KILLER PARTY
Directed by William Fruet. 1986. Canada.
There is an old Chinese proverb that says, "Never take seriously a movie that begins with a movie-within-a-movie gag." That, ladies and gentlemen, is a truism. If that movie-within-a-movie gag then turns into a cheesy hair metal music video, well... That’s an almost cosmic level of ‘not to be taken seriously’. That isn’t just a red flag that you’re watching a farce. That is a planet-sized klaxon alarm blasting you in the face, endlessly screaming at untold decibels that the film you are watching is a complete farce. Prepare accordingly.
KILLER PARTY is a stupid movie. It’s fitting that the majority of its action takes place on April Fools' Day because it is a practical joke on its audience. No, not an “it was all a joke” kind of practical joke, like in that other April Fools' Day horror movie, and no, not even in the “it was all a dream” kind of practical joke, like in that other other April Fools' Day horror movie. KILLER PARTY isn’t APRIL FOOLS' DAY or SLAUGHTER HIGH. No, it is a special kind of joke, a movie so clusterfucky in its narrative construction that I find myself gazing at it in befuddled bewilderment every time I put it on.
Follow along. Phoebe, Jennifer, and Vivia are mere days away from being welcomed into Sigma Alpha Pi. “I can smell the clout,” remarks Phoebe. She would make an excellent streamer. The resident sorority bitches, Pam and Veronica, task the girls with stealing t-shirts from the local frat house. While thieving, Jennifer meets Blake, a stone-cold hunk, and accidentally drops one of her books on the ground. It is summarily returned to her by Martin, a nerd with itchy feet.
During the Hell Night initiation in the creepy abandoned frat house down the street, our girls swallow grapes and spit uncooked egg yolks into tall glasses as part of a hazing ritual. Then the spooky stuff starts to happen. Glasses break, doors lock on their own, all hell breaks loose, and Vivia goes missing, only to be found tied and bound on a guillotine. The blade comes down and SPLAT! Off comes her head. But surprise, surprise, it was all a joke, cleverly pulled off by Vivia. How? Who knows? All we know is that her little prank causes something very real to happen to Jennifer, almost like something invades her body for a moment. That is not the end of the spooky stuff either. Their departing house mother and English professor are both killed by someone they recognize in the old frat house.
A while later, Phoebe and Jennifer are both put to work on the April Fools' Day party in the old frat house while Vivia sets about recreating her Hell Night theatrics. In between makeout sessions with Blake, Jennifer keeps hearing someone whispering her name, and the mysterious tombstone in the backyard cracks in half. None of this would have anything to do with the spirit of a dead frat boy that supposedly haunts this house, right? Vivia’s pranks go off without a hitch, Phoebe hooks up with a new fella, and Jennifer? Well, she takes a hike, far too worried about the evil she is sensing to have any fun.
And that is when the person in a deep-sea diver costume starts prowling around. Oh, did I forget to mention that, for some reason, everyone is wearing costumes at an April Fools' Day party? Yeah, that’s a thing, and so are the many, many deaths that occur within about five minutes. People are drowned, stabbed, shot with harpoons, impaled with a pitchfork, you name it. A real bloodbath. If only our leads noticed any of it happening.
And it’s here where KILLER PARTY stops being a routine slasher and starts losing its goddamn mind.
Now, I skipped over about 40 minutes' worth of events. There is much, much more that happens in the first two acts of KILLER PARTY. For example, several Sigma Alpha Pi sorority sisters are lounging nude in their backyard hot tub. The local frat guys decide to chuck a glass bottle full of bees into the yard so they can videotape the nude students as they run for cover. Not as rapey as half the pranks in REVENGE OF THE NERDS, sure, but is that really a harmless prank to pull on girls you spend the rest of the film trying to sleep with? Martin eventually hooks up with Vivia, but never stops being a sex pest. There are shenanigans involving classrooms, professors, administrators, fake severed heads, and lots of PG-13 flirting with boys. For a lot of the second act, KILLER PARTY feels like a routine college comedy.
When we make our way into the abandoned frat house, things take on a spooky tone, but only sporadically. Even during the final party, when you would imagine the horror would be ramping up, we are still dwelling in the lands of heavy petting and petty jealousies. Should we not be getting ready for the chills and thrills by now? Well, we could do that, or we could just kill about 10 people in the space of five minutes and save the rest of our time for dumbasses in bee costumes staring at asses like dogs in heat. Is this horror movie ever going to become a full-on horror movie, or are we going to keep passing the time with light-hearted laughs and college-age drama? Do we ever get a plot twist or some shocking revelation? Well, we do get one. Are you ready for it? Here it is...
I love this movie.
There. Shocking enough for ya? Admit it. You didn’t see it coming.
What sends this movie screaming into the stratosphere on the back of a rocket propelled by sheer, gleeful stupidity are the final 10 minutes, an inexplicable and fucking batshit crazy detour into EVIL DEAD territory. Suddenly, the movie-within-a-movie opening made total sense. We have never stopped doing the movie-within-a-movie reveals. We went from an EC Comic-inspired black comedy-horror tale of a bitchy woman dragged into a coffin (and then a cremation furnace), to a zombie movie, to a music video, to a teen sex comedy, to a haunted house movie, to a rom-com, to a slasher movie, just to end up with a possession movie where a demon-infected chick tosses her friend off a roof. All within 90 minutes.
None of it happens smoothly, and none of it makes sense. The random assemblage of sub-genres does not blend nicely like peanut butter and jelly; they rub against each other unpleasantly like Brillo pads and assholes. It should not work, but I am always having too much fun to care. I was a teenager whenUSA Up All Night was airing, so I am not entirely sure what a Friday night with Rhonda Shear would have looked like stoned and drunk. I imagine it would have been very confusing, especially if you kept nodding off at random intervals. Wait, I thought I was watching a horror movie, but it’s now a teen comedy. Oh, I must have passed out again. Now, there’s a phone sex commercial on. Oops, there I went again. Hey, NIGHTMARE SISTERS is on now.
It’s weird and it’s discordant, but I don’t frankly care, because watching a drooling, growling Joanna Johnson toss a dummy off a roof before yeeting herself off after it never stops being funny. It doesn’t hurt that Johnson, Sherry Willis-Burch, and Elaine Wilkes are incredibly likable leads. The secondary cast of characters all feel like they’ve wandered in from other movies, but everyone is playing their part like their lives depended on it. Nothing about the reality of this film gels around our lead trio, but there’s no way it could. This is a dumb movie, a grab bag of genres played for laughs rather than screams. It’s an entire weekend of USA Up All Night shoved in a blender and pulsed into a goopy slurry of brain-rotting goodness.
It’s so bad, it’s good, which makes it not bad at all.