Directed by William Fruet
Starring Elaine Wilkes, Shery Willis-Burch, Joanna Johnson, Martin Hewitt and Paul Bartel
Boring backstory information: I saw the final 10 minutes or so of this movie way, way, WAY back sometime in 1991 when I was waiting for WCW to come on. Lo and behold that I actually wanted to watch the end of the freakin' movie more than Jim Herd's post-Pizza Hut project of choice. In ten minutes of riveting television, I was treated to a rabid demon woman, a creepy twist ending that indicated that the surviving girl was most likely dead meat, and a pretty damn catchy end credits song in "These Are the Best Times of Our Lives." It's that damn SONG that's haunted me for damn near 25 years, and one "horror movie with 'these are the best times of our lives' song" Google search later I finally had the name of that TBS afternoon movie that scared the crap out of me all those years ago.
It's called Killer Party, originally titled April Fool. Hence the title of that awesome White Sister song that plays over the movie's opening credits. I'm somewhat sorry to say that it doesn't live up to the sterling expectations I had for it, mainly due to an almost suicidal build period that does nothing for any of the characters involved and drags to an almost comical degree. It DOES pick up slightly in the final trimester, but only slightly.
The flick starts off very promising, with the aforementioned White Sister song being the second part of what is a DOUBLE not happening-dream sequence beating the audience into submission. The rest of the build, unfortunately, is nowhere near as much fun. What we have here is a college acceptance movie, with our three principal leads being three would-be sorority pledges. There's smart, sassy Vivia (Wills-Burch), somewhat nondescript Jennifer (Johnson, who despite her vanilla character is probably the best actress of the three - particularly when she enters full Demon Mode), and sweet Phoebe (Wilkes). The three girls themselves are actually pretty likable, but the movie foolishly wastes them and makes most of the buildup about...other people. Most specifically the fraternity brothers who spend their time committing pranks on the sorority and then trying to get in their pants mere minutes later. Expert strategy, if you ask me.
The night of the big pledge arrives, where we get one of those classic Movie Greek Ceremony scenes that are about nine steps over the top. Vivia commits a prank of her own during this sequence that actually saves the initiation for herself and her friends. This leaves our terrific trio (I know...groan) in charge of the April Fool's dance on campus, which just so happens to take place in a creepy abandoned frat house where some kid died 22 years prior. And it also just so happens that said kid was into occultism, and managed to potentially conjure up some kind of mystical demon.
Watching the final third of the movie unfold, I really was struck by the very sad fact about that I've become an older, jaded horror fan. I was a notorious scaredy-cat as a kid. I'd watch the Friday the 13th movies fairly regularly, but fully admit that they caused me some near-sleepless nights in grade school. This stuff would have probably terrified me back then. Now, I've seen my fair share of tongue-in-cheek, goofy horror movies, and since this one wasn't throwing much in the way of over-the-top kill scenes or over-the-top nudity my direction, I found myself losing attention and desperately trying to think of other things to do. And this makes me very depressed.
As for the story, what we've got with the "kill portion" of this movie is Jennifer being possessed by the demon that Fraternity Kid managed to conjure up in the house. None of the deaths are particularly creative, although we do get the use of an actual, honest-to-christ guillotine. I'm always a mark for guillotine scenes. The final chase is also pretty well done, particularly since it involves the three main characters and thus the three people in the movie that we actually give a flying fuck about. It all builds up to that ending that I remembered from 1991, one that probably would have still managed to effect me as a battle-hardened 31-year-old. But it wasn't enough to rag this movie's goofy build out of the doldrums.
The movie went in and out of theaters quicker than a hiccup back in '86, and it's not hard to figure out why. The slasher movie craze was already on the wane by that point, and this not-very-sleazy entry in the genre probably wasn't going to entice many people to make the trek to the local movie house on Friday night. Even with the admittedly pretty good soundtrack that it has. Thus, while it has some good stuff acting wise from its three leads and a solid finale, this is a hard movie to recommend, nostalgia be damned.
** out of ****. I can't help but think the reason that TBS was showing this in 1991 was because the rights were likely dirt cheap, and for good reason. Worth checking out once; don't spend $13 on it like I did.
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