Films from the Crypt: Episode 14 - The Last Slumber Party (1988)

Films from the Crypt: Episode 14 - The Last Slumber Party (1988)
IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212302/
Director: Stephen Tyler (not that one)
Starring: Jan Jenson
Tagline: "...where the girls are DYING for a good time."

Full disclosure here, The Last Slumber Party is a film that is near and dear to my heart. My friends an I "discovered" this gem many years ago while trolling our local Blockbuster Video for bad horror fare. And we hit the mother lode with The Last Slumber Party.

I've seen this movie many, many times over the last few year. I rented it so many times from Blockbuster, that I wound up just keeping the tape. I eventually upgraded to the bare bones double-feature DVD (which comes along with Terror at Tenkiller).

The plot, such as it is, is about a group of three teenage girls (Linda, Chris, and Tracy) who celebrate the last day of school with a sleepover. The three ladies hang out and do stupid stuff at Linda's house. Of course, being an eighties movie, some cool bros decide to crash the party and get with these young ladies. As it turns out, while all of this is going on a patient of Linda's dad (Dr. Sickler) flips out when he's told he's going to be receiving a lobotomy (!) and flees. He kills two people with a stolen scalpel and dons an orderly uniform.

There's a lot of really confusing stuff in this movie. Linda's dad seems to appear and disappear whenever it's convenient. He goes to get some orange juice at one point and is gone for forever. There's an out-of-place dream sequence that involves some supernatural elements. I don't know, it's probably best not to overthink this one, but it sure is fun. There's lots of cool eighties cliches to poke fun at (cool mullets, a nerd named "Science"), and honestly the whole movie is just plain awful.

It's a shot on video movie, and as far as I can tell the director Stephen Tyler never really went on to do much else (except for fronting Aerosmith!). There is one other listing for him on IMDb and it's some bizarre sex movie from Japan in 2002. He's listed as co-director. That seems strange. You can tell that he just had some friends that would let him shoot in their house so he decided to make a movie.

The gore (which is VERY minimal) is pretty awful. They do a lot of extreme closeups, particularly when the villain is cutting someone's neck with the scalpel. Usually the blood starts pouring about halfway through the cut, which seems like accurate anatomy.

I don't know. You either like this kind of crap, or you don't. I doubt I could convince anyone to like this movie, but maybe I can make more of you aware that it's out there. I wholeheartedly endorse it. I would definitely recommend that you watch it with a group of friends that are game to riff on the film. It's way more fun that way.

Oh yeah, and just so you know, none of those girls on the box art are in the movie.