Detective Watts (Thomas Downey) is like two seconds away from being taken off the force for police brutality. Lucky for him, his Captain’s daughter is missing, so instead of being suspended, he gets assigned to find her. Seems she was supposed to arrive at her sorority, but she never showed up. After Watts arrives at the sorority house to investigate, more and more girls are murdered. It’s then up to him and the dim-witted town sheriff (Ed O’Ross) to apprehend the killer.
The big problem with Sorority Party Massacre is the tone is all out of whack. It starts off with a solid opening sequence that copies Scream as a gravelly-voiced killer threatens a sexy co-ed over the phone. So far, so good. However, its many attempts at comedy are mostly unsuccessful (there are fart jokes). It’s not really a spoof of the horror genre, and it’s just too goofy to work as a straight-up slasher. Ultimately, it never decides if it wants to be a comedy with occasional bloodshed, or a horror flick with occasional laughs.
Another stumbling block is the film’s over-reliance on flashbacks to propel the plot forward. The comedic flashbacks of Downey dealing with his anger management issues are especially lame and go on far too long. There are a lot of montages too, but since many of them revolve around girls wearing bikinis (or sometimes even less), I guess I can give them a Mulligan on that.
The pacing (not to mention the editing) gets increasingly erratic as the film wears on, and the hefty one-hundred-and-three-minute running time doesn’t do it any favors either. It’s also a bit of a rip-off that the sisters never have a sorority party per se. (The girls are just gathered to partake in a scholarship contest.) The ending is needlessly convoluted too, which also holds it back. On the upside, it boasts a pretty decent cast, all things considered. We have Leslie Easterbrook as the sorority den mother, Kevin Sorbo as Downey’s captain, Louis Mandylor as the mayor, Ron Jeremy as a cop, and the late Richard Moll as a creepy boat captain. The kills aren’t bad either. There’s death by acid, a bee attack (which occurs offscreen, unfortunately), burning, and a hatchet to the head.
It’s just a shame that everything else in between the carnage is so overcooked. The film would’ve been just fine if it concentrated on the sorority babes in the house being menaced by a killer. Unfortunately, all the subplots and detective bullshit weigh it down.
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