In a nightmarish, blue-tinted prologue, Mrs. Dorothy Slater (Lois Kelso Hunt) endures a traumatic childbirth with tragic results. Twenty years later, she serves as house mother of the Theta Pi sorority which she insists on closing every year on June 19th. Except this time, student Katherine Rose (Kate McNeil) and her six friends decide they'll stay behind and hold a wild graduation party. Angry Mrs. Slater spies Vicki (Eileen Davidson) having sex with her boyfriend and takes a poker to her waterbed. Vicki's revenge-driven prank backfires, leaving Mrs. Slater dead and the guilt-ridden girls struggling to hide the body. As the party reaches full swing, the corpse disappears and someone starts bumping off the sorority sisters, one by one.
A taut, well-crafted slasher movie, The House on Sorority Row was written and directed by Mark Rosman, a protege of Brian De Palma, whose career never quite recovered after he was fired from Mutant (1984). Like some of De Palma's work, this plays with elements from a melodramatic thriller from the 1940s, laced with contemporary nudity, sex and violence, a feeling enhanced by the lush, evocative, orchestral score from Richard Band. While Rosman does not stint on the blood, it's the stylish thrills and well-wrought tension that chill the blood, with the director making inspired use of childhood toys. Each murder is prefigured by something like a bouncing ball, or jack-in-the-box, which suggest the killer is using his own stunted infancy as a means of revenge against the student girls soon venture into the wide world.
The film isn't free of the cheesier elements of slasher movies. It's surprising how many balding, moustachioed college boys were lurking around campus in the Eighties, while the old "head in the toilet" gag resurfaces again - also see Curtains (1983) - and foxy Morgan (Jodie Draigie) strips down to a skimpy babydoll nightie before she is killed. And yet, Rosman concocts genuinely plausible reasons for the girls to go wandering in the dark. The psychological ramifications of accidental murder aren't probed as deeply as in, say Shallow Grave (1994), but Kate McNeil delivers one of the strongest, most nuanced performances in any slasher movie. The climax where she confronts the killer while under the influence of a hallucinogenic drug and sees the ghostly figures of her dead friends, is particularly inspired. Rosman plays it a little too cute with his ambiguous ending, but this is creepy stuff, especially for anyone frightened of clowns. A remake is due in 2009.
