Chad

Spiderbite

Truly bizarro, nonsensical sequel to the 1982 classic(?) that brings tons of new stuff to the table...but none of it successfully.

It tries to add wacky humor and fails. It tries to have contemporary pop music to hum along to...and fails. It tried to add a quasi-modern 50's rock'n'roller killer to make it interesting...and fails. It even puts a drill on a large red dil...um...guitar to create exciting new kills...and fails. It tried for psychological horror dealing with dreams...and fails. Even in the boob and sex department...it fails...especially for 80's standards on movies like this (one fleeting small pair).

So what is the most interesting thing you are stuck with? A giant exploding zit. Yep. You read that correctly. Best part of the movie, sad to say.

I still give it points for trying something so outlandish and different. At least the writers and director were trying for...something.

I have to admit that when my best friend and I rented this movie circa 1988 from the local Movie Gallery and watched it after school (9th grade), we laughed our asses off. It was one of the most different horror films we had ever seen and we were cutting our teeth at the time during the great video (mostly horror) boom at the time. Typically renting and watching up to two movies an afternoon/evening if we could (he was a latchkey kid and I rode my bike to his house every afternoon '86 to '89...until we could final drive...also to the Movie Gallery). We continued this pattern pretty regularly until we graduated high school in 1991 and went our separate ways. So we watched almost every kind of movie you could imagine. Hundreds. Horror and Sword/Sorcery movies were the "go-to" due to the boobs and violence quotient of those genres. And we saw some great ones. Anyway...enough memory lane...

We liked this movie for some reason. Laughed like crazy and we probably rented it at least 3 times which was saying something for us. So what the fuck were we thinking after my above description? I have zero idea. The movie hold nothing for me now and I was quite disappointed. It isn't even in the "so bad it is good" category. So...very, very short story long...I was disappointed. I actually revisited this film a few years ago and believe I came to the same conclusion. So it must have been a teenage thing. Well...youth are not always know for their movie criticism.

My rating at 15 years old - ****1/2 out of *****
My rating as a tired old man who has seen too many movies and thinks of himself as a decent movie critic nowadays - ** out of *****

To be able to go back and watch it as a teen in the late '80's with my best friend again...now that would be fun...

Toddarino

I wanna stick TJ feet first in a wood chipper.

exharrison

Even though I found this one kind of boring, watching parts get made fun of on The Last Drive-In made it more fun.

Undeadcow

The staged enthusiasm for slumber parties comes across as insincere like a group of adults trying to pretending to slumber party. The killer is too cheesy casual to be very interesting; it's like a strange sitcom grade horror murdered more by the least convincing lip singing ever than any driller. I feel like beneath the surface is a 'moral panic' party corruption versus 'good kid' theme that got plastered over. The only thing that makes the killer work is the dream component, most improbable weapon ever. The best part is the weird dance pillow fight segment because it's so far out and overly long.

numbercrunch

Comedy spoof of the Slasher genre is a fun film. I guess I am in the minority on this one. I completely got the dark humor. The Killer played by Atanas Ilitch really made the movie. I thought he was fantastic. IT's not great, but its a good film and a fun watch.
6.5/10

Trevor

I really enjoyed this one as well. The killer was the highlight. I’ve always had a bit of a crush on Crystal Bernard, and she’s gorgeous here.

jholmes

I'd give this a 3/10. The whole "I'm dreaming the killer thing" became super repetitive and then suddenly, he's' real. It took me a while to realize it wasn't another fake-out. And why was she having all those hallucinations while wide awake? I guess, in the end, it was all a dream, but that didn't salvage the whole 90-some minutes of the movie that came before for me when I was just thinking "wtf?". The rock-n-roll killer was just dumb. This film didn't read as humor to me so much as just nonsensical. I guess I'm not the target audience for this one!

clckworang

Not too much that I can add. This was probably my second or third time watching it. It's not good, but at least it's different - and short as well.

brainee

Yeah, one "it's only a dream" sequence following by another ... followed by another ...and on and on got to be too much. And I didn't buy for a second when the killer crashed the slumber party that it wasn't just another (but longer) one of those. The killer breaking out a musical number in the middle of his stalking-and-killing did get a laugh out of me though. Everybody let's buzzzzzz!!!!!!

I do think that a lot of these movies really need to be seen when younger. I missed this one when it was new ... like Spiderbite, I'm sure the 13 year old me would've loved it. And I probably would have a more favorable view of it now.

rbrown498

Back in the mid-to-late '80s, Roger Corman's Concorde Pictures was cheaping out wherever it could, and one of the ways that it cut costs was to limit both the length of prints sent to theaters and the number of prints sent out. For most of the films released after '87 or so, I doubt that Corman struck more than four or five prints per title, and he had a strict rule that a film couldn't be shipped on more than four reels, as another reel increased both lab and film stock costs AND shipping costs. He'd send them out into urban grindhouses with practically no advertising, let 'em play for a few days (oftentimes, not even an entire week), and then send 'em to videocassette with a "Direct from Theatrical Release!" blurb on the front.

I have a feeling that Slumber Party Massacre II was a victim of this cost-cutting. I noticed that there were some shots in the first dream sequence or two that weren't taken from later in the film, so my guess is that some stuff was cut out, probably due to Corman's strict rule about keeping the running time of Concord's films down. It's just a hunch.

I have to agree with everyone uttering a collective "huh?" over this film. It's not good by any stretch of the imagination, but it's just so freakin' weird that I couldn't tear my eyes away from it. I've got to give it props for following its own weird muse, even if that muse carried a red guitar with a working drill (sporting at least a 1 1/2" bit) mounted into the neck.

My subset film rankings for the Challenge thus far:

1. Carrie (1976)
2. Slither
3. Witchfinder General
4. A Bay of Blood / The Spiral Staircase (averaged together)
5. Silent Madness
6. Slumber Party Massacre II (based purely on its out-of-left-field aesthetic)
7. Road Games
8. The Severed Arm
9. Cutting Class

Trevor

Agree.

Stealing rbrown’s subset ranking idea:

The Phantom Carriage, 8/10
Carrie, 8/10
The Spiral Staircase, 8/10
Slumber Party Massacre 2, 7/10
A Bay of Blood, 7/10
The Frighteners, 7/10
Road Games, 7/10
Slither, 7/10
Witchfinder General 7/10
Cutting Class, 6/10
Silent Madness, 5/10
The Severed Arm, 4/10

wishbone

Quite the horror mishmash! Like others I was not sure if The Driller Killer was a phantom or real to the point that when he did his song and dance number I was like why not?! I like Crystal Bernard too but Kimberly McArthur (Miss January 1982) was super cute in this.