Horrors mix with humor in MGM's `Killer Party'
Houston Chronicle - May 14, 1986
Author: BRUCE WESTBROOK, Staff
"Poltergeist II" may be looming enticingly on the horizon, but for now the horror genre is getting no respect.
In Austin, independent producer Cannon Films is making a cut-rate sequel to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" with almost none of its original stars, a fact that has set fans howling.
And in Houston, MGM has just released a miserable indie production it picked up for distribution called "Killer Party," a horror potboiler that rarely rises above a simmer. The movie was made in Toronto with a cast of unknowns, save for nominal stars Paul Bartel and Martin Hewitt. Bartel has earned some respect for the black comedy "Eating Raoul," but Hewitt starred with Brooke Shields in the classically bad "Endless Love," and if that film didn't finish his career, this one will.
Metro is touting "Killer Party" as a horror movie with humor, though the film is really more of a feeble campus comedy with horror trappings. The filmmakers seem to change their minds about tone and thrust with every reel, starting with the opening scenes, which turn out to be a horror movie within a heavy-metal music video within the movie proper, which is then scored with hopelessly dated and prissy pop. The "raison de scare" is an April Fool's party in a decrepit old frat house where, as any viewer of the "Halloween" or "Friday the 13th" films can guess, a pledge died from a hazing incident 20 years before. Old ghosts die hard and, naturally, someone is stalking the stupid students.
After much scene-setting with hysterically overwrought high jinks and hormonally imbalanced kissy-face, the corny conventions reign, with an inevitable array of heavy-breathing point-of-view shots, followed by the usual decapitations, impalings, disembowelings, electrocutions and bathtub drownings. For the most part, these slayings are all good, clean fun, in the sense that they're almost bloodless - an oddly innocent incongruity for an R rating.
But the film turns seriously sinister toward the conclusion, with some respectably good "Exorcist-"style possession scenes, followed by more prissy pop ("These are the best days of our li-i-i-ives") over the end titles. Say what? The acting is monumentally bad - grossly overplayed and obnoxious enough to merit a new chapter in "The Golden Turkey Awards" book.
As for the production staff, they tout such credits as "Funeral Home "and "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter," which tells you where they're coming from. They may mix the brew a bit differently here, but if they think they are giving the teen slash-'em-up genre a new dimension with this mindless melange, they are sadly mistaken. "Killer Party" isn't worth crashing - just trashing.
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