a woman who has miraculously survived the carnage breaks his drill in half. That's feminism for you, and symbolism too". Time Out gave the film a middling review, noting: "Despite the unlikely script credit for Rita Mae Brown, Jones's debut feature is little more than a Halloween clone, reliant on buckets of blood and sudden surprise rather than suspense." David Hinckley of the New York Daily News awarded the film 1.5 stars out of 4, noting that the performances are "uneven" and "the special effects are not special".

Varietys published review, however, praised the film: "Besides its obviously catchy title, Slumber Party Massacre is an entertaining terror thriller, with the switch that distaff filmmakers handle the 'young women in jeopardy' format." Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader also gave the film a positive review, noting its even pacing and direction by Jones. Leonard Klady of the Los Angeles Times also noted the film's pacing, writing in a retrospective that the film boasted a "darkly humorous vision and a breathtaking pace".

Dale Schneck of The Morning Call deemed the film a "rousing thriller" that "delivers as many vicarious thrills as one could want from this sort of cinematic mayhem".

Despite the critical reception, the film has a large cult following among slasher fans.

Home media

It was released on VHS and Betamax by Embassy Home Entertainment in 1983.

The film has been released on DVD three times in North America. The first release came from New Concorde Home Entertainment in September 2000. The company subsequently re-released the film on a double feature DVD alongside Slumber Party Massacre II in July 2003. Both these versions are out of print. Shout! Factory released all three films in the series on a two-disc special edition DVD set in October 2010. It contained the full-length documentary Sleepless Nights: Revisiting the Slumber Party Massacres, reuniting cast and crew of the original trilogy and directed by Jason Paul Collum.

Shout! Factory, under their subsidiary label Scream Factory, released The Slumber Party Massacre on Blu-ray on March 18, 2014. The company later re-released the film on Blu-ray in a limited edition steelbook with new extras in January 2020, followed by a double-feature set on 4K UHD Blu-ray alongside Slumber Party Massacre II on February 21, 2023.

In the United Kingdom, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) re-titled the film The Slumber Party Murders, as the word "massacre" was felt to be too suggestive. In the U.K., it has had two releases on DVD, with both editions containing no special features.

Sequels

There have been two sequels to the film, Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) and Slumber Party Massacre III (1990). Jason Paul Collum directed the documentary Sleepless Nights: Revisiting the Slumber Party Massacres (2010). Other films in the Massacre film series includes a second trilogy: Sorority House Massacre (1986), Sorority House Massacre II: Nighty Nightmare (1990), and Sorority House Massacre III: Hard to Die (1990), and a third series: Cheerleader Massacre (2003) and Cheerleader Massacre 2 (2011), the former filmed as Slumber Party Massacre 4 before being renamed during post-production.

Re-imagining

Main article: Slumber Party Massacre (2021 film)}}{{anchor, Remake

Shout! Studios produced a stand-alone sequel/re-imagining of the film, with director Danishka Esterhazy and written by Suzanne Keilly.

The film premiered on Syfy on October 16, 2021.

References

Sources

References

1. Kart, Larry. "Why one tough woman turned down 'E.T.' for 'Slumber Party Massacre'". The Guardian.
2. "The Slumber Party Massacre". The American Film Institute (AFI).
3. Maslin, Janet. (November 12, 1982). "'The Slumber Party'".
4. (10 September 2012). "The Slumber Party Massacre, directed by Amy Jones". [[Time Out (magazine).
5. Hinckley, David. (November 12, 1982). "'Slumber Party Massacre': Sleeping sickness". [[New York Daily News]].
6. Variety Staff. (March 31, 1982). "Review: 'Slumber Party Massacre'". Variety.
7. Kehr, Dave. (26 October 1985). "The Slumber Party Massacre". The Chicago Reader.
8. Klady, Leonard. (October 12, 1987). "Movie Reviews: 'Slumber Party Massacre II'". The Los Angeles Times.
9. Schenck, Dale. (May 6, 1983). "This 'Slumber Party' will keep you awake". [[The Morning Call]].
10. "The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)". [[Fandango Media]].
11. "Company Credits for The Slumber Party Massacre".
12. "The Slumber Party Massacre (DVD)". dvdempire.com.
13. "Slumber Party Massacre/Slumber Party Massacre II (DVD)". dvdempire.com.
14. Barton, Steve. (July 13, 2010). "Shout! Factory Bringing Home the Slumber Party Massacre Collection!". [[Dread Central]].
15. (March 18, 2014). "The Slumber Party Massacre Blu-ray". Blu-ray.com.
16. (February 21, 2023). "The Slumber Party Massacre / Slumber Party Massacre II 4K Blu-ray". Blu-ray.com.
17. "'Slumber Party Massacre' DVD Series Getting Re-Released".
18. "Interview with Director Jim Wynorski - Retro Slashers".
19. (13 April 2021). "'Slumber Party Massacre' Redo from Shout! Studios Scares up Home at Syfy".