1982@40: THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW

After an ominous monochrome prologue involving a doctor, new mother and the fate of her baby we zip forward to the early '80s which was in colour and meet a group of uni students who are getting ready for an end of term party against the proclamation of the house mother, Mrs Slater. As the future matrons of those United States, they prank the old gal and inadvertently kill her. With bon ton finesse the kids get their stories straight and wrap the body in a carpet and heave it into the disused pool. Not everyone's happy about it but PARTAY! So, they pile back into the house and get ready for a night of tertiary level boogie. The sun goes down and the boys arrive, the bottles flick open and it's on. But is Mrs Slater still in the pool?

While this might describe every second teen slasher you've ever seen. Depending on what you've seen of certain Canadian/US and older French thrillers you can pick two main elements that drive the plot. I'm not naming them here as the titles alone could conceivably be spoilers. So, if you're expecting a parade of fatalities at the hand of a mysterious (but is it?) killer and then maybe a few twists along the way, then this is the movie for you. 

By 1982 the teen slasher was established. Final girls, and masked othered killers converged upon each other as the body count ticked by. Because the audience and the onscreen targets were indistinguishable, the market was, for the time being, guaranteed. So, why bother doing anything differently? Well, there's always the possibility that something special about yours might help you break into the emergent market of  Michael Keaton vehicles just in time for the Tom Hanks explosion. If that happens here, that strive for respectability, it has to do with writer/director Mark Rosman's apprenticeship on the sets of '70s name director Brian de Palma. 

De Palma had established a profile reviving Hitchcockian suspense (to the point of outright lifting whole scenes) and while you might not be able to instantly declare something as one of his you wouldn't be surprised to learn of it afterwards. His most divergent from the Hitchcock template was Carrie which remains a legit horror classic. Outside of that, with de Palma you got gloss with everything looking Hollywood rather than gritty. If you know Hitch's '50s and '60s colour films, imagine them updated by ten years. Well, that's what Sorority Row looks and feels like: soft golden '80s light, youth culture about five years out of date (dig that The Cars with Tom Petty party band), and a few twists you don't care about but at least move the plot along. Oh, forgot, and a final scene that screams sequel (just not loudly enough in this case, though there was a remake decades later just to use the title). 

If you were to program a Halloween marathon of '80s slashers, this would serve as a pallet cleanser between stone cold Carpenter or F13 entries or as a companion to other twisty turny ones like Happy Birthday to Me or April Fool's Day. Ands that's the problem. Seeing it again, I registered it as ok but could stretch that no further. Among the sub generic fare there are the screamingly gory, the outright disturbing, the trove of checklist-ticking assembly line pieces and a few outliers like My Bloody Valentine or Slumber Party Massacre. Some can still turn my stomach and others feel like favourite albums and then there are Sorority Rows which play like a stretch of hits and memories radio that you don't mind at all.

The House on Sorotity Row is available on Tubi