Slumber Party Massacre 2
 (1987)
review by Head Cheeze

The glut of slasher films began to take it's toll on the quality and consistency of virtually every horror franchise from Friday to Freddy, with producers eager to cash in before the drifting public consciousness drifted away. Slumber Party Massacre 2 is an example of how low they would go. Combining elements of the first film with a hopelessly misguided attempt at taking the franchise into Nightmare on Elm Street territory and then sugar coating it all in pastel sweaters, legwarmers and bad eighties pop songs.

Courtney, a survivor from the first film in name only since the original actress was replaced with the twangy TV Texan Crystal Bernard (Wings, Happy Days), is off for a weekend getaway with her "band", to play at a big party at her friend's condo. Courtney begins having nightmares involving a guy dressed like Elvis (Atanas Ilitch) stalking her with a guitar/drill, who somehow crosses over into reality and slashes up the girls and their boyfriends whilst dancing around to a series of awful 80's rock-a-billy songs and cracking the lamest one-liners in history (ie: When the bit on his guitar/drill breaks, he looks at the camera and says "I can't get no......Satisfactshhhhhunnnnnnnnnnnnnn." It's at this point you want to kill him yourself.). There's nothing else to say, really, since that's pretty much all that happens. Sure, we get some nudity and gore, but not nearly as much as in the original. Instead we get musical montages featuring people washing cars, dancing in perfect synchronization, and bad lip synching to bad songs. If you took out the precious few breast shots and slightly gorey moments, you'd basically have an episode of Saved By the Bell, with slightly better production values.

Concorde releases this abomination in a full-frame transfer that looks like a direct port of the VHS master, with loads of artifacty goodness reminding you that no one, not even the producers, think this pile of shit is worth an extra second of their time or effort. I am not even sure if this film was shot in a theatrical ratio, given that it was released at the height of video rental fever, but it really wouldn't matter if the film was run through the absolute best mastering process known to man, it would still be absolute rubbish.

Concorde provides a few bios, and three trailers, which are all more entertaining than the main feature, but nothing else. This is a "bargain" disc, in that it's cheap, but crap is never a bargain at any price, so skip this one unless you're a completist.