There’s no sense in keepin this thing around if I’m not gonna write, right? So here I am, and maybe there you are, too. Let’s find out where this goes together, why don’t we?

I’m currently spending 85-92% of my time hyper-focusing on how unbelievably goddamn weird existence is, and I’ve written quite a bit about how just unbelievably goddamn weird existence is, but there’s nothing there to share yet, so I decided to throw together a thing where I talk about some trivial bullshit instead. What’s important is that I’m writing.

I grew up scared of everything, including/especially horror movies. Example: the trailer for A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge scared the everlovin bejeezus out of eight-year-old me, and I still haven’t watched that movie to this day. The scene at the end of the trailer where Freddy jumps up outta the ground at the pool party? Fuckin forget about it.

I’d like to point out that the only reason I haven’t watched A Nightmare of Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge yet is that by the time I finally got around to watching horror movies, the backlog of classics was already enormous (insert joke about how I’ve been known to create an enormous backlog or two, myself) and it’s  gotten so much bigger since (so have mine!). Basically, there are only so many hours in a day, and there are a lot of great movies to watch, horror or otherwise. I know the basics of the movie, and I’ve heard things both good and bad from trusted friends. I’ll probably get around to watching it at some point, if only to impress myself circa 1985.

But this isn’t about A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. It’s about the classic 1982 slasher The Slumber Party Massacre. I’ve been aware of this movie for most of my life (the poster, pictured below, also haunted my tiny early 80’s brain), but due to the aforementioned phenomenon that is time slippin slippin slippin into the future, I never got around to watching it, until recently.

I found myself with some time to kill on a rainy day off a lil while back, and I decided to dig into that enormous backlog – really get in there and get my hands dirty – and watch something I woulda been too scared to watch in my juvenescence. I wish I had an interesting anecdote about why I chose The Slumber Party Massacre, maybe some kinda weird synchronicity behind the decision or some such, but the fact is, I chose it because it’s only 76 minutes long, and I’d already spent like 20 minutes tryna pick out a movie.¹

Long story short, I’m glad I fished around my gore-soaked enormous backlog until I pulled out The Slumber Party Massacre.

Award-winning author and feminist activist Rita Mae Brown wrote the screenplay as a parody of the slasher films that had become so popular in the early 1980’s. The producers tried to repurpose her script into a more traditional/serious slasher film, and she disapproved of their scheme, which is perfectly understandable, but I feel like it still plays out like a parody in a lot of ways, and the dialogue is damn funny. I’ll bet the screenplay is a great read.

Film editor Amy Holden Jones turned down a job working on E.T. the Extra -Terrestrial so she could direct the The Slumber Party Massacre, and I don’t know how she feels about that decision, but I think she made the right choice. Incidentally, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is the second movie I saw in the theater as a kid (the re-release of Disney’s Robin Hood predates it by about 3 months), and it scared me, too, but not in the same way that the trailer for A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge would go on to scare me a mere three years later.

But this isn’t about E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, it’s about The Slumber Party Massacre.

The movie never gets boring or drags at all. It should be difficult for a movie with a runtime of one hour and sixteen minutes to even get boring, but I’ve seen plenty of sub-85 minute horror movies that I thought would never end.

Example: I once bought this movie called Wrestlemaniac on DVD at my local Half Price Books Outlet, figuring:

• I love low-budget horror movies,
• I love classic professional wrestling (the late, great Rey Misterio (Sr.) plays the titular Wrestlemaniac),
• Wrestlemaniac is a pretty clever name for a movie, and
• it only cost three American dollars,

so it couldn’t be that bad, right? Oh, sweet summer child. It was such a festering turd that I shut that 75 minute movie off before it was over and placed the DVD directly into the garbage can so that no one else would have to suffer. It’s been almost three years, and I sometimes feel like I’m still watching that pile of shit.

But this isn’t about the enormous backlog that is Wrestlemaniac, it’s about The Slumber Party Massacre. The acting is better-than-average for a low-budget horror movie with a bunch of no-name actors, the score works extremely well within the context of the scenes, it’s super funny, the kills are clever and cleverly framed, and the killer (escaped mass murderer Russ Thorne) is creepy as fuck. Here’s the trailer.

I don’t really have much else to say about the movie. I liked it. It’s free to watch (with commercials) on Tubi. Tubi fuckin rules. To sum up, The Slumber Party Massacre is a hoot-and-a-half (out of a possible two hoots). If you’re a fan of fun, violent, creepy, well-paced, low-budget horror movies, you could find a much worse way to spend 76 minutes of your time.²

Speaking of your time, I appreciate you giving me some of it. If you don’t feel like it was wasted, why not tell a friend about Clockwise Circle Pit? It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

1. To paraphrase something I once said on Facebook, if I had until the end of time to do nothing but watch movies, time would go ahead and end before I picked out the first one. ↩︎
2. Watching Wrestlemaniac with a one-minute long intermission, for example. ↩︎