William Fruet made his directorial debut with Wedding in White, which was based on a play that he had written. The film won Best Picture at the Canadian Film Awards in 1973 and starred Carol Kane and Donald Pleasence. He followed that up with an intriguing string of Canuxploitation films, obviously taking full advantage of those wonderful tax shelter laws that produced so many statistic favorites.
There's proto-slasher Death Weekend (released in the U.S. as The House By the Lake),Cries In the Night (known better here as Funeral Home),redneck rampage film Trapped (AKA Baker County U.S.A.),Spasms, Bedroom Eyes and the kinda-sorta Alien by way of animal experimentation oddity Blue Monkey, as well as episodes of Goosebumps, Friday's Curse (perhaps better known as Friday the 13th: The Series) and Poltergeist: The Legacy.
That brings us to Killer Party, a movie once named April Fool before the similarly named April Fool's Day went into production.
College students Vivia (Sherry Willis-Burch, who is also in Final Exam),Jennifer (Joanna Johnson, who was on the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful off and on from 1987 to 2014) and Phoebe (Elaine Wilkes, Sixteen Candles, My Chauffeur) are sorority pledges at Briggs College who are in the middle of Hell Week.
They're warned by their housemother Mrs. Henshaw to avoid the Pratt House, then travels there herself to the grave of a man named Allan, who she asks to leave the kids alone before she's murdered.
On the day of the initiation - this is a similar slasher trope, just witness Sorority Girls In the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, One Dark Night and The Initiation just to name a few - the girls prepare to break in and steal some clothes. We also meet Blake (Martin Hewitt, the doomed obsessive lover of Brooke Shields in Endless Love) and Martin (Ralph Seymour, Surf II, Just Before Dawn),who with interested in Jennifer.
During the hazing, the girls are forced to hold raw eggs in their mouths. Soon, all hell breaks loose and the lights begin to flicker and glasses rise off the table. Vivia goes to see where the noises are coming from, which leads to the group finding her get beheaded in a guillotine. Somehow, this was all a ruse and part of a prank that she decided to play. This part kind of confuses me, as I have no idea how a pledge - or why, to be honest - could set up such an elaborate trick.
That said, that prank becomes the reason why Vivia makes it into the sorority. She's asked to recreate it at the April Fool's Day masquerade that they're throwing at - DUH DUH DUH - the Pratt House. That's when we learn - via Professor Zito's (Paul Bartel!) exposition - that Allan died in such a hazing ritual involving a guillotine 22 years ago. That said, Allan may have been way into the occult and conjured an evil force that was behind his death.
Bartel is the best part of this movie. I've said that sentence so many times, but it's incredibly true here. Sadly, he doesn't last much longer as when he decides to inspect the house, someone in the basement electrifies him. Also, his Zito character is named after Joseph Zito, who directed Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and The Prowler. That's because the former of those films was written by this film's writer, Barney Cohen.
During the prank at the part, Jennifer is possessed by a spirit and stops the trick. As the party falls apart, the killing picks up, with Veronica being killed with a hammer, Pam stabbed with a trident, Martin's head ends up in the fridge while Albert also loses his noggin and then Blake is drowned in a bathtub. Vivia and Phoebe run from all this carnage right into Jennifer, who discloses that she's possessed by the ghost of Allan.
They try and escape through a window, but Vivia is thrown to the unforgiving earth, breaking both her legs. Phoebe ends up killing her possessed friend by impaling her with a board, but she's overtaken by Allan, just as the police put both women into an ambulance. The movie closes on Vivia screaming that she can't be left alone with Phoebe.
The reason for the quick burst of murder in this film is because it had to be re-edited following numerous MPAA cuts. That's why the film seems to have no gore and is edited so that the murders have little room in between. In the original cut, there was more time between each kill, as well as plenty more gore, like Pam getting completely impaled by the trident.
If you're watching this and wondering, "Have I seen Briggs College before?" you have. It's the same school as 1998's Urban Legend.
Killer Party was a latecomer to the slasher era, but it's a quick-moving burst of fun. It's not perfect, but how many of these movies are?
Killer Party
1986
Comedy / Horror
Killer Party
1986
Comedy / Horror
Plot summary
Three gorgeous babes decide to join a sorority, and a whole bunch of horny guys dump bees in the sorority's back yard where a bunch of girls are naked in the outside hot tub so when the girls jump out the boys use a video camera to take lots of shots of them. Their house mother gets talked into letting the girls have a hazing party in a forbidden frat house, and when she goes there to make sure the place is safe, she first stops at a handy grave in the front yard to explain to 'Allan' why she's letting the girls use the house, and tells him that it was all an accident and it's time for him to just let it go. Allan doesn't answer her, since he's dead. Or is he? As she is nailing down a loose banister on the stairway, a mysterious figure appears before her, brandishing what looks like a tire iron, she turns, asks "What are you doing here?" and this person does answer her by striking her dead. Well, the three pledges go through a hazing (and there are some very nice set pieces here, watch for 'em),and are accepted into the sorority. One of the pledges is really good at special effects, horror stuff, and she is told that the only reason that she was accepted was that skill--they want her to gimmick up a traditional April Fools party that the sorority is hosting for a fraternity. Twenty-two years ago, the boy in the grave was killed at one of those parties by what everyone carefully refers to as an "accident." The girls talk about strange disappearances while they begin to set up the old house for the party, and more strange things happen. Vivia, the sfx girl, starts to pull off her stunts, but then really menacing things begin to happen. Will the youngsters figure out what's going on and who is doing it before they are all horribly killed? Is it still safe for us to go out to parties, or should be all be hiding under our computer desks?
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Killer parties almost killed me
"Are You A Goat?"
"Killer Party" opens like no other horror/slasher movie ever. It's a good 9 minutes before the actual movie begins. The opening 9 minutes pull the rug out from under the viewer not once, but twice! These two opening segments did a fun job of jumping on the clichés of the time. Gotcha scares, drive-ins, and hair rock music videos routinely seen on MTV. It is an absolute blast. The actual movie tells the tale of three young women pledging to a sorority on campus. They have to go through the usual pledge/hazing shenanigans. Unfortunately, a party is to be held in an abandoned frat house, where a pledge was accidentally killed years before. It appears this pledge does not rest in peace, and the party-goers are about to find out the hard way.
"Killer Party" is a horror movie with a sense of humor. Not only the humor that is in the movie in itself, but the fact that the film knows what kind of movie it is, and has fun with it. The movie just has a sense of fun all around it. Great locations, 80s nostalgia in your face, and just enough eerie atmosphere here and there. It does slow down in some spots, but it isn't a concern. However, for a slasher/horror movie, the death scenes are relatively tame, and not all of them do we see for long or, in some cases, at all. No matter. The movie was written as a fun horror movie, and that's what we get. A horror movie with humor, standard slasher conventions, a taste of the supernatural, a dash of college hazing hi-jinks, and it's own music video! "Killer Party" really does seem to be the "Everything and the kitchen sink" horror movie.
Overall rating: 7 out of 10.
This is a five (5) C = Canadian, Campy, Creepy, Cult, Classic!
I thoroughly enjoyed this 1986 creepy camp classic that in my humble view is a Canadian Cult classic. No, it is not a horror film in the real sense of the horror genre, nor is it a comedy. What I will say is that this fraternity is one that people figuratively and literally "die for!"
If I were to compare it to the 1978 comedy fraternity phenom of Animal House, I actually enjoyed Killer Party much more because it does not rely solely on gross humor to satisfy its college and younger audience. Killer Party provides an abundance of camp, comedy, a little bit of horror, a little bit of suspense and a lot of mystery as to who is actually killing off the school faculty members and the frat boys and girls?
Since this film was released more than 30 years ago and I just watched it, I must say that it holds up very well and should be considered a five (5) C which stands for Canadian, Campy, Creepy, Cult, Classic!
I give Killer Party an entertaining 8 out of 10 rating!