Rock N Roll Nightmare – SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE II

Formula is not necessarily a bad thing.  Like a recipe, a formula can reliably provide just the thing you are in the mood for.  Just because a formula promises certain results doesn’t mean it has to be predicable or unoriginal.  Rollercoasters have a very established formula.  Go up, go down, the faster the better.  Within that framework, however, is room for almost infinite variation.  A good rollercoaster gives you the thrills you were expecting but doles them out in innovative ways.  The same is true for movies.  Slashers, for instance, thrive on formula.  A vulnerable group ends up in an isolated place were, unbeknownst to them, some nasty fellow bumps them off one at a time.  The fun—if that’s your bag—lies in the who, what, and especially how the mayhem goes down.  Nothing says you can’t find a creative way to travel from A to B to C (usually standing for Alcohol, Blood, and Corpses).

Slasher sequels can fall into a tricky position of having to double down on formula.  Not only do they have to follow the basic roadmap, they also need to tie in to the previous film.  Some play it safe, like the FRIDAY THE 13^TH movies (the loony JASON GOES TO HELL not withstanding).  Others try to mix it up.  Then there is Deborah Brock, who was tasked with intersecting pillow fights, sexy shenanigans, and power tools for 1987’s SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE II and did so in a way no one could have seen coming.

The Capsule:

Years after surviving a horrific night with a slumber party crashing driller killer, Courtney (Crystal Bernard) has put the past behind her and is living the life of a normal teen.  She plays guitar in a band, is all about pastels, and is getting attention from the dreamy and frequently shirtless Matt (Patrick Lowe).  Sure, she has the occasional post-traumatic nightmare, but she’s in better shape than her fellow survivor and older sister, Valerie (Cindy Eilbacher), who is wrapped up tight in the nuthouse.  Courtney is so confident in her emotional recovery that she agrees to join her bandmates, Sheila (Juliette Cummins), Sally (Heidi Kozak), and Amy (Kimberly McArthur), at a secluded beach house, for what could be considered a party of the slumber variety.  Sure, her nightmares are becoming more vivid, and happening while she is awake, but that’s all just her imagination.  She isn’t going to let a few hallucinations ruin her fun, especially when her not-so-secret crush shows up.  One night in Matt’s hunky arms makes all of Courtney’s dreams come true.  Unfortunately, one of those dreams was about a demented, leather clad rock n roller with a wicked drill-tipped electric guitar (Atanas Ilitch), and he will turn this slumber party into a nightmare for everyone involved.

Growing up in the days before online databases and on demand movie consumption meant living with unsolved mystery.  Without easy access to every film ever made, tracking down obscure films took considerable leg work.  Who has time for that?  This left me fruitlessly pondering things like, what the hell was that movie I caught a few minutes of on HBO where a Stray Cats reject was chasing a bunch of girls around with a cherry red drill guitar?  Did I dream that shit? 

While this particular driller killer was unique, a killer with a drill was not.  There is THE TOOLBOX MURDERS, the first SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE, and plain old DRILLER KILLER, plus that drill murder through the ceiling scene from BODY DOUBLE.  That is a lot of drilling to keep track of.  I finally stumbled upon the answer after falling down a click-hole in IMDB which led me to the poster.  Thank you, Internet, for helping us sort out all the various drill killing films 

There might be a lot of driller killer movies, but I’ve never seen a story structure like this one.  The first SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE was your standard maniac hunting high school girls’ affair, with a slight feminist turn.  The sequel is a supernatural thriller more akin to A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, yet not quite that, either.  Aside from Courtney’s escalating—and nutso—hallucination (a hand-burger, being mauled by a raw chicken), nothing much happens until the Rockabilly killer literally bursts forth from out of nowhere, completely unexplained.  The last act is a brilliantly mad dash, tearing through Courtney’s friends in record time.

It’s a good thing, because the rest of the cast is hands down the blandest bunch of white people ever put in front of a camera.  Crystal Bernard, or as she is better known, that chick from Wings, does a decent job when freaking out, otherwise she is Pastel Barbie.  Amy and her boyfriend, um, Jeff (Scott Westmoreland, thanks again IMDB) practically blend in with the beige wallpaper.  If you thought Courtney’s flare-free fashion sense was bad—and you should--Amy dresses like a zoo tour guide.  Sheila is only interesting because she is a perv, but she shines compared to the others. 

Matt, the dreamy, mid-twenties teen that Courtney constantly fantasizes about isn’t anything more than a hunky face, but I appreciate how Deborah Brock inverts the typical expectations by having the camera ogle the himbo rather than the bimbo. Not only is he always shirtless in Courtney’s daydreams, the scene where he is talking to her on the phone is shot like a Calvin Klein ad, only with ‘80s color gel lighting.

The only notable personality in the group is T.J. (Joel Hoffman), and it is for all the wrong reasons. T.J. is a remarkably obnoxious take on the California surfer dude horndog. At least half of his lines in the script must have just been “uh-huh-huh-huh” stoner laughs. Every single time he opened his mouth I wanted to punch him in the face. His death scene takes forever to arrive and is not nearly satisfying enough, though I doubt any death could be brutal enough for this guy. True to character till the end, he manages to get out one last “Whoa,” before shuffling off the mortal coil.

Placed against these clowns, Atanas Ilitch’s long delayed entrance as the Rockabilly Driller Killer is absolutely electric. Iltich, who only did a couple of films after this, chews the hell out of every scene he is in. His delivery and swagger remind me of Billy Zane in DEMON KNIGHT, despite being saddled with mostly song lyrics for dialog. Not as pitch perfect as Zane, but with similar chaotic energy. It becomes a completely different movie after his arrival, and all lulls are forgiven. Pulling off a plot twist like this takes an actor with crazy confidence, and even more to wield a weapon of this caliber.

Keep your machetes, pitchforks, hedge clippers, and knife gloves, the silver horned, cherry red, drill tipped electric guitar is unquestionably the most impressively ridiculous killing device ever. It’s even more ludicrous than the flying guillotine. For one thing, it is huge. With all its twisted hooks and fangs, it's the size of a cello, yet Rockabilly wields it like a psychotic Eddie Van Halen. It’s also very versatile, great for slashes, bashes, and,of course, impalings. And how many other murder weapons allow the killer to pause in mid-pursuit for an impromptu music video?

The feminist angle is harder to pin down here than in the first SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE, where the girls banded together to overcome (and castrate) their murderous male stalker. The most notable thing with this one is that all the girls have a genuinely close relationship. None of them are catty or bitchy with each other. At first it seems like Sheila will be the diva of the faux Bangles band, maybe even having eyes for Matt. Nope, she’s just a bit of a nympho (with her own boyfriend, only). Given how clearly nuts Courtney is acting, all her bandmates are notably supportive of her. Sally is a bit oblivious, always equating Courtney’s hysteria with her acne breakout (to the point where Courtney hallucinates Sally’s face is one giant zit), but otherwise, they are very protective.

The funny thing is Courtney does not return the favor when the shit hits the fan. Rockabilly chases a wounded Sheila back to the house, where Courtney and Amy have barricaded themselves in a bedroom. When Courtney hears Sheila banging on the door, they try to let her in, but Rockabilly gets her while the door is still closed. At first I thought they were just comically bad at moving the small dresser blocking the door, but rewatching the scene, Courtney actually moves the dresser back when she hears Rockabilly is out there, too. She lets her friend get skewered rather than risk opening the door. The door that Rockabilly busts through in about 30 seconds. Later, another friend tips over the edge at a construction site and dangles above a three-story drop. She pleads with Courtney “Don’t let go!” Guess what happens at the first sign of danger? They should really vote Courtney out of the band. Posthumously.

Brock also gives the stereotypical slasher attitude on sex a twist. Instead of the “have sex and die” model, in Courtney’s case, it’s “have sex and everyone else dies.” Even before the bodies start dropping, all of Courtney’s bloody hallucinations occur after someone brings up the topicof sex. The girl clearly as some serious hang ups. Once Courtney and Matt finally go all the way (against dream Valierie’s express warning), Rockabilly jumps straight out of her repressed nightmares and into the real world, via a very phallic drill through Matt’s chest. There is zero explanation about why or how this happens. All I know is that I am grateful it does.  

Okay, that is not entirely true, since we find out that [Spoiler] the rampage was all a dream. Courtney wakes up in Matt’s bed and everything is fine. Lame. But wait,that was just a dream, too! Courtney really wakes up in the same nuthouse as her sister, screaming and hallucinating (?) a giant drill ripping through her rubber room. A popular theory is that she went nuts after the events of the movie, but that makes no sense because the events were entirely supernatural. I prefer my own theory, in which Courtney has been in the nuthouse since the end of the first movie, and Valerie is the sane one. We can only hope that Rockabilly was merely a figment of Courtney’s cracked imagination, and more importantly, so was T.J.

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE II didn’t make Deborah Brock a household name, though it did lead her to direct RETURN TO ROCK N ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, which I’m sure is great. I would like to have seen what other horror tricks she had up her sleeve, but if her legacy turns out to be a nightmare Elvis impersonator in fringy leather, wielding a drill guitar, that’s something to be proud of. I don’t know if she is, but I certainly am.

C Chaka

Bonus: More shots of Rockabilly, because I love this guy.