Slumber Party Massacre III

Summer in 1990 should be an ideal time for friends from high school to enjoy a night together with a slumber party, including games, pizza, and talking guys. Too bad a killer decides to ruin the fun!

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Watching Slumber Party Massacre III (1990), I smiled as it started because those involved took the slasher template and followed it religiously. Dedicated to the particulars of the genre, opening the credits with snapshots of the cast, all smiles and joyfully soaking up the summers rays. Volleyball on the beach, attractive guys and gals in trunks and bikinis having fun as only the summer allows. Girls talking boys, and plans of the summer party are voiced in conversation, with anticipation and excitement not contained. Cut to a teenage gal getting in her locked car near graffitied walls around some ominous street corner, as a psychopath awaits in the back seat with a drill. How did he get in the car? She struggled just to unlock her car door! At any rate, the film produces not one but two red herrings: a weird ponytailed creep who crouches legs folded on the sand near where the girls and guys are volleyballing and a neighbor for Diane (Brandi Burnett), holding the party (her parents are away of course) who might be buying her house. The girls dance to music after some small talk and food preparation, getting to a bit of "dare" resulting in striptease. The guys soon arrive with the hopes of getting laid and eventually as does the killer (he prefers to lay into them a drill or other body-destroying weaponry). One of the girls invites a non-member of their group named Ken (I couldn't help but giggle because he's all blond and dreamy like the doll!). He's had some sexual abuse from an uncle which has fucked him up. Yeah, how's that for following formula!

“Sight seeing?”

“I like what I see.”

“You don’t believe in wasting any time do you?”

“Life’s too short…”

Well, in regards to offing the folks, at least the screenplay finds creative ways to do so. A plugged up dildo is tossed into the bathtub of one victim while she rub-a-dub-dubs. Another victim is being chased by the killer, knocks repeatedly on the door of the slumber house, and is impaled by a for sale sign post!

“Girls, was it something I said?”

A slasher can be an embarrassment of riches. A killer is supposed to be someone that might be unstable and deranged but not impervious to broken vases and plates over his head, multiple punches to the face, and keeps going seemingly without a hitch. One scene has a girl tossing herself through a window in order to get away from the lunatic, knocking herself unconscious in the process! Instead of joining forces as a group to overwhelm one man, they scatter like roaches at the sign of light, chaotically running for any exit. When a lamp breaks across his head, he is only dazed where you can only imagine a normal human being would be rocked with multiple concussions and collapse in a heap. Oh, but it doesn’t stop there. A harpoon blade into the leg, which would render most people incapacitated or immobile, doesn’t stop this guy! He just gets right up and continues on! It doesn’t end there, no sir! The girls finally decide to join forces (what’s left of them!) and try to immobilize him. Bleach to the eyes which would blind him to the point where not only would he not be able to see but would poison him doesn’t stop this guy! He’ll soldier on because the slasher film demands for him to! Particularly amusing is how he will break every light fixture in the house…no hanging light or lamp will survive the drill!

In slasher films there is always the protracted hide and seek which has its typical inevitable conclusion of the killer ensnaring his quarry when she runs out of places to conceal herself from his presence. Maria Ford, red headed in a gown, finds herself in a closet eventually. The killer, his dress shirt spattered with the blood of his victims, wielding a drill, is closing in. Before her, he returns to the body of Juliette, the dildo electric shock bath victim, finding another girl hiding behind her. Shamelessly aping Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), the killer breaks through the closet door as the girl shrieks. It is all fiendishly done in a psychotic frenzy of mania.

Slumber Party III gets really nasty and misogynistic. He takes one girl, throws her on a bed, and throttles her with punches to the face. He is often mentioning his uncle, seemingly summoning anger towards him as a force behind his mania.

This film has a specific scene that fuels the furor of those that just fucking hate the slasher film. Maria Ford is slashed right in the back by the killer slinging his drill wildly as his sight is a fog. The force of the slice drops her to the floor and she begs for mercy. Maria offers to listen to him, trying to convince him that she sympathizes with his plight. Maria appeals to his damage, hoping he’ll not kill her, that Ken will stay his drill and allow her to live. Maria even tells him he can touch her body and do whatever he wants. It is sleazy and unpleasant. Not fun at all. He rips her gown and then her bra. This certainly would perhaps tickle the sweet spot for some who get a rise from this. I’m not one of those. When she goes to defend herself, he drags her near naked body across the floor (just a slim pair of panties on her body as she cannot get away), and goes to drill her. All she can do is grab the drill bit, but as he starts it up, her hands are bladed and Maria loses grip succumbing to the drill. Kudos to Maria for what she gives to do the scene. Many other actresses wouldn’t allow themselves to be victimized like that. That her life isn’t spared after all she endures is quite an unsettling bit of business. That her friends DO NOTHING to help Maria certainly pissed me off. What the fuck, man! Help your girl out! #

I think that is the significant difference in this sequel and the first film. What made the first film such a satisfying slasher film was how the remaining girls really fucking gang up and end the killer. They butcher that bastard. Part 3 has the girls often using objects to subdue him, but when there were options available to put him down, they often just epically fail! How about—because the guy CANNOT SEE—picking out a skillet and blasting the fucker over the head! Open the knife drawer and stab his ass!

I will admit that the fireside finale is rather effective. The blood and backlit flame with the house now dark after all the light was extinguished is quite a visceral aesthetic. The three remaining girls are debating about what to do with him after one of them takes a poker to him. The film shows a memory emerging to Ken as his uncle tells him he loves him with that creepy pervert grin. That is what motivates his rage and twisted forward motion. The whole point is that Ken won’t stop until he’s stopped. The irony of the drill being the weapon to do just that returns us to the machete going through Jason’s eye.

To really emphasize how mean-spirited this movie is, as the killer lay vulnerable and ready for execution, he is able to take advantage of the girls’ inability to finish the job, killing yet another one in the process. That is what the whole movie builds up to: the final seconds finally has the remaining survivors (two after Ken knife-stabs yet another girl) not taking anymore. A running drill and Ken hacking away at a fallen friend pushes Diane to use his chief weapon and exact some justice that has been coming his way. Brittain Frye is grating and whiney, unstoppable and a force of will…he doesn’t look like the typical intimidating psycho and that’s the point. Give him a drill, a driving deviancy provoked by a suicide (the uncle was a cop who ended his life) and years of abuse as a child, and even the Ken Doll might go on a rampage despite not looking necessarily like the average slasher villain.

#I just read that this scene was a re-shoot demanded by Roger Corman. It does the girls a disservice, casting them in an awful light. It paints them terribly as the worst friends ever. My honest reaction to it must have been felt by others. Maria Ford could have been spared a humiliating scene and her character could have at least left the film quickly with some dignity.