Slumber Party Massacre 2
Creating the perfect horror movie villain for all seasons is a daunting task, one where both casting and writing make all the big differences. Sometimes, you get a one shot, one off horror movie that hits the right buttons with its main bad guy, but sadly, no franchise results from it. This 1987 release WAS part of a minor horror franchise, but with a sudden about face in its presentation of the lead villain, going from a decidedly average looking misfit named Russ Thorn (a.k.a. The Driller Killer) in Part 1 who had been an escapee from a local mental hospital to an amazingly charismatic, trash talking, rock star of a horror movie villain (Atanas Illitch, a one hit wonder who later inherited his father’s billion dollar Little Caesars pizza empire) for which it is explained that original villain Thorn has now been implanted and reincarnated into the dreams of one of the girls from the original movie who had successfully killed him (Crystal Bernard, en route to stardom on the TV show Wings and replacing the little known actress from Part 1), a young lass named Courtney who not only laments overs the fact that her equally heroic sister from Part 1 has been locked away in an institution over the affairs of that previous entry, but that she herself has been experiencing dreams and visions that Thorn has recreated himself in the absolutely perfect façade of a well known celebrity / rock n roll star (Atanas) of whom young Courtney is infatuated with and has his poster up on the wall. This successfully turns Thorn into more than just a slasher, but also as a sexual threat to Courtney herself on the pretense that being raped by someone whom she considers the hottest guy imaginable would make it half as painful and twice as fun (a far cry from the balding older guy in Part 1). You see, Courtney has reached that crucial phase in her young life where she has started thinking about sex (she’s a virgin), and she has been presented with the opportunity to give it up to a rich, popular, local pretty boy (albeit an effeminate possible homosexual) whom she’s really not all that attracted to but still gleefully knows that being with such a guy will bring her prominent social acceptance even as Thorn’s Driller has completed his transformation into the evil version of the fictional celebrity named Atanas and tells Courtney in her dreams that he will not accept her being with anybody else, saying “I am you, and you are me, until we go all the way”, locking himself inside Courtney’s mind until the time comes for him to emerge. Turns out that Courtney’s birthday is coming up, and she goes and convinces her comatose mother to let her take off with her friends for a weekend all while she knows that the cute gay guy has social intentions for her. It also turns out that Courtney is in a “band”, joining up once in a while with three other girlfriends to play their instruments and try to make it sound like a real song. They are joined by two boyfriends (including an over the top stoner dude) and the winking, butt slapping would be boyfriend of The Virgin Courtney Bates. Fortunately, this is a situation that Driller loves and craves, and The Little Caesars Prince (who seems almost as if he were being coached onset by Robert Englund himself) stays on Courtney’s mind for the entire car ride up, playing cruel little visual mind tricks on her punctuated by his trademark maniacal laughter. Courtney remains undaunted, powering her way through a laughable music set with her friends before cornering the homosexual in the bedroom and giving him full consent, thus triggering Driller to literally cross over from dreams to reality, resulting not only in the hotter guy being the one to kill the limp wrist intended, but also to go on a full, all out rampage against the rest of her friends, punishing them for bad music and bad jokes all while saving Courtney for last so that he can get payback for Part 1 and finally kill her…or maybe not, since after all he openly admits that he “loves” her (plus she is a virgin), making for a savagely original take on the classic 80s horror movie villain that contrasts starkly in the metaphor department with Part 1’s Thorn, for whom it was made abundantly clear that using the drill for his murder weapon meant that he had a small penis whereas Part 2’s Atanas looks at the drill as merely an ornament, a gimmick built into the handle of his guitar which is useful for killing the supporting actors but the intense possibility of The Final Girl being subjected to a rape and / or murder at the clutches of the same type of person she’s the most shamelessly attracted to is an original concept / gimmick in of and by itself but then it gets even better than that. Driller quickly dispatches the remaining males with a wink and a smile before “it’s time for the fun part”, not only stalking and killing Courtney’s female girlfriends but also performing in engaging musical numbers prior to each kill (and successfully turning the film into a sinister music video), partially to entertain Courtney and partially to entertain himself (the narcissist ego of the character is strangely alluring). That, plus the tendency which Driller has to make song lyric references while conducting his business rather than corny wisecracks turns out to be a winning formula, along with the not any less fascinating possibility that poor Courtney herself might just have some kind of untreated mental illness due to (or because of) her own sexual repression, the idea being that she is so afraid to give up her virtue on the fear that it would change her forever into a less favorable person, which is nonetheless a proposition which the decadent Driller would give a big thumbs up to all while he festers in the subconscious of her mind, a psychological aspect that one doesn’t usually find at this level of filmmaking. Choosing a soft gay to get it over with obviously infuriates the alpha male tendencies within Driller, since as far as he is concerned it is HE who is Courtney’s actual boyfriend, turning the motivation for his murder spree into that of a jealous rage. The film falters more than a couple of steps with its overly long and tedious buildup (Courtney doesn’t even leave her mom’s house until 15 minutes into the movie) filled with needlessly overdone character development for much of the cannon fodder (the stoner dude carries a bad Jeff Spicoli brogue and acts like he really believes that he’s stealing the whole movie) and the occasionally strikingly brief moment where Driller sends Courtney a sign that he’s getting closer and closer to breaking through. But when Driller does indeed just that, the movie takes off into low budget overdrive, with the biggest question in the end being, why didn’t Driller Killer 2.0 (Atanas) wind up getting franchised completely and served up to us on a regular basis? He’s a guy who can literally bend time and space, he relishes killing girls so much that it makes him do song and dance numbers, and he draws the ire of the beautiful, stardom bound lead actress if only she also can just take her eyes off of him because she’s at least partially in love with him as well, a dark yet humorous concoction that goes up on the boards as a Roger Corman production that hits a home run out of the park…
8/10