Slumber Party '57
Made in 1976 to capitalize on the then hot fifties nostalgia craze, Slumber Party '57 was finally released on video in the late eighties, this time to cash in on the fact that it features Debra Winger in her film debut. She's not bad, but I doubt that anybody who caught this in its original run had her pegged as a future Oscar nominee, especially since the cast also feature cute and quirky seventies drive-in regular Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith and "Car 54"'s Joe E. Ross doing his "ooh! ooh!" but for a few minutes.
Here's the plot: while their basketball playing boyfriends are out of town for a game, five teenage bobby soxers have a slumber party where they get drunk, go skinny-dipping, and take turns telling stories about how each one of them lost their virginity. These tales are shown in flashbacks and they're pretty mixed. Debbie's (Debra Winger) is the weakest, all about how her boyfriend protected her from a trio of comic relief bikers. By far, the best story comes from Mary Beth (the completely obscure JoAnn Appleseth) who, after making it with aging he-man actor Rex Parker, gets a role in his latest jungle opus, where she sits topless in a big cooking pot while guys in grass skirts dance around going "ooga chacka! ooga chacka!" while throwing vegetables at her.
There's non-stop oldies on the soundtrack, but a lot of them like Bruce Chanel's "Hey Baby" or the Angels' "My Boyfriend's Back" are actually from the sixties. But the, screenwriter Frank Farmer's idea of establishing a fifties atmosphere is to have the girls say stuff like, "give me back my hula hoop!" so, what do you expect? Director William A. Levy had previously done Wham Bam! Thank You Spaceman! and the immortal Blackenstein.
Slumber Party Massacre 2
The original Slumber Party Massacre (scripted by slumming novelist Rita Mae Brown and directed by Amy Jones, who later worked on the scripts for Indecent Proposal and the remake of The Getaway) wasn't one of the better movies put out during Roger Corman's New World Pictures's late seventies/early eighties heyday, but it sure looks good compared to this straight to video sequel. Crystal Bernard from "Wings" stars as Courtney, one of the survivors of the first movie's bloodbath. Her all-girl rock band head to a deserted condo for a weekend of extensive rehearsals, and are soon being picked off by a psychotic Andrew Clay look-a-like. Writer/director Deborah Brock makes the maniac a rockabilly cat (with a power drill on the end of his 'gee-tar') who sings and dances endlessly while he stalks his victims. It's a terrible idea, but it probably made sense to the woman who also gave the world the Corey Feldman travesty, Rock N Roll High School Forever. On the plus side, there's a fairly decent topless pillow fight, and whenever Crystal's band starts rockin', they pretend to play their instruments while lip-synching a song by their cool eighties pop band, Wednesday Week (look for their 1986 album "What We Had" at your local used record store). Crystal gets the best line: "Sunday's my birthday and I don't want to go to a mental hospital!
Back to Issue 6