Slumber Party Massacre III (1990)

... aka: Night Light
... aka: Slumber Party Massacre 3
... aka: Stab in the Dark

Directed by:
Sally Mattison

Entry three in this popular slasher series delivers precisely what anyone who'd be inclined to watch something called Slumber Party Massacre in the first place would want to see: attractive young ladies showing some skin before getting massacred. Since each of these involved a male psycho brandishing a large, high-powered drill, the first was written by feminist author Rita Mae Brown as a spoof on the slasher cycle (though so much was changed from Brown's original script she ultimately disowned the project) and all were made by female directors, much has been made of the phallic symbolism of the killer's weapon. The "driller killer" in this third installment is a good-looking, clean cut ladies man who is unable to "perform" because he was sexually abused by his uncle as a child. And thus, his weapon is how he vents pent up sexual frustration and the only way he's able to really "drill" anybody. Mind you, none of that is carried out in a clever, amusing or intelligent way here, but the potential was certainly there for more than what any of these titles actually deliver.

Blonde beach bunny Jackie (Keely Christian) and her high school pals are playing volleyball when they notice "The Weirdo" (Yan Birch) staring at them. Brushing it off, they decide to call it a day, but one of the girls is ambushed in her car on the way out and drilled through the seat. Guess who's gonna be a no-show at the slumber party? In case you're not up on your obvious red herrings, "The Weirdo," weird-o as he may be, is just one of many utterly ridiculous and useless suspects the film introduces to us. Another is Morgan (Michael Harris), Jackie's pervy hippie neighbor, who breaks into her home while she's out and later will be keeping tabs on the girls through his trusty telescope. And by keeping tabs, I mean watching them dance and change clothes. Nope, not him either. Because both the DVD and VHS boxes and the trailer have no problem revealing who the killer is, I guess I shouldn't give two hoots about it either. It's Ken (Brittain Frye). Since Ken isn't wearing a hockey mask and doesn't have long hair, I reckon the filmmakers thought we'd be surprised to see an upstanding young man clad in a button-up dress shirt and khaki's running around slicing up half-naked chicks.

During the girls' get together, they do what all women do when they're hanging out: eat high-calorie junk food, suck down beer, gossip, listen through the door while the others are having sex and dance around topless. There are only two names amongst the cast that require singling out. The first is Hope Marie Carlton, a Playboy Playmate best known to horror fans as the naked girl in the waterbed from the fourth Elm Street film. Strangely enough, and despite appearing naked in nearly everything else she did, Hope manages to get through this film with her clothes on. The nude duties are left to an unknown actress named Lulu Wilson and (our second "name" on the cast roster) Maria Ford, a favorite of producer Roger Corman and late-night cable junkies. There's something very sweet about Ford's voice and demeanor, so she seems miscast as the "bad girl" of the group. She'd have made a much better choice for Jackie than the actress actually playing her. Either way, it's Maria Ford and she's always an asset to whatever film she's in, even when stuck wearing a wig that looks like it was dug out of Elvira's trash bin. Now back to that slumber party massacre...

While the girls are doing their thing (which is basically sitting around looking bored), a few guys sneak over wearing monster masks to scare them. Ken shows up next. When he can't perform for Juliette (Wilson) he decides to electrocute her in the bathtub instead. Not content with the usual hair dryer or radio, he instead opts for a vibrator that Juliette found in a drawer, plugged in and left sitting on the sink for no good reason. Others are killed in a variety of ways, some of them creative. Aside from the death-by-vibrator, I particularly liked the death by "House For Sale" sign. Someone else is killed with a swordfish through the mouth. Another gets his legs cut off with a chainsaw, but manages to crawl all the way back to the house from several blocks away in a matter of minutes. A pizza delivery girl (Marta Kober, of FRIDAY THE 13TH, PART 2 fame) and numerous others are drilled. None of the moronic characters are bright enough to figure out how to leave a house. They also have plenty of opportunities to take out the killer, but insist on running away any time they get him down. The psycho manages to survive attacks with a fruit bowl, table lamp and polo mallet, plus bleach to the eyes and getting shot with a harpoon. When one girl wonders why the unconscious killer is breathing funny, another hilariously responds "Well, we hit him over the head a lot!" During Ford's prolonged death scene, her "friends" stand around and watch as she pleads for her life while the killer strips off her clothes off and drills her. Gee, thanks a lot, pals!

Brainless as this all is, it's never boring. SPM3 (which was released by Concorde / New Horizons on both DVD and VHS) is fast-paced, frequently very funny (often unintentionally so - but whatever) and has plenty of blood and a high body count. I also really dig the end theme song "Twist and Scream" by Jamie Sheriff.

★★1/2

Naked Obsession (1990)

Directed by:
Dan Golden

Sounds like one of those generic, interchangeable erotic thrillers you could stumble across flipping through the channels at 3am, right? Yep. Sure does. But titles can be - and often are - deceiving. This is actually something of a gem, made in the early days of direct-to-cable and video erotica when these movies, first and foremost, had to cut it as actual movies, with at least a semblance of a plot, actors with talent and / or some artistry. This one has all of that, as well as a sharp, funny and sometimes insightful screenplay. Though there's plenty of nudity, strip acts and some kinky sex thrown in for good measure, what this is really about is a man in the midst of a mid-life crisis who feels like he's living a lie and is ready for a reevaluation of what's truly important to him. Behind the pretty wife, the nice house in the respectable neighborhood and the cushy job with plenty of room for advancement lies a man who feels unfulfilled and bored by it all. City councilman Franklyn Carlyle (William Katt) is that man. He's on the fast track to becoming the city's mayor and, working in conjunction with an opportunistic lobbyist (Tommy Hinkley), has come up with just the project to seal the deal. Dante's Square, the "bad" area of the city filled with derelicts, drunks, prostitutes, strippers and other undesirables, could use a renovation. Eliminate the trash, build a mall, some condos and a church; "clean up the city" and the election is his for the taking.

Late one night, Franklyn decides to scout Dante's Square when someone yanks him out of his car, hits him over the head wth a 2x4 and steals both his wallet and his wheels. When he comes to, a homeless man named Sam Silver (Rick Dean) is hovering over him. Though a drunk, Sam is no idiot. In fact, he's intelligent, witty and has a real way with words. "Life ain't permanent. Don't take it so seriously," he tells the shaken politician before taking him to the seedy Ying Yang strip club. The pay phone's busy, so Sam buys Franklyn a drink instead and the two decide to sit down and enjoy the show. Beautiful, flirtatious dancer Lynne (Maria Ford) is immediately drawn to Franklyn and vice versa. After performing her routine and Franklyn's about to head out the door, Lynne shoots him such a shy, sweet smile that you just know Franklyn's not going to forget about her. In fact, he's back there the very next night, but not before trying to ignite some passion into his sterile marriage to the uptight Saundra (Wendy MacDonald), who's simply not interested.

Heading back to Dante's Square, Franklyn runs into both Sam and Lynne once again. He makes sure to pay Sam back for the other night with a bottle of booze (he prefers it blood red and warm) and decides to give Lynne a lift back home, where she introduces the reserved politician to the joys of oxygen deprivation sex. Though things get a little rough, both part ways happy. The following day, Franklyn - scared he might get exposed for the affair - returns to Lynne's apartment to ask she keep things confidential, only to discover her being hauled out on a stretcher with a rope wrapped around her neck. A detective (former 49ers linebacker Roger Craig) immediately chases after him until Sam intervenes and then things get even stranger as Sam proves to be not quite human and in possession of some otherworldly powers, Franklyn's wife turns out to be having an affair of her own with the lobbyist and other people turn up dead.

Considering I could probably watch Ford perform strip acts for 90 minutes and be perfectly content with just that, this has the added bonus of humor, originality and visual style (neon-lit nights and some interesting black-and-white sequences). The film is well-made, well-written, imaginative and unpredictable, and the cast is also pretty good, with Katt doing a fine job in the lead role and Ford bringing her usual sweetness and vulnerability to a role that would have come off as just trashy in most other's hands. Apparently the director was originally going to cast porn queen Ginger Lynn Allen in the role. Glad he didn't. The big revelation here, though, is Rick Dean as the wise, enigmatic vagrant who describes how all cities need a balance between the dark and the light to cater to an individual's unique taste and tries to convince Franklyn that he's better off learning to embracing his repressed dark side: "There's nothing wrong with the dark, you spend half your life in it. The problem is most people have their eyes closed." Talented character actor Dean (who sadly passed away in 2006) is great in this role; one of the largest and most memorable of his career. He'd play a somewhat similar part in Stripteaser (1995), which was also set in a strip club and again starred Ms. Ford.

It was produced by Roger Corman and released by Corman's Concorde / New Horizons label on VHS. Unfortunately, there is no DVD as of this writing. Hope that changes one day. Also turning up in the cast are Elena Sahagun as Franklyn's loyal and overly protective secretary, director Fred Olen Ray as the strip club MC, porn actress Madison Stone (who appeared in Ray's Evil Toons the same year) as a stripper and an unbilled Michelle Bauer as a table dancer.

★★★

Haunting of Morella, The (1989)

Directed by:

Jim Wynorski

Review coming soon.

★★

Dance of the Damned (1989)

Directed by:

Katt Shea

While not for all tastes, I found this offbeat and serious-minded low-budget Roger Corman production to be a breath of fresh air in the overcrowded vampire genre. And all it really is is a night long conversation between a self-destructive, suicidal stripper and a brooding, world weary vampire. Go figure. In the wee hours of the night, a nameless vampire (Cyril O'Reilly) approaches dancer Jodi (Starr Andreeff) while she's locking up after a long night at work. He offers her a thousand dollars to accompany him home; no strings and no sex attached. He says he needs a friend, and thinks she needs one, too. All he wants to do is talk. Reluctantly Jodi agrees, goes home with him and quickly learns her new friend is actually a vampire. Correctly sensing Jodi had given up and will probably take her own life eventually anyway, the vampire demands she explain to him what the sunlight feels like and at 6am, he'll take her pain. It certainly doesn't sound too exciting, and it probably won't be to some people, but I found it fascinating and very well done. If you're looking for gore, action and special effects, you'll find very little of that here. Instead, you get a low-key, existential character study almost similar to a stage play. In other words, there are few location changes but lots of dialogue exchanges. It's a good example of a film that doesn't need to be a slave to FX work to be successful. There can be so much more to the genre than just cheap shocks and blood spurting when a common horror theme is put into the hands of someone with talent and imagination. It's also an excellent late night movie; watch it when it's quiet, it's dark and you're alone and in a reflective mood.

The script by Katt Shea and Andy Ruben (who were married at the time this was made) not only has some great insight into the outcast condition and very good character development but also some wonderfully poetic passages. One highlight is a beautifully written scene on a beach where the leading lady has to explain to the Vampire what sunlight feels like. It's in her description of this simple feeling that gives her back her will to live. In scenes where the two characters describe their troubled pasts, the monologues are so well written and detailed you can visualize them without having to actually see them on screen. Clever parallels are drawn between two different lost souls (not to mention two different species); one of whom is forced to live in the night and the other so wounded she's compelled to. Both leads turn in good performances and do their roles justice, and this film manages to be thought-provoking, sometimes very funny and sometimes very moving. While a million blockbuster type movies involving vampires come and go and entertain while they're around, this one has actually resonates with me more over time. It's a shame not many people know anything about it.

I not only recommend this, but also the director's excellent 1990 drama-thriller STREETS (starring a young Christina Applegate), and even her more exploitative serial-killer-in-a-strip-club flick STRIPPED TO KILL. They're all well above average for the genre, humorous at times, well written and with a heavy concentration on character. Shea shows the same kind of early talent as the best directors to come from Roger Corman U... including Coppola and Demme. In fact, I'd probably place her near the top of a list of the countless director's Corman has supported over the years. And she's certainly one of the most promising female director's I've ever come across.

Amazingly, Dance - the little known sleeper it is - was actually remade in 1993 as TO SLEEP WITH A VAMPIRE. That version, which was also produced by Corman and reused much of the same storyline and dialogue, does not come close to this version. Guess which one has been released on DVD? I wish I could say it was this one, but unfortunately some boneheads decided to release the remake instead while this worthy film languishes in VHS obscurity. Hopefully someone, some day will get this out to the masses so it can find an audience.

Future B-movie queen Maria Ford has a small role as a stripper.

★★★1/2