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Women are not film-makers you'd usually associate with the slasher movie genre. But The Slumber Party Massacre was written by Rita Mae Brown, and directed by Amy Holden Jones. The movie was originally written as and intended to be a parody of the rising popularity of the genre, in the late 70s and early 80s. However it was made as a straight genre piece, and as such straddles a black comedy line. With some of the original humour still shining through, as well as the unintended humour of clunky script and bad b-movie acting.
The movie (being an intended parody) follows the slasher genre formula. High school girls, played by 20-somethings, with plenty of shower scene nudity. (At only 8 minutes in!) An escaped serial killer with a love of power tools. Except, unlike most slasher movies, we know who the killer is and what he looks like in this movie. But you do get a series of set-piece deaths, that sway wildly between gore spectacles and over-the-top hilarity. It's cheap, it's tacky, and it has "massacre" in the title. Perfect slasher stuff! |
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Part from its infamy as one of the must see movies of the slasher genre of the period, for any die-hard fans, The Slumber Party Massacre has little more going for it. Coming out of Roger Corman's stable of New World Pictures, which gave many of Hollywood's top film-makers their first break. Amy Jones would go on to write the screenplays for Mystic Pizza (1988), and was a writer on the Beethoven series of movies. She is said to have given up an editing job of E.T. to direct The Slumber Party Massacre.
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