Director: Deborah Brock
Starring: Crystal Bernard
Year: 1987
Everything that The Slumber Party Massacre did right Slumber Party Massacre II did wrong, the result being one of the worst movies of any genre you will ever see. I was surprised by how well the first film in the franchise worked, how smartly it balanced genre gore with hidden meaning, even rivaling some of its predecessors in some ways, though it’s never risen to the same level of fame. It was fun, freaky, bloody, booby, all the things we look for from the slasher style, with subtext that forced us to ask questions about why were were looking for that junk in the first place. But the sequel could not have been a bigger misstep and mistake; idiotic, trashy, worthless, and wasted, a pure slap in the face to anything cinematic.
When a lunatic escaped from prison and killed a bunch of teenagers in Venice in the early 80s, Courtney was there to witness the carnage. Her sister had gone to the aid of the house next door, where a young girl was hosting a sleepover that disastrously turned deadly. Now a young woman herself, Courtney is haunted by the memories of that night, and by the knowledge that her sister never recovered from surviving the massacre. But hey, there are boys to meet and tunes to play on the electric guitar, so life moves on. But heading to an abandoned condo development with your mates while having visions of a new power tool killer might not be the best idea, because blood is going to flow; you know the drill.
If SPM 1 was a nod to Halloween, then SPM 2 was a copy of Nightmare on Elm Street, and while you can’t blame filmmakers with flowing toward trends, you can call them out on reproducing content because they didn’t have any original ideas to share. So what we get is a slasher that’s supposed to be a continuation of the first in the series, but really is a vehicle of its own that borrows to much from a popular style, and then runs headlong into a tree, taking us unwillingly along with it. This movie is among the worst you will ever see, from start to finish, from musical numbers to drill bits through torsos. It’s an insult to the eye and to the ear, a nightmare of nothingness that makes no sense, goes nowhere, and has not one ounce of talent behind it. The lead is the girl from Wings, for Christ’s sake, and she’s got a Texas accent now, what’s more. Awful, awful, and then awful some extra, this isn’t film, it’s more like torture, and I wonder if it was designed for just that reason, because nothing else can explain why it exists.
My rating: ☆