Rating: ** and a half
!!!?!?!?!??!?!?!?! That was the response I had to SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE PART II. I just couldn't believe at times what I was seeing on the screen. This is perhaps one of the more surreal, odd films I have seen in recent memory. I do not mean to imply that this film is a good example of stylish, existential filmmaking. What I am saying is that it is CRAZY!!!!! Luckily it is entertaining and weird enough to hold one's interest, albeit by a thread, throughout its 90 minutes.
O.K., first the plot. A teenage girl, played by Crystal Bernard of WINGS fame (another fun reason to watch the movie), is having scary dreams. In many of these dreams, she encounters the figure of a crazy, Elvis-type rock n'roller. Who he is, nobody knows (not that we'll really find out, either). Anyways, this girl is tormented because her older sister was killed the first SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE movie. This is all the connection the filmmaker needed to make a sequel.
In order to forget these scary dreams, she passes her time by playing in a band with friend...although "playing" is a generous word to use for the shoddy lip-syncing these girls do to wannabe Go-Go's songs. She also develops a relationship with a clean-cut guy from her high school. When she is invited to go to one of the girls' weekend homes for a slumber party, it seems all it going well for miss Crystal Bernard. Unfortunately, her dreams don't go away, instead they get more and more realistic and even manifest themselves in hallucinations in real-life.
Once the girls reach the home, and have the obligatory dance-around-in-skimpy-clothing scene, a couple of the boyfriends arrive. The next forty minutes or so involve more hallucinations in which we see everything from a face-consuming zit, to a bathtub filled with blood. Of course, we are led to believe that they are real only to find that they are dreams. The cops are even duped into checking one of them out...setting up the perfect girls-who-cry-wolf scenario for the impending real violence.
The violence does finally happen (although after far too long) when the Elivs guy comes to life and begins to wreak havoc with his guitar/drill. Oh yes, didn't I tell you? He kills with a drill on the end of his guitar. Often, as he does so, he sings really bad blues-rock songs making this film a big music video of blood. Sounds weird? It is. There were times that my friend Rob and I would turn to each other and say, "What the...?!" Therefore, I have to classify SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE PART II in the "What the...?!" category.
But does a film really have to make sense to be fun? No, it doesn't, and for the most part I enjoyed myself watching this low-budget mess (which, like the first, was directed by a woman). Still, at times I found myself yearning for the brilliant simplicity of the first film. In that movie, there is a slumber party, there is a killer, that's it! In this movie, they try to be more complex and the results just don't really work. Supposedly this Elvis guy is supposed to be the reincarnation of the first killer, but I got that from the video box, the movie itself explains nothing. Overall, SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE PART II is weird enough and bloody enough for a fun rental, but if you have a choice, go for the first one. Rating: ** and a half (out of a possible 4)
