User reviews

Jim Wynorski's movies are, frankly, beyond criticism. They don't pretend to be anything other than what they are--an excuse to see beautiful women naked. That's it. Nothing else. No messages, no points to ponder, no pleas for peace, love and brotherhood. Just gorgeous women in varying and frequent stages of nudity. Wynorski, unlike many directors of this type of flick, actually has a sense of humor and salts his films liberally with it. This one is a bit different than usual, but not much. It has great looking women, nudity, guns, nudity, blood, nudity, a fat guy, nudity (not the fat guy's, thankfully), and, on top of all of that, nudity. If that's what you're looking for, this film delivers. The girls aren't good--or even competent--actresses, but then again, they're not supposed to be. They're there to giggle, look scared, run around in lingerie and take their clothes off, and they do all that quite well. You rent a Jim Wynorski movie pretty much knowing what you're going to get, and he seldom disappoints. Wynorski's films deliver what they promise--a characteristic many films nowadays fail to follow through on--and you can't ask for much more than that.

Pretty good, mindless fun; better than part II was.

A group of four (or three, or five, depending on the scene) scantily clad, large-breasted babes open a box from hell, and unleash a familiar demonic killer in plaid, who proceeds to wreck havoc in the high rise office building they're working in late one night. They open another crate, from which two more scantily clad babes fall out of and onto the floor. They finally realise that something isn't quite right, so turn to conveniently located high powered weaponry to stop this murderous fruitcake in plaid.

The sprinkler system goes off, just as an excuse to turn it into basically a wet t-shirt contest, and give the girls an excuse to shower. Not that there is anything wrong with that, however. The same lightning flashes from Sorority House Massacre II, which was lifted from Gilligan's Island, are reused again here for mood lighting.

This is a bit of moronic fun, better than part I and II (Sorority House Massacre I and II) were, but it still can't quite reach the same levels of high camp that it wants to, and ends up being a bit too silly for its own good. Not to mention long. But, any movie with Robyn Harris in a nightie is well worth watching.

The art of motion pictures is young, but in lieu of the fact that this ground breaking film was made so early on, one can only look ahead to a bright future on the silver screen. Really, only three films come to mind: Dr. Zhivago, Casablanca, and Hard to Die.

Perhaps it was the buckets of watered-down blood, the squeak of a naked breast being washed in an arbitrary shower scene, or the powerful screen presence of the acting giant "Orville Ketchum." Whatever it may be, it made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me fall in love.

I am proud to say that I own a grainy, low quality copy of this piece of cinematic genius.

The original title was supposed to be "Sorority House Massacre III: Hard to Die", but they wisely dropped the first part because … well … there isn't a sorority house in sight! Still, even if they kept the full title it wouldn't have made much of a difference, as the whole thing is already quite absurd and preposterous anyways. This incredibly cheap and trashy slasher flick is just an excuse to showcase a bunch of girls hysterically running around in sexy lingerie or – even better – with their prime cups exposed in extended soapy shower sequences. Oh yeah, there's also an ultra-thin plot line about a malicious parasite-spirit that floats out of a mysterious Egyptian artifact and possesses one of the chicks. For you see, they were all recruited to do the inventory of a lingerie company overnight, which gives them easy access to luscious outfits and the manager's private shower. Then there's also Orville Ketchum! He's basically the good guy who wants to rescue the babes, but since he looks and slavers like a big fat pervert, stumbles around like a decaying zombie and never opens his mouth when he's supposed to, the girls understandably consider him to be the killer. Then again, knowing that he's around doesn't stop them from going into the basement in thongs, though. Orville is a downright fantastic persona, and you'll quickly notice that he's even more indestructible than Arnold Schwarzenegger in "The Terminator" (and, as far as I know, he's not even a cyborg). "Hard to Die" gradually gets more absurd and over-the-top with every minute that passes. The girls defend themselves with heavy machine artillery that magically appeared and Orville staples bandages to his bloodied chest! The notorious Jim Wynorski directed this flick during the early nineties, when his work was still more or less watchable. Ironically enough, "Hard to Die" ranks as his best work, alongside 80's favorite "Chopping Mall" and the underrated horror parody "Transylvania Twist". After 1995, the best things about his films are the witty and imaginative titles, such as "The Devil Wears Nada" or "The Hills have Thighs". The five lead actresses obviously aren't selected based on their Oscar potential, but they inarguably have delicious curves and tasty blouse bunnies (and definitely not too shy to show them). Respecting the overall rules of cinema, I simply cannot reward "Hard to Die" with a rating higher than 3/10, but - make no mistake – it comes with my wholehearted recommendation.

This movie sucked. The box claimed that it was the female version of Die-Hard, this movie was anything but that. It started out as soft port then a horror flick and finally an action sequence. The only redeeming quality was that it was only 80 mins. I was really disappointed since I thought this movie was similar to Die Hard but I guess not. Grrrrrrrrrr.

The third in the SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE trilogy but they renamed it for some reason. This time around we're in an office building, where a group of lingerie-clad employees encounter a murderous spirit that dispatches them one by one. It's cringy, cheesy stuff throughout, focusing on showering and nudity and little else.

This film begins with two young women named "Dawn" (Robyn Harris) and "Tess" (Melissa Moore) meeting each other outside of a high-rise building in Los Angeles where they have been hired by the Acme Lingerie company to move some of the inventory from the basement to the office. Once inside the building they are joined by three other young ladies named "Jackie" (Deborah Dutch), "Shayne" (Bridget Carney) and "Diana" (Lindsay Taylor) on the ground floor near the elevators. While waiting there, they are suddenly surprised by a menacing looking man by the name of "Orville Ketchum" (Peter Spellos) who one of them immediately recognizes as the man somehow involved in a series of murders about a year earlier. Fortunately, he wanders off without disturbing them too much at that point. However, no sooner does he walk off then they are met by a delivery man who has a package for them. Dawn signs for it and, when the elevator suddenly door opens Orville emerges and scares them again. However, upon questioning him, he recounts the details of that murder which subsequently terrifies them even more. Still frightened once he wanders off again. Naturally, not wanting to spend any more time with him, they quickly retreat into the elevator to go to their office. Once there, they eventually open the package that Dawn signed for--and the murders begin not too long after that. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this film started off reasonably well with some good humor and several scenes of an erotic nature being prominently displayed. Unfortunately, as the film progressed, it quickly dissolved into the same scene being basically replayed again and again. And it got incredibly monotonous after that. That being said, even though there were several attractive actresses featured, with Robyn Harris and Melissa Moore being the prettiest in my opinion, I actually liked the character played by Peter Spellos the most. Poor guy, he just can't seem to catch a break. In any case, as much as I might have liked the cast, I thought the film itself was much too cheap and boring, and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

To me, I know what to expect when I see a video box that has a woman on the front cover wearing a bra and holding a machine gun, along with a 4-Star Rating from Joe Bob Briggs. It always amazes me that people rent this stuff, apparently expecting Bergman or something, and THEN decide they have to write negative reviews denouncing the overall silliness, bad acting, cheap production values and amount of nudity and/or violence. To me, HARD TO DIE delivered exactly what it promised on the box...action, blood, babes, machine guns, Corman references (this is, after all, a New Horizons video) and loads of cheesy fun.

Five scantily-clad young women (Gail Harris, Karen Mayo-Chandler, Deborah Dutch, Melissa Moore and Bridget Carney) are hired to work a temp inventory job at "Acme Lingerie" in a closed down for the night high-rise. They all get naked in a touching group shower scene that alludes to the powers of female bonding (HA!), try on the new Fall lineup of underwear, then accidentally open a "soul box" containing the spirit of Hockstetter, the notorious "sorority house killer" (last seen in Wynorski's similar SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE 2). Someone in the group becomes possessed by the evil spirit and starts killing the others with a hook. Thankfully there's an armory shop in the same building, so the surviving girls get to defend themselves with high-powered machine guns! Big Peter Spellos returns from SHM2 as hulking Orville Ketchum, who is mistaken for the killer and outlives a dozen or so knees to the crotch, stabbings and gunshots (not to mention a fall off the roof!).

If you decide to take these zany proceedings seriously, that is your choice, but approached in the right state of mind, it's often hilarious. There's B-movie ingenuity at work here in this silly time-waster. It is action, nudity and in-joke packed and the ladies are all all pretty fun and energetic, so it's fine viewing for the audience intended. If you do not like these films, simply do yourself a favor and stop watching them.

This movie is credited to Arch Stanton but was actually directed B-movie legend Jim Wynorksi, which makes one wonder 'how bad does a film need to be for Wynorski to hide behind a pseudonym?'. A sequel of sorts to Sorority House Massacre II, the film is an undeniably dumb, poorly written, badly acted and clumsily directed mess, but actually isn't as unwatchable as one might imagine, providing you set your expectations low: Wynorski wisely adopts a tongue-in-cheek approach, and provides an almost endless parade of semi-naked big-breasted women, which certainly helps to make the time pass less painfully.

Gail Thackray (also hiding behind a pseudonym - Robyn Harris) and Melissa Moore play Dawn and Tess, employees at the ACME lingerie company, who have been tasked with doing the annual inventory. Helping them are temps Jackie and Shayne (Deborah Dutch and Bridget Carney), who dress like they've come from a call-girl agency rather than a temp agency. Also in the office to lend a hand is new secretary Diana (Karen Mayo-Chandler). Shifting dusty boxes from the basement to the 8th floor gets the girls all grimy, so they take it in turns to have a shower and then slip into some of the company's new range of skimpy underwear. However, the evening takes a terrifying turn for the ladies when they open a parcel that has been delivered to the wrong address and accidentally release the soul of serial killer Hokstedter, who quickly gets to work reducing the staff count.

What follows is typical Wynorski trash, the girls running around the building in their barely-there undies, while trying to avoid creepy janitor Orville Ketchum (Peter Spellos), who they believe is doing all the killing. Dawn, the cutest and most resourceful of the girls, has numerous encounters with Ketchum, repeatedly stabbing him and whacking him in the nuts, but he won't stay down - which turns out to be a good thing, since he is actually trying to protect her, the real murderer being Diana, who has been possessed by Hokstedter. The finalé sees Dawn and Diana engaging in a drawn out, bullet-riddled gun battle, 'cos in Wynorski's world, there's nowt more entertaining than two buxom women in their scanties firing machine guns.

this is quite possibly the greatest piece of american cinema to date! jim wynorski is a genius. 5 girls in a lingiure factory + orville ketchum > tons of crazy hijinks. i watch this film daily to prepare for life. wonderful acting, plot, special fx!!! who is the killer? i still don't know after 233 viewings. all i do know is that if you haven't seen this film, your an idiot. my favorite film of all time. please please make another sequel!!!! slumber 4, soroity 3, or just hard to die 2. greatest film ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I simply love this film. The five main characters are just gorgeous. Sure this movie is badly acted, but its lots and lots of fun. Rent it and you'll see how the director exploits the babes' bodies. IT HAS LOTS of nudity, some blood, barely dressed chicks shooting each other, a lot of screaming and a really high sense of fun. I am proud to say I own a copy of this film and its one of my favorite slasher movies from the 90's.

Orville Ketchum is back in this sleazy slasher by Jim Wynorski.Skimpy clothed chicks in a skyscraper of of the Acme Lingerie Company are being stalked and eventually murdered by demonic Egyptian killer.Like "Sorority House Massacre II" "Hard to Die" is an exercise in tasty sleaze and schlocky humor.It works as some sort of a sequel to "Sorority House Massacre II".Orville Ketchum is fantastic as creepy janitor and there is also memorable cameo of Famous Monsters creator Forrest J.Ackerman.If you like gore and gratuitous nudity you can't go wrong with "Hard to Die" aka "Sorority House Massacre III".Naked bimbos having long showers and touching their naked breasts.Count me in.7 bloodied boobs out of 10.

Hard to Die (1990)

** (out of 4)

Unofficial third film in the SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE series features most of the same cast as the second film, although they're all in new roles (obviously). The story is pretty simple as five ladies dressed in lingerie's must fight off a killer while trapped inside a skyscraper. HARD TO DIE is a pretty silly and over-the-top film that is quite campy from the first scene to the last but what else would you expect from director Jim Wynorski? Like the previous film, this one here has a few confusing moments dealing with a completely different series. The Orville Ketchum (Peter Spellos) character from the previous film is introduced here as the "suspect" from the "previous events" but when he tells the story of what happened that night, instead of using clips from SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE II they instead use clips from THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE. I'm not exactly sure why this was done as the story here perfectly concludes what happened at the end of the previous one but oh well. As for HARD TO DIE, it's a fairly entertaining movie as long as you don't take it too serious. The five actresses obviously all have big boobs and they're constantly shaking around throughout the 78-minute running time. The actresses are all good for what they're asked to do and this includes one of the most obvious "shower scenes" in the history of horror movies. Forrest J. Ackerman has a brief bit as does Wynorski who plays a porn director. Spellos is a lot of fun as the suspected killer who is constantly scaring the girls no matter what he's doing. There's a long-running gag dealing with him scaring the girls, which is pretty funny and we get an even longer running gag dealing with his constantly being shot, beaten, stabbed and yet he can never die. The gore level isn't all that high and you never really see any deaths on screen as we usually just hear a scream and then blood being splashed on the wall. The film eventually runs out of steam and especially when you consider this is pretty much just the previous movie only just set in a skyscraper. Either way, fans of trashy and silly direct-to-video movies should get a few laughs out of it.

Jim Wynorski is, without a doubt, the king of B-movie sequels. He directed some of my favorite follow-ups, including 976-EVIL II, BIG BAD MAMA II, and this, SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE III, also known as HARD TO DIE.

Five women working in a high-rise lingerie company building are forced to work overtime. A package mistakenly arrives at the address, and after they open it, they unwittingly release the soul of Hockstetter, a psychotic madman who died years before. Soon, the girls begin getting picked off one by one. Could the killer be Orville Ketchum, the creepy janitor and supposed hero of the sorority house massacre years before? Whoever it is, the girls decide the situation can best be solved with heavy firepower!

HARD TO DIE had one of the most intriguing ideas I've seen in a while: take DIE HARD, and replace Bruce Willis with lingerie-clad women with machine guns. Brilliant, right? Close, but no cigar. However, HARD TO DIE is still a fun movie. The first fifty minutes or so is straight-up slasher, with an unseen person picking off these girls one by one (off-screen).

However, the bad acting and hilarious dialogue kept me amused for that period of time. Then they break out the machine guns in the final twenty minutes. And it is glorious. Wynorski knows who his audience is and he knows how to entertain them. He jam-packs the movie with loads of female nudity (he even cameos as a porn director), lots of gun fire, and almost no plot.

The film is hilarious for both intended and unintended reasons. For unintended, we get loads of bad acting and poorly written dialogue. For intended we get an over-the-top display of violence towards poor Orville as he is shot multiple times, stabbed multiple times, and even falls off the top of the high rise! Then there's the extremely goofy final shot and how the girls feel the need to change into the new lingerie after their clothes get a little wet! It's brilliant! However, I do have a few complaints. For one, the film is just too short for its own good. Jim Wynorski has proved before that he can make a 70-minute runtime work (CHOPPING MALL), but here, it just feels like the studios gave him a specific 77-minute runtime while he was halfway through filming and realized he needed to speed things up. I think if the girls had gotten the guns earlier on (maybe with about forty or so minutes left on the runtime) it would have been better.

Still, HARD TO DIE is a really fun movie and is sure to please for fans of B-movie cheddar. The plot is brilliant, the humor is top-notch, and the fun spirit is fully intact.

Even though it's not the greatest, it's still quintessential viewing fans of bad movies.

This mountain of melted cheddar is dumb, dumb fun. Director/producer Wynorski (who also helmed the raucously cheesy Chopping Mall) proves himself to be the unsung B-movie hero. Wynorski's films win because he creates schlock that believes in itself. This production doesn't have an air of superiority. It carries its ludicrous premise with a conspicuous joie de vivre and at a boisterous pace, all while avoiding the doldrums of self-parody. Wynorski also succeeds in that his intentionally funny and over-the-top ending is actually funny. He thus accomplishes the rather difficult task of creating a film that people will laugh at AND laugh with.

This film is actually the third entry in the Sorority House Massacre series, but stands just fine on its own (I've never seen the two preceding SHMs). It may be the best of the trilogy, downplaying the derivative slasher element that defined the first two films and instead taking an exuberant action-horror-comedy slant (the title, in case it wasn't obvious, is an obvious spoof of Die Hard). Just the image of our trashy-lingerie-wearing, bloody-breasted heroines brandishing automatic firearms is enough to alight the predilections of any cult film fan.

Breasts.

How many of you, back in the 90s, actually rented it thinking you were getting "Die Hard?" None of you? Now how many rented it because it had a bra on the cover? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Its another one of those movies I caught on HBO too late when I was a kid. Thank you latch-key childhood.

You know the film already, it's Slumber Party Massacre. You know the film already, they hire a whole bunch of women, they film each one of them naked, they find an excuse to dress them in undies that, really, are only worn in the bedroom with the intention that they be taken of....

...and then they work a loose...a VERY loose plot around it and have all the women scream and run around, which I am pretty sure movies like this inspired Bay Watch.

So, really, why read this review, you already knew what you were going to get before you rented it.

(*1/2 out of *****) In a cross between Die Hard and the Slumber Party Massacre (and Sorority House Massacre) movies, a deadly spirit is released into a high-rise office building while a group of pretty female co-workers who work for the ACME Lingerie Company are staying late doing inventory on one of the upper floors (as well as showering and trying on the merchandise). As in Sorority House Massacre II (which was filmed and released roughly the same time as this one and which, with the exception of the building setting, basically follows the same plot), one of the girls becomes possessed by the demon and starts butchering her scantily-clad friends before they even get the chance to have a pillow fight. Luckily, the remaining gals find a crate full of automatic weapons and, next thing you know, bullets are flying, blood is splattering, and breasts are bouncing. I won't lie to you, T&A can often carry an otherwise lousy movie a long way, but that's hardly the case with this one (still, I went ahead and gave this turkey an extra half-star solely for its wall-to-wall display of frilly teddies and lace panties.) Orville Ketchum (as `Himself') appears as the same character he plays in SHMII, and he even narrates a near-identical flashback sequence lifted from the original Slumber Party Massacre. As a testament to the bad writing and Wynorski's equally bad direction, the tiresome and ridiculously indestructible Ketchum pops up around corners every three or four minutes and just stands there looking stupid -- a very bad idea. Seriously, he's one of the most annoying characters in B-movie history, and if he's meant to provide comic relief, it doesn't work. Joe Bob Briggs `LOVED' this movie, and it admittedly does have its charm, but not enough of it to cover up the wretched acting, writing, and directing. Low-budget and horror movie cameo king Forrest J. Ackerman has a lengthy role as Dr. Ed Newton, who sits in his office the whole time. The back of the video box shows pictures of scenes from an entirely different movie. Wynorski has the honor of being responsible for some of the worst drek the slasher genre has to offer.

Lowlight: The death scenes are laughably staged -- one girl gets pulled off-camera from behind by somebody with a hook, and then an obvious bucket-full of fake blood is splattered against a concrete wall. Stupid, stupid stuff.

This is a wild ride and I enjoyed every minute of it, my only complaint was the unnecessary scene where they try to make this seem like a stand-alone/unrelated film, even though the rest of the movie heavily treats this as a sequel to Sorority House Massacre 2.