User reviews

Listen, I've suffered through a lot of bad movies in my day, but the exciting thing about them is that, sometimes, they're so awful they almost turn into bizarre comedies full of weird line readings, insane dialogue, completely inhuman responses to big twists, etc. For me, the worst thing a film can do is be boring or mundane without a single inspired moment and, honestly, most bad films are usually far from boring.

This brings me to Sorority House Massacre - a film so dull, passionless, and lacking in anything remotely resembling excitement that I'm surprised I remembered it enough to give this review.

It manages to cram the plots of Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street into one, but it does absolutely nothing of note. Usually, in even the worst of slasher films, there's a character or death scene or two worth remembering, but there's absolutely nothing to latch onto here. It's all just going through the motions.

If you value your time, skip it.

Sorority House Massacre isn't too bad at all, but there is nothing original or fresh about it either. The basic plot is the same as Halloween (killer from an asylum escapes in search of his sister) and borrows a little from Nightmare On Elm Street (lots of weird nightmares about the killer). The nightmares don't really add much to the film, so I think it would have been better if they had been left out. The build up to the climax is a little slow, but once the action kicks in there are surprisingly a few tense moments, such as when the killer tries to climb in through the window.

Overall, Sorority House Massacre is just an average slasher flick. Watchable, but not very original. Also not very gory, so gore-hounds should look elsewhere.

Mad killer escapes from an insane asylum and goes after his sister (does this remind you of anything?), with whom he shares an unexplained telepathic link. This film is not too bad of its type, but it's just too derivative of both "Halloween" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" (there are many ominous dream sequences). The main heroine is fairly engaging, but the rest of the characters are almost indistinguishable from one another (and the men are badly acted, too). (**)

An authentic whack job (John C. Russell) wants out of the mental asylum he is in. Once he escapes he goes to a sorority house where he seems to have a certain connection to a college girl named Beth (Angela O'Neill).

In the end this movie is better than it should have really been. Does have some good imagery during the dream sequences, but takes too much from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and way too much from HALLOWEEN. I thought a big thing that would have worked for the movie was adding some back story to the characters. We do get Beth's, but none of the other characters seem to have much of a back story. None of the male college students have any. Because of this the only characters I really cared about were Beth and John (Vinnie Bilancio). John just seemed to be a nice guy, but man I wanted to get deeper into his character than what I got. You may say that's what you get for watching a slasher. Maybe, but I am not going to lower my bar just because I am watching a slasher flick. They too can have well-developed characters. I also think by doing this it may have extended the running time a little as it comes in at only 74 minutes.

Anyways, on a side note they end up watching SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE, which I do recommend watching and writer/director Carol Frank worked as assistant to the director in that film. As well when some of the college girls decide to go through Cindy's clothes who has gone away for the weekend you are welcomed to Shoulder Pad City. Ahhh the 80s.

one night when i came across this movie in blockbuster i picked it up knowing that i would probably get a bad horror film. but i thought it would be bad in a good way. i should have known not too rent this, horror films were great from 74-84, but anything after that for the most part sucked. there are so many things that made this movie bad, too many too name, but i'll name one. this is the biggest Halloween rip off i ever saw. killer breaks out of a Psycho ward, and goes after this girl and what we find out is that her familly was killed by her brother and now he's coming for her. if that's not a Halloween rip off i don't know what is, if you wanna rip off Halloween that's fine it was a great movie, but atleast do a good job. i almost past out so many times durring the movie, it's so boring i can't think of one thing good to say about this movie at all i give it 1/10, and i give it a one only cause they riped off a classic horror film so atleast the makers of the film have taste

Sorority House Massacre could be forgiven for shamelessly aping other horror films such as Halloween (and it's first sequel) and The Eyes of Laura Mars, but it has the audacity to bring absolutely nothing original to the plate at all which makes the whole film feel like watching paint dry.

In the film, we have a young sorority girl plagued with visions of her insane brother who killed her family and, now, wants to come after her and her sorority friends after breaking out of an asylum. Clearly, not the most original plot in the world, but if Sorority House Massacre had at least attempted to bring in some fresh characterizations, interesting dialogue, or maybe an inspired sequence of suspense or two, it wouldn't have felt so stale.

"Sorority House Massacre" (1986) combines the plot of "Halloween" (psycho killer escapes asylum and goes after his little sister) with the sorority house setting of "The House on Sorority Row" (1983) and "Black Christmas" (1974). But the production values are subpar by comparison, sparking some to call it the worst 80's slasher film.

It's true that the movie starts shaky with filmmaking akin to an old soap opera, but it builds some suspense in the second half. And there are a few gems, like when Beth's sorta-date (the short, dark-haired guy) says, "I just like being with you." This shows that the writer actually put in some effort despite the Grade B (or Grade C) production values. The fact that there's no camp and everything plays out deadly seriously is a plus.

The film is short and sweet at 1 hour, 14 minutes; it was shot in Los Angeles.

GRADE: C

My friend and I got together and we were looking for a movie on satellite. Return of the Sith? Nah, too long. Sideways? Nope, too heady. Sorority House Massacre? Charge my card immediately!! Throw this movie in with cheesy, 80s horror flicks. Other films like "Slumber Party" Massacre come to mind. All are pretty much knockoffs of Halloween, the godfather of modern slasher flicks (I don't think Psycho was, for it was of an earlier generation). But it's all there, the bad 80s hair and outfits, actors that can't annunciate, and a killer that doesn't die, even after repeatedly being stabbed, punched, and hit with a shovel. This guy must be made of steel.

If the girl having visions about murders in her dream isn't a complete ripoff from Nightmare on Elm Street, nothing is. True, this freakish girl doesn't die in her dreams but everyone around her goes by the wayside. I'm surprised she wasn't subjected to more abuse, as she really was weird and had an eerie resemblance to Kyle McLaughlin.

Not to say I expected Shakespeare when I watched this rubbish. Bad acting was expected, some mindless T&A to go with several dead bodies, and that's what I received. The money shot occurs when the murderer is coming after the sorority girls, falls two stories off a ladder, then is able to spontaneously crash through the window minutes later. Even Altman couldn't pull that one off.

So ya, this is your basic 80s slasher flick. Not necessarily funny but mildly amusing. Make sure you watch it with a friend and crack jokes through it's entirety. And if somehow this movie scares you, get a cigarette and a shrink.

When people think of trashy 80s slasher films, this is the kind of movie that comes to mind. A bunch of sorority girls have a slumber party with their boyfriends and only one will survive unslashed - but not before a good serving of boobies, some tasteful man butt (which is either clothed or exposed depending on the camera angle), and a clothes changing montage with music that seems ripe for a vaporwave remix. The script is barely even TV quality, the acting is too restrained to convey any real tension, and the villain basically has no motivation. He's just a scary guy who waves a knife around and occasionally connects it with a screaming bimbo. If you're in the mood for junk food then this is worth an impulse watch (it's only 70 minutes, after all), but if you're actually looking to be scared or thrilled, don't bother.

"Sorority House Massacre" follows Beth, a college coed who is spending Memorial Day Weekend at a sorority house with several sisters who want her to join. The house seems strangely familiar to Beth, and a series of dreams and bizarre visions link her to a madman who is dead set on nabbing her in the house.

In some ways a "Halloween" ripoff of the highest order, "Sorority House Massacre" takes the blueprint of Carpenter's classic and bases itself on the precise premise without an ounce of shame. Madman breaking out of a psych ward, shots of a group of girls walking through the tree-lined suburbs to class (except here the location is unabashedly California, and the girls college students). While some people have ripped this film for its shameless imitation, genre fans are more likely to appreciate the funky weirdness the film has to offer.

There are tinges of a psychic thriller set inside the slasher framework here that are handled surprisingly decently; lots of talk of ghosts, dreams and psychology, and brainwave connections make for some inventive plot fixings. The flashbacks and Beth's bizarre visions of the villain are edited and presented in a startling fashion, and somehow manage to be mildly creepy. The film is much less gory than the title would suggest, which is another reason the film falls in line with a psychic thriller perhaps more than a straightforward slasher. The performances are ho-hum at best, but for a low-budget late eighties horror flick, they are completely respectable.

Overall, "Sorority House Massacre" is a heck of a lot better than it should be. It is contrived and at times silly, but there are some genuinely startling on screen encounters with the villain, and the film is engaging in all of its hokey eighties corniness. The obnoxious late- eighties "Saved By the Bell" wardrobe and California atmosphere is also another amusing point of interest. 6/10.

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

A little girl's brother kills the whole family, but she escapes by hiding in the basement. He is committed, and she grows up with a new family, eventually going to college and joining a sorority. Due to memory loss, she does not remember that the sorority house was her childhood home.

Thank you, Roger Corman, for producing this cheap attempt at a slasher, cashing in on a craze at the time. You are a producing genius.

I am more than a little confused by the "trying on the wardrobe" scene. Did it help the plot? No. This seemed like an excuse to play bad music for a minute and show three girls in various stages of undress. While (for good or bad) nudity is a crucial part of the slasher, this pushed the concept of "gratuitous" to new levels.

The film was written and directed Carol Frank, assistant to the director of "Slumber Party Massacre". Clearly that film's influence on this one is obvious, if for n other reason than the title. And Frank has done little else in the world of movies... very mysterious. (For what it is worth, this film is more than good for a first time director... the potential for a career was certainly there.)

The lead actress, Angela O'Neill, is unknown to most people, but she is actually now a success in Hollywood -- in the arts and props department. She has worked on such films as "American Beauty" and "Apollo 13". If this film did nothing else for the world of cinema, it launched O'Neill's career, and has benefited us all.

Beth moves into a sorority house where a family was once killed. Soon the killer returns to continue his bloody rampage and murder a bunch of screaming sorority girls and their boyfriends.

The killer is a lot like Micheal Myers without the mask. He has a big knife, he is a heavy breather who doesn't say much, and he likes to stand in shadows a lot. He does, however, have a much faster pace. Extremely low budget, acting is nothing special, cinematography looks like something a kid could do, but with a running time of 1 hour and 15 minutes not a total waste of time for slasher fans.

* out of ****

I should be kinder to a movie that gets in and out so quickly, and it doesn't lack for a bit of fun sexual frolicking (not so much sex so much as a gratuitous changing clothes montage where the lead actress doesn't change, in part because the character is traumatized sure but also the actress didn't want to go nude), or an admirable PB&J smashed-together homage at one point where our lead heroine is in a classroom and thinks she sees the killer outside the window only to have a freak-out over really being asleep (so Halloween and Elm Street together are last I guess). And Angela O'Neill is fine as the lead Final Gal.

But it's all mostly generic-sauce when it comes to the kills and set up, and so many of these premises of a mad dog of a man escaping from a Mad-House to, uh, psychically track his prey, and the acting is just OK (the big hair is the stand out) and the kills when they come have a little blood but not a lot of creativity beside Stab-Stab-Stab. It does move quickly and I'm sure for an agrual sleepover if any of you silly high school people decide to throw on this at random from Shudder you may get enough Prime Cheese out of it to suffice.

It doesn't help though that the director here (one time only as it seems, Carol Frank) was a hired gun off of her AD-ing on Slumber Party Massacre, which managed to have a lot more ingenuity and a sharper sense of dark humor than this Woman Has Scary F-ed up Dreams Oh My thing here. I actually found a few of these Nightmare set pieces early on fairly creative as far as the camerawork and surreality of it all, but it gers repeated too much and without much of an explanation (I assume she knew the killer as a child, but since the child actor on hand was probably only available for like an afternoon they didn't get more than they probably needed for that thread).

This is all to say Sorority House Massacre certainly exists and is nowhere near the worst Slasher out there; it may even be a little better than it's closest antecedent, House on Sorority Row, and I'd certainly take competent over boring-mediocre. If only it did... more than it had.

This was a pretty poor eighties slasher movie. It was very obviously a copy of Halloween (1978) but done really badly. Very little happened in the movie. It was so horrifically unoriginal. Nothing stood out about the mess except for the really poor filmmaking. Badly scripted, unimaginatively directed and overall simply really dull. It gets an extra point for containing some great nudity. I miss eighties nudity. I suppose there is some charm in watching something so unoriginal and derivative, it is like a blanket - cosy, warm, familiar but also essentially forgotten immediately. It's not worth watching.

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.

Sorority House Massacre just has to be the most hysterical slasher movie of the mid to late 80's even though it was never intended to be this way! I watched this with some friends and we cried our eyes out laughing. It failed to be scary on every level, in fact the only scary thing about this movie was the girls hairstyles and the conversations about their clothes, boys and food that was supposed to carry the film along. If a guy had made this movie he would have been shot by feminists for stereotyping teenage girls. As it stands, the woman who directed this and the producers who handed over the money for such tripe should be executed for squandering!! Still, I'd watch this movie again and again, it's as good as any horror spoof even though we're not supposed to snigger when one of the girls gets butchered and her stud boyfriend runs into the house naked except for some sneakers and cheesy white socks, sprouting, in a deep jock voice with twitching eyebrows "Some guy just killed Tracy"...Classic!!!!

I found this to be a pretty good movie. The scene with the dolls at the kitchen tables is one of the more memorable horror scenes for me. It gets to be a bit campy, but it is a generally good movie. There is horror, laughter, and as with any good teen horror...naked women. While it is taking a lot from Halloween I still find it to be a good watch and would recommend it to anyone.

Sorority House Massacre (1987) C-74 min. D: Carol Frank. Angela O'Neill, Wendy Martel, Pamela Ross, Nicole Rio, John C. Russell, Marcus Vaughter, Vinnie Bilancio, Joe Nassi, Mary Anne, Gillian Frank, Joseph Mansier. Surprisingly good of its kind, this slasher flick, one of many MASSACRE films of the 80s, has more character development, symbolism, and backstory than it has any business having. A college student pledging for a sorority spends the weekend in the sorority house with her future sisters, sensing that her psychotic brother is coming after her. Guess what happens next. Lines like `Hold on, where's my brain?' make this film an Oscar contender (*sarcasm alert*). For slasher fans and horny guys looking for lots of big breasts and erotic butt shots. RATING: 5 out of 10. RATED R for graphic violence, grisly images, profanity, sexuality, nudity, adult themes.