Sally Mattison, who had expressed an interest in directing. When he offered her the reins on SPM III, she quickly accepted, deciding to abandon the comedic tone of the first two films. “I was somewhat uncomfortable with the depiction of violence in slasher films, ar-
guably solely for entertainment value, and about violence in entertainment more gen- erally,” she says. “I decided that if I were being asked to make a slasher film, I would give people what they seemed to want – more than they wanted, maybe, to get them to think about it. There is one very dark scene near the end of the film, when a char- acter is cornered and killed, that was added after principal photography. Initially the scene was very brief. The film was running short, and my recollection is that Roger specifically wanted that scene lengthened and made more graphic. That is the scene that I’m most uncomfortable with. I’m not sure if I succeeded at all in getting people to think about the violence, particularly violence against women, the way I hoped to.” The franchise’s influence is undeniable; the SPMfilms inspired a plethora of what
filmmaker Jason Paul Collum (director of Sleepless Nights: Revisiting the Slumber Party Massacres documentary) calls the “girls in bloody nighties leg of horror” – movies such as Sorority House Massacre 1 and 2 (which even incorporated footage from SPM), The Sandy Hook Lingerie Party Massacre, Psycho Sleepover, The Last Slumber Party, House on Sorority Row, The Stay Awake and even The Sorority House Slumber Party Massacre. Though the original franchise came to an end with its third installment, the series enjoyed something of a revival in 2003 with Jim Wynorski’s Cheerleader Massacre, which was co-produced by Corman and originally titled SPMIV. Though the title was eventually changed and the film has little in common with the series that inspired it, it did manage to revive one of the original film’s ill- fated characters. Linda, played by veteran horror actress Brinke Stevens, had a pre- sumably fatal run-in with escaped mental patient Russ Thorn in SPM, but apparently got better in time to make an appearance in CM. “Back when I’d first heard about SPM II, I asked if I could be in it – and the reply
was, ‘But Brinke, you’re dead!’ In truth, you never actually saw me die, only heard a horrible off-camera scream.” Stevens was eager to reprise her role for Wynorski’s spinoff, even if the part wasn’t
quite as meaty as she would have liked. “I wish they’d had time to put some scars on my arms or chest to allude to my past trauma,” she says. “As it is, I’m remarkably unscarred... except perhaps mentally.” Nearly 30 years after the release of the original SPM, viewers remain sharply
divided about the franchise’s feminist trappings. To many, the films represent a rarity in the genre; besides being the only horror franchise helmed exclusively by women, the first installment, in particular, flips many of the genre’s typical gender roles. “The stereotypical roles are reversed, with the girls being smart and strong, while
the boys are more effeminate and constantly making poor decisions,” says Collum, whose three-part documentary is included with the re-release. “Lots of female em- powerment with women doing ‘men’s’ jobs like carpentry, telephone repair, etc. And, in the post-Halloween world of Jamie Lee Curtis fighting back, these girls pick up power tools and use them... they fight for survival.” “It’s definitely there,” says Brock, of SPM II’s feminist subtext. “Amy Holden Jones
and Rita Mae Brown started it with the original Slumber Party Massacre and then Roger just continued with the women writer/directors. The young women in SPM II are inde- pendent and do and say what they want with a lot of freedom. Also, they are the ones who have to solve their problem in the end. There are no men to come to their rescue – they’re all dead or have rejected the whole idea of the ‘problem,’ as in the local police. In the end, Courtney has to face her own fears in the Driller Killer – who definitely represents a type of deranged masculinity – and destroy him.” Mattison expresses a similar desire to address the genre’s treatment of women in
her film; in particular, she wanted to do away with the familiar trope of the promis- cuous girl being the first to die. “That bothered me as an unfair, double standard pun- ishment of female sexuality,” she remembers. “In SPM III, the most promiscuous girl of the bunch doesn’t get bumped off first; she lasts a while. I tried to partly upend what I saw as the conventions of the genre, while working within it.” The franchise’s detractors, on the other hand, offer a more cynical explanation: the
films are perceived as feminist horror movies only because Corman was shrewd enough to market them as such. “At the time of its release [SPM] was attacked by feminists, but that is absurd,”
Jones says. “More boys die on camera, by far, than girls, and far more brutally, as well. This is the nature of the genre. It’s not about violence against women per se, any more than The Omen is about child abuse. I was a young feminist then and I’m a middle-aged one now. There were precious few strong women on screen at that point. I’ve made a whole career of trying to change that. This was the beginning, hum- ble though it may be.”
The Girl Gets It: (top) The Driller Killer (Atanas Ilitch) wields his drill bit-headed gui- tar and (below) the gooey aftermath of Sally’s gigantic exploding zit from SPM II.
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