New World Pictures, 1982

starring: Michelle Michaels, Robin Stille, Rigg Kennedy and Michael Villella

directed by: Amy Holden Jones

the plot: With her parents away and the house to herself, Trish (Michaels) decides to invite her friends over for an impromptu slumber party. However, Trish excludes Val (Stille), the new girl in school who’s better at basketball than the other girls. As the girls, and their horny boyfriends, gather at the house, Trish’s neighbor, Mr. Contant (Kennedy) checks in and offers to keep a watch out for any suspicious doings in the neighborhood. There’s plenty of reason to be scared—mass murderer Russ Thorn (Villella) has escaped from the local jail and is headed toward town. As the festivities get underway, guests start disappearing. But it’s not until the pizza boy turns up dead at the door that the teens realize they’re dealing with a psycho in their midst. Luckily, Val lives across the street, and when the screams start echoing through the neighborhood, Val becomes an unlikely ally. However, not even Val and Trish may be a match for a killer armed with a power drill and a chip on his shoulder.

why it’s good: Apart from its salacious title, “The Slumber Party Massacre” should be a largely forgettable slasher flick. It’s got everything you’d expect: a gimmicky killer (this time with a large, phallic power drill), copious nudity (including an extended shower scene in the girl’s locker room with lingering shots of the girls’ posteriors) and a number of false alarms and jump scares. Surprisingly, “Massacre” has a bit of a feminist twist, and that’s largely thanks to director Amy Holden Jones and screenwriter Rita Mae Brown. Brown only wrote the first draft of the screenplay, which she intended to be a parody of the then-nascent slasher genre. However, the producers ditched much of her original concepts and played the movie straight, resulting in more than a few intentionally, and unintentionally, funny moments. Sure, there are lots of bare breasts, but there’s also an interesting bit when Val and her younger sister fight over who gets to read their stashed copy of “Playgirl.”

And while more than a few of the girls are dispatched by the killer’s drill bit, the movie eschews the “final girl” cliché and allows a group of heroines to team up and fight the killer. “Massacre” also features scream-queen Brinke Stevens in one of her first film roles.

why you should own it: You don’t need to own “Massacre”; in fact, you might not even need to rent it. But if you stumble across a copy, pop it in your DVD player and wile away the 82 minutes. There aren’t any extras on the disc, so if the film doesn’t satisfy your craving for mayhem and bare boobs, you’re out of luck.