Truly Dreadful Film

Must See Movie...

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

"Sorority House Massacre" is one of those movies with constraints in budget or talent or both that prohibit you from making any investment of time or consideration in anything that happens on screen.It's like watching a movie playing in the house next door and you're trying to peer through the window to get a good look at the screen. Maybe there is one or two moments in it where you would have liked to understand what's going on, but you can't, because the budget is so low that it keeps you outside, or maybe the actors are too bad to generate interest, or perhaps it's the direction.Who cares? The point is, the movie is thoroughly unconvincing.The plot is basically a "Halloween" rip off, but it's told so badly you could miss that. It's about a girl who is in college and has a mental block about something in her past involving a man who breaks out of a mental institution at the beginning of the movie. He does this so easily you wonder why they even bother showing it. Why not just start with him out, and leave the escape up to our imagination? Anyway the movie tries to build suspense for his arrival home and the imminent and titular "massacre" with an endless barrage of tedious and inept dream sequences. These fantasies just become distancing when they are supposed to be horrifying. Furthermore, the actress who plays the protagonist is unable to make her "character" interesting enough to even want to get into her head. We know that she's related to the killer and that he's coming back to get his revenge. We didn't need so many interminable dream sequences to point that out. You get it almost immediately.It's funny that "Halloween" had a lower budget than this, and that was able to establish some key details with ease, like Laurie Strode as a fully fledged character, and Michael Myers as a terrifying embodiment of evil. This movie completely fails at establishing anything like that.According to the IMDb plot description, what sets off the protagonist of "Sorority House Massacre" remembering her evil brother, and what makes him come back to take revenge (or whatever you call what he is doing), is the fact that the titular "sorority house" is the same house that they grew up in, where he first went on a killing spree. I missed that detail in the movie, but if it's really true, it's the dumbest thing about this whole debacle.

"Sorority House Massacre" does have some things going for it, although in the end it doesn't stand out from other slasher offerings during this time. (Not that some aficionados of the genre should mind all that much.) It's got blood, and it's got some breast shots, but it might not be exploitative enough to suit some tastes. What it does have is some good atmosphere, and occasionally it's slicker than expected, with a particularly tense scene involving a ladder. The nightmare sequences are reasonably well realized, and the girls in the story are not quite your typical slasher movie airheads. That doesn't mean that the dialogue isn't groan inducing at times, or that its delivery is any better. Still, when we watch something like this we come to expect a degree of crudeness and cheesiness, and this movie does succeed in that regard; it's even got a requisite dopey 80s style montage.Troubled girl Beth (Angela O'Neill) comes to visit her friends at a sorority house, while being plagued by visions of a stone faced psychotic creep, Bobby (John C. Russell), who'd murdered his family and has been locked up in a mental hospital. Naturally, the creep escapes, and Beth and her friends (and their boyfriends) will eventually be terrorized and slaughtered.There are enough amusing, titillating, and suspenseful moments to make this palatable viewing. Writer / director Carol Frank, in her only feature credit, does keep the story moving, and like so much of the Concorde catalogue, it clocks in at a very trim running time, in this case 74 minutes. The music by Michael Wetherwax is quite good and there are some efficient "prowling camera" sequences.If one simply can't get enough of this sort of thing, they could do worse than "Sorority House Massacre".Six out of 10.

By 1986, the slasher craze was basically at a point where originality was out of the door, and rehashing old plots was the way to go. Four years after Slumber Party Massacre, and three after The House on Sorority Row, Sorority House Massacre is another college-girls and boyfriends being stalked by a maniacal killer with a sharp object. Carol Frank, writer/director, tries to add a semblance of authenticity to the table by introducing psychic connections, but that plot ultimately ends up being a direct Halloween rip-off so unfortunately, the story here fails.However, we're watching an 80's slasher flick, story is not important here, we want the T&A, stalking and slashing! Alas, this is mostly missing as well. I mean, there are a couple of standard flashes skin, and splashes of blood here and there but overall the movie lacks any interesting kills or suspense.There is plenty of fun to be had though, with a hilariously out of place montage where the girls try on a bunch of clothes, and some fantastically bad acting sure to delight lovers of bad cinema. Sorority House Massacre is very short, barely clocking in over 70 minutes, so at least Frank understands the intended audience. And really, you can tell the movie is striving to be good and looking for love, unfortunately it will be loved for the wrong reasons. It is hard to glance over the horrid dialogue, and the ease at which someone can escape a psychiatric institution.Would I recommend this movie? Absolutely! It's short and for the most part bad enough to be very entertaining, and if you are a slasher enthusiast, you could do worse than Sorority House Massacre.1/5

Not to be confused with the earlier and slightly better The Slumber Party Massacre, with which it shares several similarities (a house full of teenage girls, a psycho killer, a virginal heroine, the word 'Massacre' in its title), Sorority House Massacre is yet another routine 80s stalk 'n' slash thriller, with a little Nightmare on Elm Street dream nonsense thrown in to try and spice things up a little.It doesn't work!.When the most horrific thing in a scary movie is the awful fashion sense of its characters, then you know you've picked a real turkey; admittedly, the extra large shoulder pads, baggy checked trousers with extremely high waist, and nasty perms are all fairly amusing, but they do not make up for this film's inability to scare, its lack of gore, or the complete absence of a decent plot.The derivative story sees Angela O'Neill as Beth, the new member of a sorority house where it is rumoured that a lunatic once murdered his entire family. This being a cheesy 80s slasher flick, those rumours eventually prove to be true—well... almost: Beth turns out to be the only survivor of the massacre, now all grown up and lacking any memory of her childhood trauma. Worse still, her brother—the killer—now seems to have a psychic connection with Beth, knows that his lil' sis is back 'home', and wants to finish the job he started 14 years ago. Escaping from his asylum with ease, he makes a quick stop at a store to pick up a hunting knife, and then hot foots it to the sorority house, where he begins to hack up the girls (and their boyfriends, who, this being a cheesy 80s slasher flick, drop by to party).Taking an absolute age to get going, with far too much time spent on mundane chit-chat between the girls, and on Beth's dreary nightmares (caused by her psychic 'link' with her brother), this film has a real problem with its pacing. A little welcome nudity helps a tad to keep viewers from nodding off completely (although none of the girls could really be classed as total babes, they do have nice jugs), but it's left way too late before big bro' finally gets into full-on killing mode. The deaths, when they do arrive, are uninspired, consisting of one tedious, unconvincing stabbing after another, leaving one longing for something a little more creative (is it too much to ask for our killer to make an effort?).By 1986, absolutely tons of slasher movies had already been and gone; this one added nothing new to the genre, whilst making a complete hash out of the stale elements it borrowed from its predecessors.