The House on Sorority Row is about a Sorority planning a party and the house mother is an old bitch named Mrs. Slater. The girls don’t like her because she’s grumpy and doesn’t let them do anything. Mrs. Slater doesn’t like them because she’s old and hates most things. The girls play a trick on her, they pretend to shoot her and make her get into the gross pool. Plan backfires and the gun…umm fires I guess and kills Mrs. Slater. The girls toss her into the pool and go on with the party, as you do. Now someone is going around killing people at the party, one by one with a cane. Is Mrs. Slater not dead? Is she the killer? GASP!
Dammit SLATER!
Not you A.C., with your jheri curl mullet, the old bat with the cane!
THIS IS HOW YOU GET A MOLDY SUBFLOOR!
The acting is ok. Ok, in the way of passable, I mean no one is winning an Oscar here! Mrs. Slater is rather wooden, and that is before she becomes a stiff…., she’s played by Lois Kelso Hunt, known for such movies as The House on Sorority Row and…yeah that’s about it. The girls are all kind of cute, in an 80s mall hair way. Kate McNeil plays Katherine the goody goody final girl that of course questions the others about their morality when tossing the old bird in the disgusting ass pool after they blow her away. Eileen Davidson plays Vicki, she’s kind of the ring leader of sorts. Vicki gets caught bangin her boyfriend on a waterbed and we all know from Pieces that “the most beautiful thing in the world is smoking weed and fucking on a waterbed”. Mrs. Slater pops the bed, which is a bold move because that bad boy would gush EVERYWHERE then you got a rotten subfloor to replace Slater! Did you think of that?! No you were too worried about a young virile sex kitten taking a roll in the hay with some Chad that is undoubtably from some frat house nearby! So by all means ruin this house so you can get back to watching the latest episode of Matlock! Matlock….I once had a crazy thought about that show. What if Matlock killed all those people, but the old guy was so smart and crafty he was able to frame everyone so he got off easily? Think about that! Because this is the fuckin Matlock blog now! Jesus you can tell it is the end of the month because your boy is getting silly here. On to the next thing.
The special effects are much in the way of the acting nothing great, nothing shitty just middle of the road and that is ok, the head in the toilet was a nice touch(see right). Most of the kills are similar: stabbings with the cane. Kind of an interesting murder weapon, and it is also the major red herring in the movie. Because Mrs. Slater isn’t the killer, it is her long lost son Eric. At the beginning of the movie they show a woman going into labor, the doctor has to preform surgery, she loses the baby. Or so it seems! WHOA! Yeah so Eric is alive and he’s crazy as fuck I guess. Some doctor is trying to capture him and uses Katherine as bait. She goes into the house and there is this creepy ass clown in the background. You see it off in the distance behind her. Suddenly the clown rises up and goes after her slowly. I LOVE THIS SHOT! For sure it is ripped off from Halloween and Michael sitting up behind Laurie, but shut up Halloween is awesome and does so many things right, that other slashers do not capitalize on! This movie I’ll give credit to for taking one of the more subtly effective things from Halloween and using it. She fights the dude off and ends up stabbing him tons of times, but his eyes open at the end.
If you’re looking for some super original idea with awesome effects and top notch acting then this isn’t for you. If you’re like me and you’ve seen a buttload of slasher movies and you want one that actually tries to be good, then check this out. I always enjoy this movie. It has some atmosphere to it and that can be a rarity in the slasher genre. The early 80s slashers spent more time building suspense and characters and less on body counts. This actually has a decent body count of like 8 or something, but the characters are charming and the suspense builds nicely at the end. I give this movie a B. It has some rough acting and clunky dialogue but all in all it deserves more recognition.
