The House on Sorority Row [1983]

Preparing for a post-graduation party is interrupted by the house mother who forbids her sorority girls from using the grounds and building for such an activity. When one of the sisters decides to take some of her pent-up hostility out on the house mother through a prank involving a gun with blanks, and the results end in accidental death, the girls are left with the taxing efforts of a cover up that goes awry when a psychopath disturbs their plans. This killer might just be linked with the house mother.
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There were some early slashers which opened with an event—typically traumatic—that happened in the past many years prior to the current events of the rest of the film. A pregnant woman needing to deliver, it appears, loses the child when the doc must do an emergency C-section.

I want to thank you for helping me become what I am today…wasted.

The basic premise has the sorority sisters sick of their bitchy house mother who will not allow them to party at the dorms during the last few days before leaving college for the “real world”.

Eileen Davidson is primarily known for soaps but she’s a fox in this film as the spitfire with vengeance in mind for Ms. Slater (Lois Kelso Hunt), the house mother the girls hold a special dislike (but somewhat respect…; “She’s an institution around here!”) for. Slater interrupts Davidson’s Vicki while she’s in the middle of coitus with a lucky dude. So Vicki wants to play a prank on Slater, with the girls in on it. This is the catalyst for the slasher part of the plot: when the prank goes awry and Slater dies, “someone” kills those responsible in her honor. The use of a gun, the dirty pool that was never cleaned for the four years the girls were at the sorority, and Slater’s bird-handled walking cane, play a part in the prank that ultimately results in the house mother’s unfortunate demise. The sequence of events afterward provides the incentive of revenge towards the girls. You can watch a movie like I Know What You Did Last Summer and others of its ilk—about a secret kept by a group regarding an accidental death and the aftermath that results in their murders one by one—and The House on Sorority Row might be considered influential in the slasher genre.  It was all fun and games until that death and because of it the group’s seemingly solid friendship and camaraderie is shaken / broken. Add the psychopath into the mix, coupled with the guilty conscience of participating in a death and cover-up, there’s solid ground for a slasher formula. Too bad the formula has been depleted of that value through overuse. Harley Jane Kozak is perhaps the most successful performer from the cast as she serviced several films as a wife / girlfriend (or of female characters that are somewhat significant) in Arachnophobia, Necessary Roughness, Parenthood, When Harry Met Sally, Clean & Sober, and the awesomeness that is The Taking of Beverly Hills (slight sarcasm, but, yeah, I enjoyed it despite myself). She is basically one of Vicki's underlings, but it is still fun to see her so early in her career. The girls gathered about before Slater interrupts them, totally inebriated and happy is a nice scene to me because there's a feeling of celebration and joy that will be detonated by the crisis that comes the following day.

You’ll notice in these kinds of slashers that there’s a dominant voice among the group that seems to carry weight while the other weaker members follow her lead, however reluctantly, while one among them is totally against the secrecy and the unwillingness to at least attempt to get rescue, even if it is futile. “What will happen to us if the police, emergency responders, and the public know of what we’ve done?” Vicki is obviously the girl with the dominance of the group, while Katherine (Kate McNeil) is more concerned with Slater’s well being and welfare. “She’s gone and there’s nothing we can do about it.” With this, it is rather clear that Katherine will be the final girl and Vicki, the self-absorbed, only-concerned-about-herself bitch, is doomed to get it real good when the time is just right in the movie. Seeing the girls rush into action to get Slater’s body wrapped up, tied, and dumped in the pool is quite a sight. It’s sickening, but in panic-mode, people do such things. Protecting your livelihood and all that shit. Anyway, Katherine momentarily helps but pulls back, gathers her thoughts, watches stuck in shock at the whole situation, and walks away. The body doesn’t go down, floating back to the surface. Someone’s got Slater’s cane and almost immediately puts through a party-goer’s throat.

The party commences on schedule but the girls are unable to make the most of it because of their actions earlier. The disco ball and streamers hanging, one of those pop band wannabes belting tunes, and a congested mob of bouncy college grads, the boys and girls, dance, hook up, flirt, and eye each other from up close and afar. It’s a lively bunch, too. I love this one scene where director Mark Rosman shoots each conspirator, slightly separated, looking at each other, the camera following from one girl to the next, among the crowd. Each girl has that worried, nervy, anxious look of anticipating bad things. The guilt wears heavily. I like how each girl is singled out among the happy kids in attendance, their demeanor (those who are throwing the party) right the opposite.

“I’m a sea pig.” Three students decide they might take a swim, one of them a big boy and further evidence that the heavier actors cast in slashers often are the butt of jokes regarding their weight. The trio who think about swimming are used to emphasize that the pool no longer has the body at the bottom of (or in) it.

 

I have to say that I loved the opening credits with the girls getting ready and director Rosman carrying the camera through the dorms as they are going about their routine of prettying up. It just says that this film is about them, centered around the girls planning on life after college and the big send-off that is supposed to leave this chapter in their lives with a bang. Instead, a small group will be responsible for an unfortunate accidental murder, fall victim to a psycho, kept secret from most people (other than the doc who delivered her child) by the mother, and so the whole night (that was supposed to rock) is a huge downer…to say the least.

The back story of Ms. Slater is important to those who wrote the script. Why dedicate a whole opening scene before the credits devoted to her troubled pregnancy and birth to a child with issues unless those behind the overall plot wanted to emphasize that the killer and the victim of the girls’ prank are significant to everything that happens? It seemed as if she lost the child, but throughout the movie her doctor is brought back over and over to re-iterate Ms. Slater’s defender once she’s killed and dumped in her pool like disposable trash. To care enough to give a reason for why the psycho is unleashed and his reason for targeting the girls (the doc says that an event could trigger a psychotic break that would result in violent behavior), and the eventual carrying out of each murder at least proves that there was a modicum of thought put into the slasher movie’s violent onslaught.

The back story slowly unravels as Katherine finds the ladder to the attic of her sorority house open, following it into the “home” of a child who spent his formative years hidden away from society…for some reason. We even get a name…Eric. This name was located on a birthday card from mother, and we are treated to all of the toys, wallpaper, and furniture Katherine uncovers with her lit candle (and eventual light turned on), a secret Ms. Slater kept carefully hid from practically everyone. Now the son will get his revenge.

 

Slashers never fail to have at least one moment that features something a character does that leaves me gobsmacked. The party is closing, the college kids are heading to their respective places, and one of the sorority girls hunted has a large butcher knife but flees immediately when Eric breaks the kitchen door glass with Slater’s bird-handled cane, running into the hall connecting the dorms, falls (of course), and cannot keep from vomiting, heading into the bathroom to barf, placing herself in a confined place for the killer to make easy pickings of her. She’s ill equipped emotionally to fight a killer she cannot see and he just overpowers her instantly. She didn’t have a prayer.

There’s a great moment of dark comic brilliance that happens when the girls attempt to push a garbage bin holding Slater’s body, actually ramming it into a campus policeman’s car! Fate saves them when another incident calls for the cop to go elsewhere, letting them off reluctantly. And with that, I like how the numbers dwindled, yet even at two left Vicki was still damned determined to rescue her ass.

The ending has Dr. Nelson (Christopher Lawrence), accountable for a procedure that allows infertile mothers a chance to become pregnant but is experimental and not quite legalized (he warns those wanting the procedure that there might be “abnormalities”, “side effects”), doping Katherine and using her as bait to lure Eric to their location! Nelson’s involvement makes sense considering how vital those responsible for the script made the back story of Slater in regards to the killer. He is, in a sense, culpable for Eric’s condition, his mental state’s deterioration, and Nelson needs to either kill or recover the institution patient (typically under his care except for summers when the sorority house was closed) through the use of a tranquilizer gun. But Katherine isn’t exactly happy about being used as bait, taking advantage of a guy (Peter, played by Michael Kuhn) who just doesn’t seem to know when to give up on her (they were to be set up as a blind date at the party), on the receiving end of one of Nelson’s tranquilizer darts. Getting Vicki’s gun (not knowing the only bullets available are blanks!), Katherine believes she now has protection, heading up to the attic hoping for a showdown where the advantage is hers. Eric now slides into his clown costume for one last chance to bash her body in with the bird-handled cane.

With an enchanting and lively slasher score from Full Moon’s own Richard Band (probably one of his best), that punctuates the appropriate beats of the plot, just enough potent murder set pieces (the kills are seconds-long, Friday the 13^th stylized quick bursts of violence, primarily through the use of the cane) to satiate the blood lust of the genre’s fans, and a drugged final girl trying to shoo away the effects of it so she can deal with the killer after her that adds to the closing sequence, The House on Sorority Row should maintain a level of respect and appreciation from the fanbase. I remember this film started to gain some attention on the imdb horror board even while it still made the rounds on VHS in the early parts of 2004-2006. The dvd release was a good way for the film to become more attainable through release. Other avenues like streaming also are ways it now can be viewed regularly instead of having to find it for download.

 

I do think, in slasher terms, the film has something to offer. I would consider it somewhere in the middle of the genre—in terms of performance, there are varied degrees of bad and decent (I don’t really think there’s a real standout great performance, though), and the gore scenes vary from okay to decent (the head in the toilet is probably the best of the gags, with torn throats and blood, and several cane attacks)—a reasonably successful slasher that has some moments that aren’t too shabby. There are slashers that defy the expected revealed face (like Black Christmas (1974)), opting to keep the killer hidden under disguise. The clown suit at the end is a cool visual, but he only wears it for that scene, with director Mark Rosman preferring to keep him mostly in the dark and off screen. Doing this does make him more enigmatic. The “insane asylum psycho” killer is old hat, but this was par for the course in 1983, and the ghost of Halloween was still looming over the genre then. McNeil spends the final half of the film under duress, stress, anxiety, and soon the influence when doc pumps a hypodermic into her bloodstream. Rosman even has her hallucinate and struggle with her composure. So as vulnerable and out of sorts as McNeil is at the end, it does set up her situation as dire and bleak. And, guess what, the final fade to black promises that Eric isn’t so willing to go out even after being stabbed by a doll (you just have to see it to understand). It adheres to the slasher formula so those who love the genre and wish for the goods associated with it will probably enjoy it; the genre’s detractors will probably consider it run of the mill and same old story, same old song and dance.