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I thought I'd kick the new year off with another movie marathon. I thought it was time to check out a few old school mystery flicks. Som...

Monday, July 10, 2017

Sorority House Massacre (1986)


Decent poster... lousy movie
The Slasher movie marathon continues. Honestly, I’ve been ducking what I wager are going to be disappointing or bad entries into the genre. I mean The Final Terror wasn’t great, but it did have some things that I liked about it. But part of the reason that I review movies is to steer you towards good ones and away from bad ones. Time to take one for the team.

Sorority House Massacre follows a young co-ed named Beth. She is staying Memorial Day weekend with some friends in a sorority house. The moment she walks thru the door she starts to have bad feelings and nightmares. At the same time, we see a comatose patient at a mental health hospital suddenly become agitated. Being that this is a Slasher movie he eventually breaks out and heads to the Sorority to kill off some co-eds. He arrives just in time to get both the girls and their boyfriends. Does he have a connection to Beth? Why does she remember the house? Does it have anything to do with the scary story about a killer wiping out everyone in his family one night except for a younger sister?

This one really got on my nerves. There are a lot of good movies in the Slasher genre, but its popularity caused a lot of cheap “quickie” ones to be made. Far too many follow what they thought was the formula of nudity and gore equals a good movie, or at least a
This is a thing?
paycheck. Here we get the worst of the worst as far as nude scenes go. I’m not a prude but for no apparent reason the co-eds decide to dance around and try on clothes. They do so topless which I guess is a thing? I wouldn’t know and my lovely wife just rolls her eyes at me when I ask about her college days. The other part of the formula is the gore and they fail at it as well. We get a respectable eight kills but not one is memorable. I mean I suppose if you have a killer using a knife he would just stab people in the chest repeatedly. But if the naked dancing isn’t realistic then why are the kills?

Sorority House Massacre is even worse in that it rips off a much superior film. Let’s see if this sounds familiar, shall we? A brother breaks out of a mental hospital to come back to town to finish his sister off. Along the way he steals a station wagon and a knife from a hardware store. We are a Captain Kirk mask away from some serious plagiarism. Other observations I can make include bad acting, terrible pacing, and no attempt at all for scares. There isn’t even an attempt at a jump scare in the damn movie! Hell, even the less than stellar Cheerleader Camp tried to frighten the audience.

Maybe it is because I grew up on Slasher movies but they have always held a special place in my movie loving heart. I get so tired of defending the fact that I enjoy the genre but when a flick like Sorority House Massacre comes up there isn’t anything to say. This one is really just an excuse to have naked women frolic around and get killed by a man wielding a knife in a vaguely phallic way. Just skip it and let us all pretend it didn’t happen. Hey anyone want to talk about the great kills in the Burning or the creepy atmosphere of the Prowler? Anyone?


My Slasher movie marathon continues with Hell Night


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