Fourteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #11 The House on Sorority Row (1983)

I got so burned by Stephen King adaptations in the first part of the month that I've decided to embrace as many 1980s slashers as I can.  Hence The House on Sorority Row, starring an absolutely gorgeous young Eileen Davidson.

It opens with a flashback to June 19, 1961, as Mrs. Slater struggles through a difficult birth.  It appears that she loses the baby ... or does she?

And then we're back in the "now," a/k/a June 19th in the early 1980s.  College graduation has just wrapped up and the sorority girls are packing up after the school year.  Seven of them - Katie, Vicki (Davidson), Stevie, Morgan, Liz, Diane and Jeanie - are resentful that their house mother (Mrs. Slater) is closing the house before they can have their blow-out party.  They decide to rebel against her and have the party anyway.  She gets very upset and a little violent, whacking people with her cane.  They plan a prank against her and it goes horribly wrong: Vicki ends up shooting and killing her.  They sink her body in the pool and plan to deal with it after the party.

The band playing the party is VERY 80s, by the way.  Also very 80s: Liz's bitchin' van.

Once the party really gets going, so does the killer, whom for a while everyone thinks is a not-as-dead-as-we-thought Mrs. Slater.  In order, these folks get stabbed by that cane or otherwise sliced and diced: some random glasses-wearing nerd who is in the wrong place at the wrong time; Stevie, in the basement, trying to turn off the pool lights; Morgan, in her own bedroom; Diane (in Liz's bitchin' van); Jeanie (in the bathroom); Liz (in her van); Vicki (adjacent to the van); the doctor who attended Mrs. Slater's fateful delivery back in 1961.  Katie ends up being a fairly clever Final Girl (despite some egregious over-acting), luring the killer out and fighting back.  She ends up killing the killer ... or does she?

I didn't like The House on Sorority Row quite as much as Slumber Party Massacre, largely because THoSR took itself so very seriously.  Still, a solid entry into the genre.