The Dorm That Dripped Blood

Well, that was a downer! And I mean that in the best sense. In fact, The Dorm That Dripped Blood has an ending so mean...so cruel...so nuts...that it actually elevates the entire film that came before it. Before that moment, The Dorm That Dripped Blood basically clips along as a decent enough college slash 'em up, but the ending really sends it over the top.

The film follows a group of college kids staying over the holiday break to take inventory and clean up an old deserted dorm. Soon enough, they find themselves sliced and diced by an unseen murderer. Why? Who knows. People handle the stress of college in their own unique ways.

The murders are mostly well staged and there's a handful of suspense here and there. Most of the actors are fine if nothing else. There's a fun cameo by Daphne Zuniga and a pretty cool music score by Christopher Young if that helps.

All in all, The Dorm That Dripped Blood is a decent little time waster. You could do much worse.

The Dorm That Dripped Blood has a chip on its shoulder. A big one! If you're looking for your run of the mill "tits and blood" slasher, this might not be the one for you. It's darkly lit, creepy, and the film stock is grainy, making it feel more like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Last House on the Left than a Friday the 13th sequel.

The story is nothing special. A group of college students (some of whom look a bit too long in the tooth to be college kids) stay over a holiday break to take inventory in an old dorm and are stalked and killed by someone who will be revealed during the shocking climax.

The cast is decent if a bit dull, but they do a decent enough job and there's not a lot of suspense or scares, but The Dorm That Dripped Blood stands out from the pack by the sheer mean spiritedness of its death scenes and unpredictable kill order. It doesn't play nice or by the rules and there's something sort of exciting about that. The ending is an especially shocking downer.

It's also the feature film debut of Daphne Zuniga, so that's kinda neat. She doesn't have much screen time, but she does a decent job and is featured in one of the wildest and most mean spirited moments of the film.

The Dorm That Dripped Blood might not be a genius work of art, but it has enough interesting moments to make it worth a watch.

Must give Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow credit for having the guts to go against established slasher formulas to create something different. There's definitely an attempt to set atmosphere over numerous scenes of gore. There is attempt to develop the characters. The ending is what makes the film memorable. Maybe the motivations for the killings isn't original, but it doesn't have to be. Sometimes in life bad people win. It sucks. It's infuriating, but sometimes that's how it goes. I applaud the writers and directors for going against the grain with this one.

The Dorm That Dripped Blood has never been mentioned in many "best horror films of all time" lists and it probably never will be, but if grisly gore is your thing, there are worse ways to spend your 90 minutes. It at least has an admirable mean streak that runs throughout where you feel that no one is safe and that's a good thing to feel in a horror movie. A lot of the college kids look like they might be old enough to have children in college themselves, but that's part of the fun of these cheap horror movies, isn't it?

College girl Joanne Murray takes on the unenviable job of readying the student housing building to become apartments,which includes selling the unneeded furniture This takes place during a break,so a mysterious psycho is stalking the nearly-empty premises on campus."Dorm that Dripped Blood" is a low-budget slasher flick that is quite entertaining.The acting is pretty bad,the plot is predictable,but the gore effects are quite good.The film was made by UCLA film students Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow for next to nothing.Soon a dreamy ambiance kicks in,very similar to the enveloping forests of Jeff Leiberman's fantastic "Just Before Dawn".7 out of 10.It's great to see Daphne Zuniga of "The Initiation" fame run over few times by a car.