#good-bad

@thechosengryffindor asked: It is Monday once again and we could all use a good laugh

I got hit in the head with a can of soda. Good thing it was a soft drink.

It’s easy to see why one might become nostalgic for what Slumber Party Massacre (1982) could have been. Written by Rita Mae Brown, the original script for Sleepless Nights was intended to be a feminist parody of the slasher genre. However, it’s hard to say if eventual director, Amy Holden Jones, understood the subtle nuances of this proto-Scream film, or if she and husband/ cinematographer Michael Chapman simply chose to ignore them in favor of a quicker and cheaper project.

Visually this film can be summarized as “tits and blood,” which technically better films achieved long before and after. The shower scene, for example, parallels with the opening of Carrie, which was released six years earlier. In the 1976 Stephen King adaption, this setting serves to contextualize the protagonist’s outcast status as she comes screaming out of the shower, unaware the blood she’s drenched in is a result of her period. Yes there is nudity, but the lightheartedness of it punctuates the horrors to come. In contrast, the gym/shower sequence in Slumber Party Massacre is irrelevant to the plot. The information we learn here-- Diane doesn’t like new girl, Val, because she’s pretty and good at basketball-- could have happened in almost any context.

That being said, the true entertainment value of this film comes from moments like this, where the pandering and absence of introspection produce unexpected humor. Without too many spoilers here’s a brief list of nonsense: eating pizza on top of a dead delivery boy, implied masturbation to a Sylvester Stallone PlayGirl by high school girls, not-at-all subtle phallic imagery in a drill-bit killer who exclusively murders hot girls, and, as previously stated, lots of tits and red corn syrup. 

Good news is that I got out of a biology test!

Bad news is that I'm sick. :(

Good news is that I get to watch Glee tonight now!