The House on Sorority Row (1983)

Best movie of this year hands down!

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The House on Sorority Row is one of the many cult classic slasher films to come out of the 1980s. The director, Mark Rosman, had studied under Brian de Palma in his early days. As a result, I feel like — despite this being a fairly run-of-the-mill slasher flick — it has a slight leg up as a result, especially considering it was Rosman's first feature film (and he was only 24 at the time). But not much.The story centers around a group of seven sorority sisters who are trying to plan their final hurrah — their graduation party — but being thwarted by their house mother's increasingly rigid rules and stifling attitude. They decide to play a prank on her to lighten the mood, but things become darker than ever when it doesn't go quite as planned…** SPOILERS! **I had pretty high hopes for this movie going into it, and even during the first 30 minutes or so. It's a fairly well known cult classic and I had heard the name about a million times before finally caving and watching it. I am definitely guilty of building up what I think a movie will be like in my mind and, unsurprisingly, am often disappointed (or surprised, at the very least). I love 80s slashers so I knew I wouldn't HATE it, but I definitely wish I had liked it more.The initial backstory of Mrs. Slater's (Lois Kelso Hunt) traumatic birthing experience and her subsequent mental breakdown was promising. When Dr. Beck (Christopher Lawrence) says into his hand-held recorder "there's a good chance that any traumatic episode could act as a stimulus for the patient's latent violence" I was like, OH DAMN, we are IN FOR IT.Even more so when the girls deliver their prank, which was pretty messed up even for spoiled sorority girls.But it went a bit downhill from there. There were decent chunks of the movie when I was more occupied with boredom than suspense (most of all whenever they'd show Katie's "date", Peter, just tiptoeing around looking rejected — get a life, dude). Or just studying the various plot holes (does being injected with a sedative really mean you can still run around mostly unhindered save for a few moments of stopping to catch your breath?).The kills were largely mediocre (save for the throat slitting in the van, that was pretty solid). I won't lie, I like my slashers to be bloody, and this just didn't deliver in that aspect (and a couple of them were too fake-looking to even be shocking). Though the head in the toilet was pretty fantastic.The acting was surprisingly good for such a cheesefest, with a few genuinely funny moments ("I'm a sea pig!"). And I did really enjoy the music (the atmospheric soundtrack written by Richard Band — who has a number of 80s horror classics under his belt — and performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, NOT the party band — 4 out of 5 Doctors — who were a fitting addition but not altogether pleasant).I thought it was going to take a more interesting, dark turn when Dr. Beck ties Katie up and tells her "you're the bait", hoping to lure Eric in… but that didn't really pan out either. It redeemed itself for a moment when Eric turns out to be hiding inside that super creepy jester costume and mask that are inexplicably hanging in the attic… but that was so short-lived it's barely worth mentioning.Ultimately, worth watching if you're interested in seeing a fairly mild, cheesy slasher flick with a decent storyline and acting… but not among my favorites.

THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW is a standard slasher outing of the 1980s with an almost all-female cast. The plot has much in common with I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, which came much later, and features a group of college friends who pull an unfunny prank that leaves a middle-aged lady dead. They decide to dump her body in a swimming pool to make the death look like an accident, but then the murders start...This rather cheap film is pretty much par for the course for the genre. It goes for the gory rather than scary approach although the crude nature of the special effects work puts this far below an equivalent production like BLOOD RAGE. The back story is pretty ridiculous and clichéd and the film is never scary, but on the other hand it is fast paced with lots of incident. The best and most mysterious aspects of the script are ripped off the French classic LES DIABOLIQUES.

Spoiler Alert!!! This movie is pretty interesting about a group of sorority girls playing a prank on the owner and suddenly it goes wrong and ends in her death. They decide to throw a party like a day or two later and suddenly a mysterious murderer who wears a cool looking jester costume begins killing them one by one. The acting was pretty bad for this film but I guess it was just the 80's style of having bad acting. The whole setting screams the 80's and it really does well just like The Burning and Nightmare on Elm Street. Most of the kills in this movie are off-screen which is kind of a disappointment but they are at least creative for what it. I also really enjoyed the ending as well I mean it was honestly my favorite part of the whole film! This movie gives the viewer a really good time as it takes each character and kills them, unexpectedly. I give this film an 8 out of 10.

Full of eerie imagery, suspenseful murders and performers that are perhaps a tad better than you might be expecting, "The House on Sorority Row" is a subtle and slow-burning, but to me extremely effective slasher flick that is now one of my favourites, but for the longest time after I first ever saw it as a little kid all I could remember of it was that I liked it a lot, but nothing else except that an old lady was forced into a pool at gunpoint, and that it had a fat guy in said pool who says "I'm a sea pig!" And when I randomly got the cheap DVD that just happened to be it, it was the coolest thing as it got to the scene and I realised that it was the movie that'd been at the back of my mind for so many years. And it turned out to be a real diamond in the rough and my yearning to see it again was very well-founded. It's a very solid and entertaining slasher, one that I personally feel is very unfairly underrated and overlooked. I think it has a superb atmosphere of haunting dread and a level of sustained suspense throughout that I find quite brilliant. The cinematography is really beautiful and the look of it has a great use of shadow and light which gives it a certain weird crisp atmosphere that helps create a generous amount of creepiness. Its look is very sleek and bright-looking, but also shady and sinister. It's visuals help to set it apart and make it more distinctive from its more formulaic and forgetful brethren that were around in abundance at the time. The attic set is especially spooky with the children's toys and clown motif which is of course a little foreshadowing with the name "Eric" spelled out in toy blocks for a moment in the background. The film is also helped enormously by the score of Richard Band which gives it a lot of soul and depth that I don't believe it would've otherwise had. Just imagine it without the music. *Not* pretty.. There really isn't all that much to it, it is a very simple and straightforward venture and is definitely no gorefest by any stretch of the imagination, in fact with the killings it's mainly what you thought you saw, as it mostly cuts away or is done off-screen. So what? It's kind of got its own special thing going on and isn't just about waiting to see how many gruesome ways in which a bunch of random people running about can die! I mean yeah, obviously it's not a great deal more than that, but it's very well-written and tight in construction, with an engaging pace that flows nicely as well a strong compelling quality to its story that keeps me engaged the whole time and I've never got sick of it yet, I find it satisfying on all the levels that I think should count when it comes to a slasher movie. At least it tries to be a mystery by never completely revealing the killer and keeping you guessing until the end, and I love that about it, although as a kid I never quite grasped that it wasn't Mrs. Slater, even after they find her body.. I think it still does a good job of misleading the audience. And I found the group of girls likable and interesting enough, everybody had a good chemistry together, I bought them as friends. And although nobody was exactly brilliant or anything, to me they seemed like characters that actually had a little character or at least it was better than what you'd typically get from this kind of movie. I don't even mind the obvious dubbing of the puritanical house-mother, it's great fun to laugh at and it kinda makes the flick feel like a Japanese movie at points! The acting was good from pretty much all involved, with the big gaping exception of Jodie Dragie as "Morgan" who was a total airhead and had the acting talent of a porn starlet, which leads me to suspect that the only reason she was ever in the movie was perhaps because she was 'humping' Mark Rosman! The awesome moment when she blurts out: "How do we know she *IS* alive!?" is hands-down the most hilarious part of the movie and just has to be one of the all-time great terrible line-readings ever, it's that bad it's funny. Even Eileen Davidson chuckles at it on the commentary! No surprise at all that it's her only ever film credit. Take a bow, sweet Jodie! And Kate Mcneil was a good lead but I really couldn't stand her, she was so irritatingly goody-goody! Even though she's technically right about what she's saying, the way she delivered her lines just made her come off as a big 'ol stick-in-the-mud to me and she went a little overboard with the whole responsible one thing.. I thought she was great at the end when things get a little bizarre and she's all doped-up and lures the killer to the attic with the ominous musical jack-in-the-box just like his mother used to... And I still find the ending to be great and pretty unforgettable. When the jester unexpectedly lifts its head up is still one of the most chilling moments in horror movies for me. A little more jester would've been nice, but it's still an effectively intense climactic scene for the movie. And that's something else I love about it, the way it leaves things on a strangely satisfying ambiguous note where things are not looking particularly bright for Kate! Love this movie, I think it still stands as a superior little slice of this particular branch of the horror genre. Now "Get out of my house!" G'night folks!!