Trish Deveraux’s (Michele Michaels) parents go away for a few days and leave the 18-year-old high school girl home alone. Trish decides to have a slumber party with some of her friends, Kim Clarke (Debra De Liso), Diane (Gina Smika Hunter) and Jackie Cassidy (Andree Honore). Trish wants to also invite her next-door neighbor, who happens to be the new girl in school, Valerie Bates (Robin Stille). Diane says some rude things about Valerie, who overhears the conversation. She declines the invitation.
In the meantime, a homicidal maniac and mass murderer, Russ Thorn (Michael Villella) escapes from prison. He ends up at the high school in Venice, California. Russ kills a telephone repair woman (Jean Vargas) and steals her van. He then watches from the van as the students leave school for the day. While hiding in the van he sees one of the students, Linda (Brinke Stevens) go back into the school for something. He follows her in and kills her with a power drill.
The girls show up at Trish’s house bringing beer, pot and baby-doll pajamas. Trish’s neighbor David Contant (Rigg Kennedy) is assigned to keep an eye on things while her parents are away. Two boys from school, Jeff (David Millbern) and Neil (Joseph Alan Johnson) crash the party. Diane’s boyfriend, John (Jim Boyce) sneaks into the garage to have a make-out session with Diane. Next door, Valerie is babysitting her younger sister, Courtney (Jennifer Meyers).
Everything is in place, and everyone is oblivious to the crazy man stalking teenagers and killing anyone he comes across. The girls at the slumber party are not aware of Russ’ presence until the pizza guy (Aaron Lipstadt) falls dead in front of them. In his head is a nicely drilled hole.
“The Slumber Party Massacre” AKA “The Slumber Party Murders” was released in 1982 and was directed by Amy Holden Jones. It is an American horror slasher film produced by Roger Corman. There were three slumber party massacre films in the standard series. A fourth film was done in 2021. Additional series were done off of the original franchise. They were the “Sorority House Massacre” series and the “Cheerleader Massacre” series.
A slasher film wouldn’t be a slasher film without teenage girls and boobs. There are several scenes where it seemed to be necessary for the girls to take off their clothes. Why have a conversation about a slumber party in the school hallway when you can have it in the girl’s shower room? It seems that Roger kept adding exploitative scenes all through filming.
As a slasher film from the eighties the movie was typical. No story to speak of but some surprisingly adequate acting. Lots of blood, lots of dead teenagers. It ended up being a decent offering of the genre.
The screenplay was written by Rita Mae Brown. She is well known for her murder mystery books. One of her main series was her Mrs. Murphy Mysteries that she co-wrote with her cat named Sneaky Pie Brown.