Gender and Subverting Slashers in THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE

Everyone has their idea of the typical ‘80s slasher film - the killer with an iconic gimmicky weapon, the final girl, the kills and gore - and every trope that you could come up with is fully present in 1982’s The Slumber Party Massacre. Directed by Amy Holden Jones and written by Rita Mae Brown, the film follows a group of high schoolers in Venice, California that throw a slumber party while their parents are away. Unbeknownst to them, Russ Thorn (Michael Villella), a serial killer of five people, has escaped custody and has the girls in his sights as his next victims. Russ stalks the girls, slowly killing off those close to them one by one until crashing into their slumber party for a final confrontation, where Trish Devereaux (Michelle Michaels), Valerie Bates (​​Robin Stille), and Courtney Bates (Jennifer Meyers) finally subdue and defeat the killer. On paper, the plot sounds pretty true to the slasher formula: it has all of the genre’s hallmarks of the plot and story, and it plays out close to what we’d expect. But the film gets an added layer to it through the fact that it was directed and written by women. Rita Mae Brown was an activist and feminist writer and originally wrote the screenplay as a parody of the kind of slashers that were released at the time. The film became more of a direct and serious slasher during production, but still fully retains the feminist side of her script and some deeper subversive elements to it. The subversion of slashers in The Slumber Party Massacre comes from its repetition of slasher tropes with the differences in the portrayal of gender in the genre by Amy Holden Jones and Rita Mae Brown.

The Slumber Party Massacre’s portrayal of women seems similar to other slashers on the surface but is more complex when taking a deeper look at certain scenes. For example, one of the most criticized tropes of slasher films in their depiction of women is their excessive nudity. The film in the beginning shows graphic nudity in the shower scene, leering over the girls’ naked bodies. This scene is the most outwardly demeaning towards the women but is interesting in how it mirrors a later moment of Jeff (David Millbern) and Neil (Joseph Alan Johnson) spying on the women changing. Those two characters are parodies of horny teen boys, and Amy Holden Jones is drawing a connection between them and how male viewers of these films can tend to gawk over the naked women. Whether this moment works as a metaphor or giving in to the tropes is up to the viewer, but it is also interesting how the focus of the scene shifts to Trish staring at Valerie showering and inviting her to the party. It moves from a male view of the scene to a female view of Trish seeking female companionship in Valerie. Most notably when it comes to these characters, it hits a strong emotional chord in its finale. As with many slashers, it’s the women that have to take up the final stand against the killer. But in this film, we end on a sad moment between Trish, Valerie, and Courtney crying together over Russ’s dead body after finally killing him. Their friends have died and we get to see that in the end, they all cry together from the loss and trauma that they have just endured and can share their emotions without even saying a word. It’s a strong example of how The Slumber Party Massacre is less focused on literally speaking its themes or directly addressing its subtext on gender but is still taking a feminist stance. It’s a moment of emotional complexity that no men in the film receive anything like and leaves an impression as the final moment.

The depiction of men in The Slumber Party Massacre as weak and unsympathetic shows some of its strongest examples of feminist subversion of slasher tropes. Almost every single man shown on screen is presented in an embarrassing or unfavorable light, compared to all of the women being sympathetic characters. Starting from the beginning when Mr. Devereaux (Howard Purgason) and Mrs. Devereaux (Anna Patton) leave Trish at home, her mother hugs her and wishes her goodbye, and wants to make sure she was okay before they left. Mr. Devereaux on the other hand is uncaring, sitting in the car and just wanting to leave to go on his trip. He nags his wife to leave instead of wishing his daughter goodbye. Trish is left alone with Mr. Contant (Rigg Kennedy) to help her. Mr. Contant is an older man who is watching Trish while her parents are away. He takes the role of watching over her way too far, leading to him even going inside her house while the door is open without telling her and delivering another jump scare for her and the audience. His check-ins are strange just based on the idea of an older man constantly watching over a high schooler who’s home alone. It’s mostly shown as an annoyance in the beginning but the character is still questionably nosy into Trish’s business and won’t leave her alone. Other male characters that wedge their way into the girls’ party are Jeff and Neil. The two are first introduced staring at a telephone repairwoman and sending advances to her. The two characters are perverts who care mainly about watching the girls while they’re changing and later scare the girls by sneaking into their basement. What they do is strange, gross, and based only on their sexual desire. The two are shown as weak and cowardly and later decide to run away to get help instead of staying back and defending themselves. The script has them making comments about flunking gym class, quitting cub scouts, and how the women could beat them up. It comically makes them punching bags and their pathetic nature meets its end when they are both killed by Russ Thorn. There is also an emphasis on their screams in their death scenes too to put them in the place of the slasher victim that women typically occupy. Specifically, when Neil is attacked, his screams are drowned out by the screams of a woman in a horror movie.

“All of you are very pretty…I love you…takes a lot of love for a person to do this, you know you want it, you love it.”

Lastly, killer Russ Thorn shows a crazed killer trying to kill the girls at their party out of obsession. He doesn’t specifically target women, but he’s still targeting this party for his next killing spree. His final speech shows him doing it as an act of love. He’s killing out of a crazed infatuation with these girls, showing a man’s manic lust leading to violence. In his defeat he gets his power drill cut off along with his hand, and screams and shrieks in his final moments, similar to Jeff and Neil. The big connection between many of the portrayed male characters is that they all have unflattering qualities to them and are toxic in their own ways towards the girls. Almost all of them contribute to scaring the girls, some being unintentional while others are on purpose. They’re all trying to wedge themselves into the girls’ lives and their party in different ways, being portrayed on a scale of weak to insane.

As a whole, The Slumber Party Massacre offers up an interesting look at gender in slashers while also remaining a solid slasher on its own. It has all the feelings of a classic ‘80s slasher with the added layers to it from Amy Holden Jones and Rita Mae Brown. As female horror creators, they use the format of slashers to engage the audience in its fun and campy trappings while also adding feminist commentary about societal gender norms in horror media. Although a lot of the examples of how this is a feminist work come from its presentation of men, it’s still a subversive way to deliver a feminist slasher to audiences. Just as it shows Valerie watching and enjoying a horror film, this too is a horror film made by women that shows us their important roles behind the scenes. The subversion of slashers in The Slumber Party Massacre comes from its repetition of slasher tropes with differences in the portrayal of gender in slashers, and its creators engage with the genre by keeping the same structure of films that have come before it while also giving a space for viewers to highlight a feminist view of the film.

WOMEN WHO WORKED ON THE FILM:

• Amy Holden Jones, director & producer

• Rita Mae Brown, writer

• Wendy Greene Bricmont, editor (uncredited)

• Francesca Bartoccini, art director

• Janet Scoutten, makeup artist

• Pamela Canzano, assistant art director

• Virginia Sue Cox, props assistant

• Patrushkha Mierzwa, boom operator

• Laurette Hayden, post-production coordinator

• Sharron Reynolds, script supervisor

• Carol Frank, assistant to director

• Michelle Michaels, actor as Trish

• Robin Stille, actor as Valerie

• Debra De Liso, actor as Kim 

• Andree Honore, actor as Jackie 

• Gina Smika Hunter, actor as Diane 

• Jennifer Meyers, actor as Courtney

• Pamela Roylance, actor as Coach Jana 

• Brinke Stevens, actor as Linda

• Anna Patton, actor as Mrs. Devereaux

• Pamela Canzano as Carpenter

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