Killer Party
The entry requirements for Briggs College only the first step in the challenges that best friends Jennifer, Phoebe and Vivia will face on their road to higher education, next is their application and, if successful, induction into the Sigma Alpha Pi sorority, humiliating and degrading rituals overseen by vindictive pledge sister Veronica who abuses her position of authority and further complicated by the marauding boys of Beta Tau.
The faculty seemingly unable to exert any control over the students, their behaviour malicious, out of control and bordering on illegal as their pranks escalate, it is seemingly innocuous Vivia who ensures the girls a place when she pulls a Hallowe’en themed prank during their initiation, impressing Veronica who sees it as a way to strike back at the Beta Tau boys in the April Fool’s Day masquerade at Pitt House, reopened after it was abandoned two decades before.
A relatively obscure slasher of the mid-eighties despite distribution by MGM, Killer Party was directed by William Fruet from a script by Barney Cohen, the Gothic buildings of campus shot on location in Toronto and providing much-needed production value in a film which inexplicably has two false openings, a prelude of a graveyard revenge horror which segues into a big hair rock video by White Sister, ultimately revealed as being viewed by Jennifer (Joanna Johnson).
An uneven film even beyond the three establishing scenes, there is a sense that the budget of Killer Party was insufficient for the ambition, the characters overwhelmingly bland and juvenile as though they were rushed onto the page and then the screen without development, the exceptions Sherry Willis-Burch as smart and defiant Vivia – scripted to die early until it became apparent she was their most valuable player – and Martin Hewitt as Blake, both far better than the material they are working with.
The few fully realised effects sequences impressive but many of the deaths simply the thrust of a trident or the fall of a guillotine blade out of frame and Eating Raoul‘s Paul Bartel given little to do as Professor Archibald Zito, Killer Party is less than the sum of its parts, the horror elements unbalanced by trashy low-brow comedy and the nocturnal fogbound graveyard of the opening shot a false promise, paralleling The Initiation of Sarah but with community college qualifications rather than a masters degree.
Restored for Blu-ray by Arrow, their new edition is supported by archive interviews with actors Willis-Burch and Ralph Seymour who plays insufferable frat boy Martin, Cohen, composer John Beal, make-up effects artist Gordon J Smith, production designer Reuben Freed and a feature on White Sister’s role in the film and new material in the form of a commentary by film critic Stacie Ponder and two visual essays from critics Alexandra West and Mike Muncer.
Killer Party will be available on Blu-ray from Arrow from Monday 10th August
