House On Sorority Row
The horror / slasher phenomenon of the 1980s has actually translated very well to the modern day home video market with the advent of 2K blu ray transfers and 4K discs, usually involving some intricate remastering of the original film elements in order to make them presentable for todayâs consumers with their elaborate home theater setups. And while Oscar winning dramas from the same time period are generally ignored or overlooked for such lavish treatment, the horror slashers of the 80s have become a proven commodity in the marketplace, selling like hotcakes to the rabid fanbase from the big guns like Halloween and Friday The 13th all the way down to the bottom of the barrel fare like this 1982 release, virtually ignored in its own time ironically enough probably due to the glut of similar attempts at the genre formula, but after Quentin Tarantino of all people both endorsed it and handpicked it for his Austin, Texas based Film Fest in 1996, it started gaining traction as almost all of these films do when it came to reviving it and releasing it on one advanced home video format after another. Truth is, it really is an AWFUL film even by the standards of its genre, with ridiculous plot holes and unbelievably terrible story developments and despite its âsorority girlâ pedigree, it mostly features some average looking females except for lead actress Kathryn McNeil (best known for successfully fighting off a killer monkey in George A. Romeroâs Monkey Shines), a truly luminous beauty with a unique, down to earth, girl next door look to her and arguably the most kissable pout in movie history, here thankfully given the coveted Final Girl spot which keeps her onscreen until the end of the movie. Other notables include soap opera diva Eileen Davidson and future star / character actress Harley Jane Kozak as being among the other sorority girls in peril. As for the concept / backstory / explanation for the origins of the killer here, we start the film with a badly blurred flashback to 1961, where as it turns out an older woman who has always wanted very badly to bear children has submitted herself to an experimental process at the hands of a surprisingly calm genetic mad scientist, resulting in a successful conception and birth only for the child to turn out to be some kind of deranged mutant. Flash forward 20 years where that same woman is now the long standing house mother for the sorority house where the story takes place, literally despised by all of the girls for her uptight, tyrannical nature and refusal to allow these girls to even have a graduation party of their own, strangely insisting on actually (and illegally) kicking the girls out early so that for some reason she can have the house all to herself during the summer. Since this pisses off the girls to no end, they decide to stage a fairly elaborate prank to teach her a lesson and (surprise surprise) the prank goes horribly wrong, resulting in the old womanâs death. In a bit that would later on be borrowed by the I Know What You Did series, the girls decide that instead of facing the music and potentially having their futures ruined by the incident, they will hide the body and eventually dispose of it and nobody will ever know what really happened to the old hag. Of course, this becomes the impetus for the murders themselves starting up once the big party gets underway, and even some random male partygoers wind up falling victim to the killer which suffice to say, is indeed the mutant son of the house mother we saw being born in the opening scene, made even worse by the later revelation that HE WAS LIVING UP IN THE ATTIC OF THE SORORITY HOUSE THE WHOLE TIME AND NONE OF THE GIRLS WHO HAD EVER LIVED THERE OVER THE YEARS HAD EVER FIGURED IT OUT. And it gets worse from there as the house motherâs bound and wrapped dead body disappears from its original hiding place, only to turn up somewhere else STILL BOUND AND WRAPPED WHILE THE GIRLS OPENLY SPECULATE AS TO WHETHER OR NOT SHE IS STILL ALIVE. One of the girls even has the corpse LAND ON HER HEAD AND AFTER SHE WAKES UP, SHE GOES BACK TO HER ROOM, STRIPS, AND THEN DANCES AROUND IN SOME LINGERIE BEFORE THE KILLER SON GRABS HER. Meanwhile, the party itself is going along swimmingly with drinking, dancing and a complete disconnect by all of the other guests as it relates to the horrors being experienced by the seven girls who actually live there. McNeilâs sweetheart with a determined resolve is the only one suffering from a crisis of conscience over the whole matter, constantly scolding and reprimanding the others about the utter wrongness of their actions and after enough bodies have dropped, she finds a way to contact the original nutcase doctor whose genetic experiments started this whole thing that created the freak, only to have him drug her and use her as bait, lying about having called the police in order to protect his own reputation and instead wanting to capture the mutant son in order to bring him back to his clinic for âfurther treatmentâ. All of this idiocy in the storyline still doesnât stave off the slow spells in between killings or the mostly bland and inconsistent writing (a lame attempt is made to hide direct references to the mutant killer son in some early dialogue scenes so as to lead the viewer astray and possibly inspire an unwanted second viewing) as well as the indifferent acting on all fronts (McNeil is saddled with a supposed fraternity boy blind date who easily comes across as being the most passive character in the entire film), but the biggest insult to the viewer is saved for the finale, as we anxiously await finally seeing this mutant freak for ourselves so that we can marvel at the character makeup design (something that was also a highlight of the Friday The 13th Franchise so we could see just how far gone Jason was by any given point), but instead IT NEVER HAPPENS, PREFERRING TO KEEP A MASK ON THIS GENETICALLY MUTATED KILLER UNTIL THE FINAL SCENE. And of course, we always like our horror movies to be resolved so that we can have closure and stuff. BUT HERE THE MOVIE JUST ENDS SUDDENLY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BATTLE BETWEEN THE KILLER AND MCNEILâS FINAL GIRL!! And apparently that was intended so as to keep it ambiguous over whoever wins! Were they thinking sequel?? Franchise perhaps? Probably not, as even the sheen of modern high definition technology fails to hide the fact that this was a shoddy low budget affair even for its time with gore shots during the killings that were obviously inserts and production values on a par with a high school play. And yet the amazing nostalgia that people still have for the horror releases of this era (although not all necessarily classics) has kept the gravy train of content rolling along indefinitely as even having been a part of the most obscure of this genre can certainly still translate into having a gig today as being part of the special featuresâŠ
3/10