Slumber Party Massacre II (

1987

)

By now, everyone should be familiar with my opinions on The Slumber Party Massacre (1982). Lord knows I made the review of it detailed enough. If you’re just joining us though, the original The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) is a mediocre slasher that offers little beyond the usual thrills of the genre (namely tits and blood) that is held up as a feminist masterpiece because it was written and directed by two women. The know-nothings in the professional commentariat, as always, fall over themselves inventing reasons to love this film, but all this is just fluff. Most of the time they praise regular genre conventions as brilliant innovations, or just invent whole shots and scenes to bolster their thesis. Had the same film been made by a male director and a male screenwriter, it would either be castigated as misogynistic filth or, more likely, ignored completely.

It’s especially galling because, in heaping praise on The Slumber Party Massacre (1982), most critics studiously avoid discussing the film’s first sequel: The Slumber Party Massacre 2, which is a far more interesting film in nearly every regard. It’s a film that directly plays with genre tropes, particularly those relating to how slashers handle sex and virginity. Usually, criticism of these tropes is confined to a shrug and a lame “it’s misogynistic that virgins survive” so it’s nice to see a film actually treat us like adults for once. Incidentally, The Slumber Party Massacre 2 is also written and directed by a woman (Deborah Brock), so those arguing that The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) needs to be praised just for the sake of diversity and inclusion are left without a leg to stand on. Though I suppose that they would prefer a film with some relation to a well-known feminist kill-joy like Rita Mae Brown over one written by a woman with no ambitions beyond creating a fun horror film. I tell you, there ain’t no justice! Oh well, at least monsterfromtheid.com can be counted on to properly assess the merits of lesser-known 1980s slasher films.

Slumber Party Massacre 2 picks up a few years after the original and follows one of the first film’s multiple final girls: Courtney. For those of you who don’t remember she’s the one whose character was supposed to be twelve but her actress was probably closer to twenty-two. Amusingly, her actress here looks younger than the one in the original! Courtney may have escaped Russ Thorne’s murderous rampage, but she still bears some significant emotional scars from the ordeal, mostly in the form of recurring nightmares. Though her personality has also been impacted at least somewhat, the Courtney we saw in The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) was a little heart breaker who could be charitably described as boy-crazy. Now she hasn’t been on a date or so much as smooched a guy since the whole ordeal with the driller killer. At least she’s better off than her older sister, Valerie, who is still locked up in the loony bin five years later.

Despite all that, Courtney is determined to be as normal a teenage girl as possible. She hangs out with her friends, plays in an all-girl rock band, and crushes on the dreamy guy in her class. She even has plans to consummate this burgeoning romance over a long weekend in her friend’s new condo. The only problem is, her dumb mom wants them to go visit her crazy sister over the long weekend instead. Courtney manages to wiggle her way out of that by reminding her mom that it’s her birthday and she’d rather not spend it holding hands with a catatonic psycho in an insane asylum. Mom, being more than a bit guilty about forgetting her daughter’s birthday, agrees.

Unfortunately for Courtney, after the revelry of the first night in the condo with her friends (where they get drunk, strip nude and spray each other with champagne… You know… regular girl stuff), she starts to sleepwalk and have vivid nightmares.  It gets worse from there with her nocturnal terrors quickly giving way to full-blown hallucinations, usually involving a drill/guitar-wielding rockstar/psycho killer. At least they seem to be hallucinations anyway, when Courtney finally gets around to popping her cherry she’s in for a rude awakening.

On a logistic level, Slumber Party Massacre distinguishes itself right out of the gate here by creating an environment for its carnage that is both isolated and reasonable for the characters to be in. The neighborhood where the condominium is located in a new housing development, and almost none of the other houses are finished or moved into. There will be no logistical issues like in The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) or Halloween (1978), where the audience will find themselves yelling at the screen: “Just walk 50 feet and yell for the neighbors, you stupid cow!” The ease with which Slumber Party Massacre 2 solves this problem just shows how quickly things like this can be resolved… or at least how easy it was to resolve these things before every teenager under the sun carried around a cell phone with them 24/7. It is ultimately a small point, but it does show that the filmmakers are at least trying.

Likewise, the script takes pains to make sure that police cannot run to the rescue of our doomed teenagers by having Courtney insist on calling them earlier in the film, for what turned out to be nothing more than her own trauma-induced delusions. The cop who responds is a real asshole by the name of Officer Kreuger accompanied by his slightly more amiable partner Officer Voorhies (I see what you did there Ms. Block). Krueger, like most public servants, is so disgusted at the notion of having to do his job he assumes that Courtney is trying to prank him and blacklists the entire house from calling 911 again. So, it’s safe to assume that should the teens try to call for help, nobody will be coming in a hurry. So, when Courtney’s delusions finally begin to manifest in reality (which happens very late in the movie, nearly fifty minutes into a 75-minute film), the victims are isolated and alone, with no chance of anyone coming to their rescue.

Yet, logistical improvements alone do not make a horror movie worth watching. Hell, I’m more than willing to ignore a great deal of idiocy, provided a horror film delivers some decent gore and plenty of cheap thrills. Moreover, Slumber Party Massacre 2 also has some understanding of what worked in its predecessor though, as it keeps short run time of The Slumber Party Massacre (1982). Sure, here there is quite a bit of dicking around before the killer finally makes a corporeal appearance, but I’d hesitate to call any of this wasted time. The nature of the scares, being rooted in the main character’s delusions allows for some really fun surreal effects that wouldn’t be possible in a film that was taking place entirely in reality. The “zit” scene, in particular, is downright awesome and the possessed chicken is certainly worth a laugh. Moreover, when the killer shows up in the last twenty minutes of a 75-minute slasher it’s a lot better than when he shows up in the last twenty minutes of a 95-minute slasher (I’m talking to you Trick or Treats (1982)).

Yet where the film really shines is in the way it tackles surreal horror. I’ll be the first to admit that Slumber Party Massacre 2 is far from the most original concept in the history of horror. It is essentially, a fusion of Repulsion (1965) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). At first glance, this seems like an absurd concoction that brings in the most artsy-fartsy of the genre into close contact with the mainest of the mainstream but horror has a unique advantage blending high culture and low-brow shlock. Indeed, the slasher genre itself was shaped in no small part by its artsy independent precursors like The Driller Killer (1979), The Toolbox Murders (1978), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).

Moreover, there is more common ground between these two extremes than first meets the eye, as both Repulsion (1965) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) deal with fears related to sexuality. Albeit, the fears in the average slasher are much subtler and much more common than what we see in Repulsion (1965); a vague uncertainty and unease about sex as opposed to an active disgust for both one’s own sexual desires as well as the desires of others. That’s just what happens when you populate your film with healthy teenagers instead of emotionally withdrawn rape victims.

There are some persistent misunderstandings about sex in slasher movies that needs to be addressed in some depth here. A lot of critics and commentators wrongly assume that because so many horny teens get murdered in slasher films, that the films are advocating a return to traditional morality where sex is only ever practiced inside marriage. It’s the kind of mistake that you could only make if you: 1). Believe that art exists primarily to push a political/social agenda (the “all art is political” brainlets), 2). Have conveniently forgotten that most of these movies are consumed mainly by horny teens who have little desire to transform the world into a pre-enlightenment theocracy, and 3). Have forgotten entirely the fears and anxieties of being a teenage virgin yourself.

Sex, for most teenagers, is something faintly frightening. Even in the time before the AIDs epidemic (which, uncoincidentally, came into public consciousness at the height of the slasher boom: 1981), there were still plenty of other venereal diseases and unplanned pregnancies to worry about. Yet even if we ignore those fears, “safe” sex is not without its own terrors. There are fears over rejection, humiliation, and disappointment to say nothing of worries over developing a nasty reputation as a slut among your peers. Naturally, these fears impact inexperienced teens far more than they would mature adults. When slasher films link sex and death by having everyone aside from a lone virgin die, they are exploiting these fears. They are not advocating that we “kill all the whores” and roll society back to the 1500s.

In this area, Slumber Party Massacre 2 is a great deal more concerned with this sexual terror than most of its peers. Sure, Friday the 13th (1980) may have the famous post-coitus kill that implicitly links sex with death but this is just an association. If we think about the scene rationally it’s safe to assume that Mrs. Voorhees would have gutted the two young lovers regardless of whether she found them screwing playing pinochle. Other slashers are, if anything, even less explicit than this, they certainly don’t cast as their killers a rock’n’roll star (a perennial object of adolescent female desire), kit him out with a drill-guitar (good lord, how many more phallic symbols can you cram into a single object?), and have him manifest in reality at the moment the heroine is about to lose her virginity. As far as anxieties about approaching adulthood and losing virginity go, Slumber Party Massacre 2 isn’t exactly subtle. Then again, when you’re telling this kind of story, subtlety is often overrated.

If Slumber Party Massacre 2 has a fault it’s the decision to put Courtney and her friends in a rock band. Seriously, the last thing we need in a surreal slasher movie is musical numbers. I’ve mentioned before that musical criticism is not my strong suit, so I’ll keep it brief and just state the obvious: These girls just don’t rock. We’d be better served by replacing the scenes of them playing music with some more character moments, or a shower scene, or some more gross-out gore, or really anything.