The Slumber Party Massacre

I talk about them about them all the time, I know, but they have such great screenings I just can't help it. They were great at The State of Things in Bristol. I'm super excited about what they'll do for Halloween. Of course its The Final Girls.

Back in July, before all the madness happened, Fox (I've mentioned her a few times) and me got tickets to see a slasher movie. Not the sort of thing I'd do on a Friday night but the I remembered reading about it somewhere else before (I'm pretty convinced it was Dell on Movies) and thinking this sounds awesome.

The Slumber Party Massacre isn’t your average 70s/80s slasher, it is known as the first feminist slasher movie. Slasher films usually feature women half naked most of the time, getting killed all the time and overall, a negative representation of women.

Rita Mae Brown, feminist writer and activist, originally wrote the screenplay for The Slumber Party Massacre as parody of the genre but as production moved on, some things were changed. When editor and aspiring director Amy Holden Jones ended up with the script for The Slumber Party Massacre, things looked like they’d change for the better. But Roger Corman, praised in the industry for his work, wanted more gore, more naked women, as the film has filled its quota. Regardless of these changes, the film stands out as being progressive (in my eyes anyway) in more ways than one.

The story goes, a group of ‘high school girls’ all on the basketball team, plan a slumber party at Trish’s house whose parents are away. They invite new girl Valerie, who lives next door but feels uncomfortable and doesn’t go. It also just so happens that mass murderer Russ Thorn has escaped and starts killing everyone he meets, but he seems fixated on this group of girls. The girls are in for a scary and bloody night.

The panel talk that followed the screening was brilliant. Discussing how the women are depicted as more capable as they actually fight back, arming themselves with knives when a pizza delivery guy drops dead in the living room after one of the nastiest off screen deaths. It was also noted that the women who dressed in short wear lived longer which was a intriguing observation. The objectification of women is seen but in a way it was more natural, if a little pointless but this was on purpose. A shower scene where women discuss athletes and later on in the house, undressing in the living room so the boys have an opportunity to watch them. The men’s deaths are actually more gruesome, as the men are screaming in pain (and understandably). Even the killer is shown to be weaker than then women when he corners one of the final girls with his weapon of choice, a phallic like object, an electric drill than is chopped down with a machete. He begins to loose at this stage, whining like a child and falling into the pool. Another fair point is that women are seen in jobs such as carpenter and phone line repairer, which is refreshing and more importantly, completely normal. The team’s coach, also a woman, is a fighter. She senses something is wrong and goes over to help, fighting back, almost cornering the killer. These genre tropes being challenged were strangely uplifting. Feels odd to say this about a slasher movie, but it’s true, a Friday night out that is hard to beat.

@TheFinalGirlsUK 

@BFI

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