Killer Party (1986)

A bitter woman attending her mother's funeral gets pulled into a casket by her dearly departed and is accidentally incinerated, which turns out to be a movie playing at a drive-in where a girl goes to a snack bar, encounters dancing zombies and then a rock band, which turns out to be a music music video being watched by one of our heroines. This bizarre film-within-a-film-within- a-film opening is probably the most appropriate way to start out a film originally called "The April Fools" and set among a group of joke- playing college students in the midst of Hell Week. Shy Jennifer (Joanna Johnson), vivacious Phoebe (Elaine Wilkes) and geeky Vivia (Sherry Willis-Burch) are the three newest pledges of the prestigious sorority Sigma Alpha Phi ("the wet dream of this college!") where they must endure such rush week indignities as paddling, having raw eggs cracked into their mouths, being fed goat eyeballs (!) and being forced to say "I myself prefer a big, fat cucumber" in the middle of class.Thankfully, all that's about to come to an end as the girls approach the end of their hazing period, only they're about to trade the feelings of embarrassment and humiliation for the feelings of death and bodily possession instead. Bitchy sorority head Veronica (Alicia Fleer) unwisely decides to hold the sorority's annual April Fool's masquerade ball - held in conjunction with a male house known as the Beta Tau - in a long-abandoned frat house haunted by the vengeful spirit of a guy named Alan who was accidentally killed there twenty years earlier. As the party is underway, someone decked out in a diver's costume decides to kill everyone off in a variety of ways that include a trident, knife, hammer, guillotine, drowning and that old standby, a harpoon shot up an ass. By the end, the guilty party (whose identity is poorly telegraphed in advance) is sporting white contacts, an EXORCIST tongue and a husky voice and literally climbing the walls.This actually begins surprisingly well. The production values and photography are both good, there are some fun songs, the performances are competent from most of the cast, the actors and actresses are likable and the dialogue isn't half bad either (the script was from Friday THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER writer Barney Cohen). We get a good look at college life to start things out, but the movie wastes way too much time on that and the various pranks going on on campus, including bees unleashed upon a bunch of topless girls in a hot tub. For the first hour plus the film is almost completely bereft of horror so by the time it does reach the finale it has no other choice but to rush through it in a haphazard fashion completely devoid of either suspense or gory payoff. Hampering the film even further is that ALL of the kills take place off- screen. You simply get to see an already-killed victim or the killer approaching behind someone with a weapon before it abruptly cuts to something else. Apparently the MPAA forced them to eliminate every bit of blood and there doesn't appear to have been a lot to begin with. The only real gore moment they allowed to pass through was a decapitation and that's only because it turns out to be a prank!Martin Hewitt receives top billing for his supporting role because he was in the hit ENDLESS LOVE (1981) a few years earlier. (Terrible movie but it got him some attention at the time). Cult legend Paul Bartel has a small role as an uptight professor and other small parts are played by Ralph Seymour (JUST BEFORE DAWN), Terri Hawkes (PROM NIGHT II) and Woody Brown (ALLIGATOR II). By the way, the current "trivia" on here about this movie starting production in 1978 and being mostly filmed then is complete bs. This was actually filmed in 1984.

Supernatural/slasher hybrids rarely work, and Killer Party is an example of one of those genre confused movies.It starts off interestingly with a movie within a music video within a movie. Confusing, huh? Yeah, it is, but it's all in good fun. Then, we meet our leads who engage in the usual college hi-jinks. This time, though, there are not so funny, but I guess they're fun, too.The gang is planning a sorority party in an old run down frat house, where a man was killed years ago. Before you know it, someone is killing off the co-eds. The murders are obviously heavily edited. Once they start they come right after another. I'd like them to have been a bit more spread out. The last 30 minutes are flooded with nothing more than dry, neutered murders.Even though the final 10 minutes give some cheap thrills, the movie ultimately fails at anything it's trying to do. It's not scary enough to be a supernatural horror, or bloody enough to be a good slasher, and certainly not funny enough to be a decent college comedy.Nice ending can't save a relatively dull, incompetent film. The direction, acting, and music is very good. Too bad it enevr adds up to a cohesive whole.Watch out for that damn theme song too. "These are the best times, of our lives. These are the best times!" God, help me.Worth a rent.

"Killer Party" is a pretty dumb and righteously forgotten mid-80's horror-comedy that only gets funny when it's meant to look serious and vice versa. That's quite painful already, and it gets gradually worse with bad acting and total lack of gore or inventive gimmicks. After not one, but TWO (not even counting the super cheesy music video) misleading opening sequences, we're introduced to three cheerful girl friends that desperately want to be part of a prominent campus sorority of which the name has already slipped my mind. They're accepted, but only because one of them – Vivia – is a master in pulling April fool's pranks. The girls are referred to as "goats" (quite appropriately) and they're assigned to freak out the boys of a frat club during a party held at a haunted frat house. What follows next is a series of lame red herrings disguised as fraternity pranks and a handful of bloodless killings, supposedly committed by a student who died in the house 20 years ago. Is it all a set-up? Will the girls ever bath naked in the hot tub again? Do we honestly even care?? With the exception of lead actress Elaine Wilkes' portrayal of Phoebe, all the characters are completely insufferable and their deaths nearly weren't painful enough in my opinion. "Killer Party" is boring up until the last fifteen minutes, then it gets over-the-top campy and totally implausible. Not even the spirited guest appearance of Paul Bartel ("Eating Raoul", "Death Race 2000") as the grumpy teacher can save this movie from being an utter mess. Check out "April Fool's Day", instead.

Boy, oh boy, this movie is a total mess. It tries to be a lot of things but almost misses every single mark. But what do you want if you mix-up parody/comedy, slasher/horror & a bit of demonic possession. Don't expect over the top situations like SCARY MOVIE, 'cause KILLER PARTY prefers to quietly rip-off certain movies instead of parody them openly.Story-line: On a university campus the Sigma Alpha Pi sisters decide to throw an April Fool's Day-party in an abandoned sorority building. Apparently, someone got killed twenty years ago in that same building...On a positive note, the filmmakers were sort of original by shooting three different opening scenes (We have a funeral-scene, which is part of a movie in a drive-in theatre, which is part of a music-video one of the main characters is watching in her livingroom). Now, it is when you witness the music-video (a Michael Jackson's THRILLER rip-off) that you realize you've just entered a really bad 80's movie and you will have a few good laughs while at it. Just look at the band ('White Sister'!?!?) featured in the videoclip. They've got spandex, bad hairdo's and they play bad 80's glammy hard-rock with lyrics like "April, why do you play the fool...?". I almost fell on the floor laughing.Then, this movie suddenly turns into a bad PORKY'S clone (yes, folks, there's nudity). We get some practical jokes amongst students, an initiation ritual in order to get our three lead female characters (Phoebe, Vivia & Jennifer) admitted to the Sigma Alpha Pi's, preparations for the party,... All this nonsense lasts for almost an hour and we only get two occasional bloodless killings (an old hag and a teacher).It is when the party finally starts that the filmmakers suddenly seem to realize that they were making a horror movie, so in comes the mysterious slasher/killer dressed in a ridiculous antique diving suit. He starts killing off people left and right, all off-screen (big let down!). We do get to see some dead bodies and body parts afterwards, but nothing special.In the end, our three leading girls are the only ones left standing. And it is at that point this movie suddenly becomes highly amusing. Jennifer becomes possessed (complete with Linda Blair contact lenses and a tongue that would make Gene Simmons jealous) and starts drooling, speaking with a distorted voice, climbing up walls and bursting through ceilings while chasing Vivia & Phoebe. Now, we do get some hints during the party scenes that something's wrong with Jennifer, but still the final climax comes as a surprise because it totally changes the mood of the film, reminding us a bit of NIGHT OF THE DEMONS, same atmosphere. So I had to give this movie an extra point for that.All in all this is a bad movie (especially the acting and the musical score) and normally I wouldn't recommend it. But if you're a fan of cheesy 80's slasher-movies, you might want to give it a try. Because, believe me, I've seen worse. Gorehounds, however, should stay away from this movie because of the lack of blood & gore. It's worth seeing for the climax in the end because of the entertaining performance of possessed cutie Joanna Johnson and some nice camera-work and fun effects (I loved it when the camera pulls up to Jennifer while doors are closing simultaneously in the background and she growls: "I've been waiting twenty years for this..."). If you like practical jokes in horror movies, you can also check out the more suspenseful slasher-movie APRIL FOOL'S DAY. Or if you'd like to see the ultimate in 80's campus horror, check out NIGHT OF THE CREEPS. Both movies are (though not really comparable) better than KILLER PARTY.