The slasher subgenre has long held a complex relationship with women in horror—both onscreen and in the audience. Criticized for its misogynistic representation of women as passive victims, it has been simultaneously praised for its progressive portrayal of active, strong female heroines. In the 1960s, the emergence of the women’s movement in America was a symptom of second-wave feminism, which subsequently permeated the western world. This built upon the core values of first-wave feminism and the fight for gender equality in the early 1900s with seminal campaigns like the suffragette movement. Second-wave feminism extended the focus of this quest for equality—taking on the workplace, the family dynamic, and reproductive rights in regards to women’s bodies—and lasted well into the 1980s. Slumber Party Massacre (1982) serves as a brilliant illustration of what happens when the slasher meets second-wave feminism.
Check out the original trailer for Slumber Party Massacre:
THE SLASHER AND THE FINAL GIRL
Though second-wave feminism had a profound effect on cinema at this time, it was particularly resonant within the horror genre, and the slasher film in particular. This was most evident in the character of the ‘final girl’, a trope defined by Carol J. Clover in Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (1993). Clover proposed that the audience initially aligns with the killer in the slasher film, largely due to the adoption of this character’s perspective via the camera, but that this affinity is displaced on the character of the final girl by the end of the film.
This fluidity of gendered identification among spectators is mirrored in the characters, as the final girl becomes masculinised in her final confrontation with the killer through phallic appropriation, when she wields a phallic weapon and actively uses this against her—typically male—attacker. This masculinization is enhanced by the androgynous names often given to final girls, such as Chris, Laurie or Sidney. Usually, the final girl survives due to her eschewal of the hedonistic lifestyle that her friends indulge in—vices such as sex, alcohol and drugs—as well as her intelligence, cautious observation, and determination.
Earlier incarnations of the final girl don’t necessarily correlate with Clover’s rules, as the contemporary slasher film was still being shaped. Examples include Lila Crane in Psycho (1960), Sally Hardesty from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and Laurie Strode in Halloween (1978). These women are effeminate, often passive and, most importantly, though they survive, are rescued by a male figure.
Lila, Sally and Laurie
Cut to the 1980s, when the slasher film had considerably evolved along with its women. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) is emblematic of a shift in gender politics during the rise of second-wave feminism. Compared with the character of the final girl in horror films from the previous two decades, Stretch in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 had a masculine name, dressed in androgynous clothes, was confident and career orientated, and displayed agency in her fight to survive.
SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE: Rita Mae Brown & Amy Holden Jones
In 1982, Slumber Party Massacre was released and was additionally notable within the slasher subgenre for the innovative creative team of Rita Mae Brown and Amy Holden Jones, as recognised and promoted by Roger Corman.
Rita Mae Brown is an author, poet, scriptwriter and political activist, campaigning for women’s and LGBT rights since the 1970s. Her most notable written work is Rubyfruit Jungle, penned in 1973, which is an autobiographical record of Brown’s adolescence, sexual experiences, and career as a lesbian author. The book was notable upon its release for its explicit references to lesbianism; a copy is included within the set design of Slumber Party Massacre as a testament to its genesis and, arguably, the progressive nature of the film.
Amy Holden Jones is somewhat of a prodigy in the film world. After studying film at MIT, she won the American Film Institute National Student Festival in 1975. Martin Scorsese was one of the judges in the competition and subsequently offered Holden Jones an assistant role on the production of Taxi Driver (1976). From this, despite being still only 22 years old, she landed an editing role on Joe Dante’s Hollywood Boulevard (1976). In 1982, at age 27, she released her directorial debut: Slumber Party Massacre.
INTERVIEW WITH AMY HOLDEN JONES
Holden Jones was kind enough to comment on her experiences making Slumber Party Massacre for the purposes of this article:
I’ve seen it reported many times that Rita Mae Brown’s script was “Sleepless Nights.” This isn’t the case. She wrote a script for Roger Corman titled “Don’t Open the Door.” I read it gathering dust on his shelf. It had a prologue, which I rewrote, then I shot those first pages on my own dime. I gave the ten minutes of film to Roger to prove I could direct and to my surprise, he asked me to direct the whole thing. That’s how I got the job. Only then did I read the rest of the script. It was not a satire, contained no humor, and in my opinion didn’t work. I went into preproduction while I rewrote it cover to cover. The wonderful set up of a slumber party menaced by a driller killer are crucial to the finished film, and it came from Rita. I wish I still had a copy of her draft but I don’t. I’m afraid I did not even look at it as I rewrote. I gave my new script, which I now called “Sleepless Nights,” to Roger. He told me, “You can do this, you can write.” The new version contained all the humor and virtually every single line and every scene. The prologue was jettisoned completely. It was not a union project and I could have claimed the screenplay credit, but I felt the set up contained the theme and that Rita as original writer deserved the credit, so I gave it to her. In retrospect, I should have shared screenplay credit for the sake of honesty, but I’m glad I did not claim the whole thing.
It was Roger Corman who retitled the project “Slumber Party Massacre” after he saw the first cut, and he was so right to do it. His creative input was to give us 200,000 to make the film and he required the nudity. I delivered it as simply as I could. Corman gave no notes on the script at all. He gave a few small editorial pointers and sent us back to make the ending bigger. The pool sequence was largely reshot. I’m sorry to say we pretty much destroyed that pool. Overall, it was a blast making it. I remain proud of it to this day. It is, in my opinion, feminist. The women solve their own problem. More men die on camera, by far, and the boys in it, though dear, are largely ineffectual. The metaphor of a driller killer menacing teenagers clearly relates to a young woman’s fear of getting laid for the first time, or even raped. That comes from Rita but I understood it, and kept it throughout. Most horror has an underlying metaphor and we did, too, and ours is uniquely female which is rare. I shot the poster myself and even that crazy image relates to our theme. It remains the only slasher film written and directed by women. Since we were excoriated when it came out, as critics personally attacked me. “How could a WOMAN show violence against women?” They both missed the point of the film, and the fact that working for Roger was the only way to get in at that time. Everyone from Scorsese to Jonathan Demme did it. But somehow we were supposed to advance making no compromises. He was and is a great producer who recognized and nurtured talent, and was completely indifferent to whether the people he hired were men, women, or any color of the rainbow. Sadly, after I quit working for Roger, I never encountered that even handed fairness, or ability to instantly spot talent, again.
EXPLOITATIVE OR FEMINIST?
Despite the authorial and creative influence of these two trailblazing women, many critics, such as Richard B. Armstrong and Mary Willems Armstrong in the Encyclopedia of Film Themes, Settings and Series (2009), argued that Slumber Party Massacre “exploited young girls in true stereotypical slasher fashion” (p. 185). But, as Holden Jones writes, this was simply not the case. Perhaps the film’s closest slasher sister is Bob Clarke’s Black Christmas (1974). Often conflated with Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and John Carpenter’s Halloween as the first examples of the contemporary slasher film, Black Christmas presented one of the most considerate and genuine representations of women within the genre. Unlike the more archetypal characters in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Halloween, the film is extremely honest in terms of its dialogue and interactions between the largely female cast: the women drink, smoke, swear, have sex, and discuss issues relating to reproductive rights via an unwanted pregnancy.
Slumber Party Massacre is very similar in its credible depiction of women. It follows a group of high school women who are terrorized by an escaped mental patient, Russ Thorne (Michael Villella), during a slumber party led by Trish (Michelle Michaels) when her parents are away for the weekend. Valerie (Robin Stille) is new to the school and makes an impression on the women’s varsity basketball team. Trish responds by extending an invitation to Valerie, her new neighbor, to join the slumber party, but Valerie hears the rest of the clique insulting her and declines.
With a penchant for the phallic power drill, Thorne easily dispatches the majority of Slumber Party Massacre‘s women, as well as several men: Mr. Contant (Rigg Kennedy), the nosy, strange male neighbor tasked with checking on Trish but, in actuality, stealing mementos and creeping around her house and garden; two boys spying on the girls, Jeff (David Millbern) and Neil (Joseph Johnson); and Diane’s (Gina Smika) boyfriend John (Jim Boyce).
Valerie and her younger sister, Courtney (Jennifer Meyers), are also alone in their house for the weekend, unaware of the bodies piling up next door until Valerie is telephoned by the girls’ basketball coach, Mrs. Jana (Pamela Roylance). The phone suddenly cuts off, as Valerie and Courtney check on their neighbor’s house and a final battle between Thorne and the surviving women ensues. Mrs. Jana arrives and tries to help the girls but is killed for her efforts. Unusually, unlike its contemporaries, Slumber Party Massacre has three final girls that face off with the killer and survive: Trish, Valerie, and Courtney.
FINAL GIRLS?
In addition to their greater number, the women in Slumber Party Massacre subvert Clover’s classification system relating to this trope in that they have traditionally female names and participate in a hedonistic lifestyle. Not only does Trish smoke marijuana and drink alcohol at the slumber party but the younger Courtney has a comical exchange with her sister, who teases her about “beating off boys in the fifth grade.” Courtney also receives a telephone call from a boy, talks on the phone about kissing him with a friend, and sneaks into Valerie’s room to look at her stashed magazines containing images of male celebrities, pretending to be doing her homework until Valerie knowingly tells her not to remove the centerfold again.
Sexuality is thus presented from a specifically female perspective. Courtney, as a young teen, is overtly framed in regards to her sexual curiosities and awakening, which is generally an ignored or taboo subject in relation to women within popular culture. Similarly, Diane’s relationship with her boyfriend, and her sexual naivety, is expressed in a single line, “am I getting better?”, which is in turn ridiculed by several of her friends listening in on the telephone call and giggling.
OBJECTIFICATION OF WOMEN?
Despite this, a big issue for critics of Slumber Party Massacre was the nudity of the women: the camera slowly pans across the naked women in an early communal shower scene, lingering over their bodies, and adopts the static viewpoint of Jeff and Neil as they watch some of the women undress during the slumber party from a window. The latter scene in particular, in addition to the creepy neighbor, overtly aligns the audience members with a male voyeuristic viewpoint. But, taking into account the fluidity of Clover’s gendered audience identification within the slasher, and the focus on female sexuality within the film, the nudity surpasses the sensationalist spectacle enforced by Corman. While his insistence on nudity appeals to the traditional belief that men were the target audience for horror, it could be argued that the nudity is just one of several elements that appear to conform to formulaic conventions, allowing the film to subvert these expectations by exposing its audience to feminist ideologies and an authentic account of female interactions and conversation.
The latter can be argued in regards to the satirical elements of Slumber Party Massacre‘s script. This injection of comedy throughout the film is a residual result of the parodist tone of the script, which acts as an extension of the honest portrayal of the female characters and resonates in the dialogue. After the pizza delivery man is killed, Kimberley (Debra De Liso) states, “He’s dead all right. So cold.” Jackie (Andree Honore) replies, “Is the pizza?” Similarly, during the initial shower scene, Diane comments, “Y’know, I think your tits are getting bigger,” to which several girls respond, “Mine?”
In addition to the realistic and witty dialogue spoken by the women, traditional male roles are undertaken by women in the film to further establish the gendered focus. For example, a female phone company repairwoman and an odd job woman / carpenter are introduced early on, and the central group of friends are members of a female basketball team, instead of a female defined sport such as netball, with a female coach. This plurality of female characters, and subsequent focus upon female sexuality and issues, ensures that the film operates within a distinctly feminine subjectivity.
A COMMENTARY ON SECOND-WAVE FEMINISM
The film thus endures as an historical and cultural cinematic commentary on second-wave feminism in America during the 1980s. Instead of an iconic male killer acting as the main focus for the film, as is true with so many slashers, it is the sisterhood of the female creative forces that shaped Slumber Party Massacre, and its resulting respectful, realistic, and progressive portrayal of women, that resonates with the viewer. Though the creative team of Holden Jones and Brown may be more or less alone of all their sex in the world of 1980s slashers, they speak to sisterhood on a much wider social, cultural, and political platform.
Rebecca Booth has a master’s in Film Studies from the University of Southampton. She is the co-editor of House of Leave Publishing’s anthology, Scared Sacred: Idolatry, Religion and Worship in the Horror Film (2019). Formerly the managing editor of Diabolique, her book on The Devil Rides Out (Devil’s Advocates) will be published in 2019 by Auteur Publishing. In addition to contributing essays to printed collections, most recently Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin (Spectacular Optical, 2017), she has been published on several popular culture websites such as Den of Geek, Scream and Wicked Horror.
REFERENCES
Armstrong, R. B., and Willems Armstrong, M. (2009). Encyclopedia of Film Themes, Settings and Series. McFarland & Co. North Carolina.
Brown, R. M. (2014). Rubyfruit Jungle. Bantam Books. New York.
Clover, C. J. (1993). Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton University Press. New Jersey and Oxford, England.
Related posts: On the Final Girl in It Follows; on two recent novels about Final Girls; and on the origins of the Final Girl in Anne Radcliffe’s fiction and the recent American Mary.
