Slumber Party Massacre 2

Tonight I watched Slumber Party Massacre 2, a 1987 film starring a young Crystal Bernard (better known as Helen Chapel from the TV show "Wings").

First off, let me say that while I did not see the original Slumber party film, I followed this one with ease. The main character, Courtney (Bernard) is a minor character in the first film, but this is understood easily enough through flashbacks.

It should also be noted that the film series was successful to spin off a number of knocks offs, including (I'm not making this up) Lingerie Party Massacre, Bikini Party Massacre, and Alien Beach Party Massacre.

With those pleasantries aside, I'll tell you that I didn't like the film. Courtney and her friends are a hot teenage rock band that hopes to make it rich. They fool their parents into allowing them a weekend getaway to a condo, where they plan to practice their music, write songs, and, oh yeah, hook up with boys.

We do not see much of the aforementioned hooking up. Oh, there is a fun scene where they dance and splash champagne on each other amidst a shower of feathers, while the one actress without a titty clause in her contract (the one with the smallest breasts, I should note) dances topless. A couple of horny teenage boys (oxymoron) watching her from the window echoed my thoughts when they said, "I didn't know girls really did this stuff at slumber parties." He's right. Boys just play video games and fart.

And so the first night we hear sex through the walls of Courtney's bedroom, while she has extremely hilarious dream sequence fantasies about a topless football player.

Sounds normal, right? It is, except Courtney is having recurring visions from her previous Slumber Party experiences. A leather clad Andrew Dice Clay lookalike visits her and asks her to "go all the way" with him. When he finally appears, he chases them with an enormous badass guitar, tricked out with flames and a ginormous drill where the head stock should be. Therefore his victims get screwed, but not the "screwing" they intended. Get it, gang? Screw?

Anyways, so all of this is fun. Villain kills dumb teenagers, yay! Villain stops to do a few dance moves, quote a Fifties rock song, then screws another teenager, yay!

Except this wasn't just an ordinary horror movie. Remember that Courtney and her friends were in a rock band (actually a fairly good one), and that their boyfriends were coming to watch them perform. They can dress it up as a B horror flick all they want, but what this movie was really about was the role of women in asserting themselves in the rock and roll pantheon alongside rockabilly superstars like Elvis.

Because women were asserting their independance by being sexually aggressive, playing rock music, and manipulating phallic instruments (guitars, bass), they were penetrated by a leather-pants throwback from yesteryear. But not just penetrated: drilled, like a piece of machinery in a man's workshop.

Of course it comes down to Courtney, having to face this monster that's been living inside her head for so long (actually, I think he only haunted her this one weekend, but you get the idea). Does she turn his phallic instrument of doom against him? Use her own guitar to electrocute him? Hell, does she have a rock off and defeat him at his own game?

Nah. She sets him on fire and throws him off a building.

Then she wakes up next to the football player, and it was all a dream. And she kisses the football player, and yay happy ending, but then...the dream man turns into the nightmare guitar player, and she's suddenly in the very insane asylum her sister is confined to. Then we watch in horror as a regular-sized drill grinds into a small model that looks vaguely like her cell, in the worst special effect of an otherwise well-made movie.

The startling misogynist ending is surprising, given that the writer/director was a woman (Deborah Brock). She went on to direct 3 more B (no, b is too high. Let's say E-Movies) and, amazingly, co-produced the brilliant Buffalo '66.

So here's my message to Deborah Brock (the rest of you may scroll down: you had your chance to make a fun little slasher movie and give it real meaning. You could have furthered the cause of women's lib and inspired millions of young girls to be whatever they wanted, be it doctors, lawyers, or rock stars. And you threw it all away for a stupid twist ending the studio probably pressured you into accepting.

You're telling little girls everywhere that they might as well not run from the monsters--that they should "go all the way" with them or they'll be locked in a dark room with a big metal dick boring up through the floor for the rest of their lives. Shame on you.

As for the rest of you: you gotta see this fuckin' movie.