Day Two: Female-Helmed Horror Movies for October
Slumber Party Massacre II
Written and Directed by Deborah Brock
1987
1 hour, 15 minutes
I watched it on iTunes.
I loved the first one so much, I had to try the sequel. Alas, “Slumber Party Massacre II” is exactly what you think it is, only more boring. It rips off some of the original’s scenes and ideas and has none of the teeth of the first one. There’s no artfulness here, just forced montages and sooo much bored, bad music-filled build up. Courtney (Crystal Bernard) was Valerie’s precocious preteen sister in the first “Slumber Party Massacre.” Years after the first film’s massacre, Courtney is now 17 and suffering from PTSD-style dreams. Her dreams go back and forth from thoughts of Matt (her crush) and the massacre. Only now, adding to her trauma, is a new character in her dreams, another power drill lover, who’s a kind of rockabilly Freddy Krueger. I love when horror films explore PTSD and I’m not sure why they don’t do it far more often. But everything is so surface and awkward that it never really hits on that theme. Although I did so love Courtney telling her mother, after her mother insists they go and visit the traumatized Valerie, “I don’t want to spend my birthday in an insane asylum.”
The girls are in a band together and man, are they awful. The songs barely even make sense but at least one of them repeats this line over and over, “If only I had him, I’d feel so much better.” I genuinely can’t tell if that’s meant to be funny or what. She and her friends go up to one of their parent’s condos for the weekend to practice their music and hang out with their boyfriends. At first, they have fun, drink too much, enjoy a realistic level of girls’ night gluttony. But then when Courtney falls asleep, that night and at every awkward opportunity the next day, she dreams of this rockabilly Drill-Killer.
At first she and her friends think she’s losing it, but when Sally (Heidi Kozak) goes missing, Matt calls the police. But when they show up, Officer Kreuger and Officer Voorhies (both misspelled in the credits but hey, pre-VHS days) don’t search the house and when the previously missing Sally returns, they get unreasonably angry and just bounce. So when the rip-off Freddy shows up in their real lives and starts killing people, Courtney calls the police and is outright told to stop lying and quit calling them. It’s one of the only scary moments of the film but even then, it’s more of a scary idea then something that has weight to it in the moment. Almost every kill is uninventive and none of them are scary.
This movie wants to be “Nightmare on Elm Street” so bad, it can taste it. There’s Office Kreuger and Trish’s family is now referred to as the Cravens. There’s even a dreaming in a bathtub scene. I love some nerdy references as much as the next gal but these just echo how completely derivative this mess is. The only real bonus points I can give it is that Courtney’s new boyfriend, Matt, seems to be a sensitive, caring guy and their budding relationship was a charming watch. But I think I will skip the third one for now, even though it is fun to have found an 80s slasher trilogy, all directed by women.
