House on Sorority Row is about a group of senior sorority sisters of Theta Pi who decide to schedule a year-end graduation party in June, after the house usually closes. Their house-mother, Mrs. Slater, waving her cane and generally seeming a bit unhinged, vetoes the idea and insists that that they leave on the usual date. Afterward, Mrs. Slater finds Vicki (the fabulously slutty and impetuous house member) and her boyfriend tussling on Vicki’s waterbed and is so disgusted she punctures the bed with the head of her cane (which, of course, will come into play later as a useful weapon for impaling). From earlier, puzzling scenes in the movie, we see that Mrs. Slater has some mental disorder, but the opening scenes leave the exact nature of her problems a mystery until later in the film.

Vicki’s humiliation leads to her idea of playing a practical joke on Mrs. Slater involving her boyfriend’s gun (loaded with blanks) and the scummy sorority house pool, which Mrs. Slater is to cheap to keep up. All of the sorority sisters besides Katherine, the sweet and virginal one, agree immediately. Of course, as jokes involving guns often do, things go terribly wrong, Slater ends up dead, and the girls decide to hide the body and continue with their graduation party plans anyway.

What makes House on Sorority Row different from most movies of this genre is that it manages to be funny, tense, and scary all at the same time. In early scenes after Mrs. Slater’s death, the girls all nervously attend their party, afraid that somebody will find out their secret as frat boys dive into the pool and ask about Slater’s absence. After the murders begin, the movie cleverly misdirects the the viewer regarding the identity of the killer and the reasons for them.

The acting here is decent overall. Kate McNeil is dull and timid as the prim Katherine and Eileen Davidson steals the show as the aggressive, impetuous, and sexually-charged Vicki. Jodi Dragie as Morgan delivers her lines with a cluelessness that makes them hilarious. Try to watch her deliver the line how do we know if she’s still alive ?halfway through the film without laughing. Unsurprisingly, this was her first and only film, according to IMDb.

House on Sorority row doesn’t have depth or great acting, but it’s fun, lighthearted (as lighthearted as a movie that features a severed head in a toilet can be) and a great early example of the genre.

The film takes place on the night before Easter and opens with a robbery where a masked gunman mercilessly kills a liquor store clerk. We’re then introduced to a single Mother, Mindy Peters, and her handicapped son, Nicholas, who is obsessed with the holiday – we later find out that his father died on Easter. Mindy has a date with her new boyfriend, Remington, who, unbeknownst to her, is the criminal who committed the robbery and plans on moving in with her despite Nicholas’ objections. When Mindy has to work a double shift and can’t get a babysitter, Remington offers to help but has more sinister plans to party. Unfortunately for him and his friends, a masked killer is on the loose and begins to pick them off one by one.

So what separates Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill! from other recent slasher movies? Firstly, it’s not a remake and even though it’s about a masked killer who chooses to kill during a particular time of the year, I think this is more in homage to classic slashers than an attempt to bring something entirely new to the table. I would have liked it to look a little more authentic (like last year’s The House of the Devil) but this may have been impossible due to budgetary constraints or simply because Director Chad Ferrin wants this to be remembered as an unpretentious modern-day slasher.

There are some gory death scenes which include a drill to the head, plastic wrap suffocation and even a broom to the throat (not the brush end). Muskatell manages to walk a fine line in his portrayal of Remington who’s simply vile but strangely likable (the handlebar mustache and chops complement his pear-shaped body and maniacal laugh for comic effect).

I’m a little uncertain about the direction as the photography is dodgy throughout and certain shots don’t appear to be framed properly – if this was for effect, I don’t know if it always worked. I thought the ending was a little weak and felt rushed but it tied things up nicely.

In the end, though, this isn’t looking to break any new ground; it’s a straightforward exploitation film in the style of the ultraviolent slashers from the 70s and 80s, with unwholesome characters, a thin plot and questionable morals (all of which is good).

Enter Hatchet. A short little slasher flick that’s about a small group of young Americans who are on vacation, wander off the beaten path, and start to get picked off one by one. What makes Hatchet different from all the other teen horror flicks is the sense of humor that it has in response to the same old tired stereotype characters and predicable plot twists that we see in too many American horror films.  It takes those characters and extends and exploits those stereotypes to a whole new extreme.

The plot of Hatchet is much of the same as what I’ve previously mentioned, and if anything, it tries so desperately to be incredibly straight forward in terms of your typical slasher film plot. You guessed it; a group of young Americans are on vacation, they get sidetracked from the fun, get lost in the middle of nowhere, and for some reason somebody or something wants to kill them. Hatchet can certainly be admired for making us laugh at it’s overly stereotypical characters, over the top killer lunatic, and humorous plot advancements, but in the end, Hatchet is still JUST THAT…another Hollywood Horror Film with very few tricks up its sleeve.

So if Hatchet won’t surprise you, it can most definitely make you grin. It does manage to be very clever. When most of our characters are still alive, their interactions and self conflicts can be amusing, to say the least. Adam Green, the films writer and director, simply takes material that is not at all original and tries to use his witty script to his only advantage. As a result, the characters will keep you interested in the film and you might even find yourself feeling a bit disappointed when some of your favorites get the axe…errr, i mean…hatchet.  You won’t necessarily miss them for the duration of the film, but you might find that the film was far more humorous  when all the characters where alive and well.

So this is a slasher, right? So it’s got some good kills, right? YES! If you think that you’ve seen it all (you’ve got some nerve!) then you are dead DEAD wrong. The killer in Hatchet is a HUGE man-beast that slays our main characters in the most satisfying and almost always humorous fashions. Nothing is incredibly realist here as far as blood and guts are concerned, but lets just say that due to all the buckets of gooey red stuff that were spilled, my jaw dropped in glorious wonderment on more than one occasion. If you are watching the film with a friend you will undoubtedly be saying “DID YOU SEE THAT???” after countless kill scenes. The funny thing is, of course he saw “that”,…i mean…he’s sitting in the seat RIGHT next to you. Dumbass! Still, you know what I mean.

The Carter’s decide to take a family vacation. It’s been ages since they had one, so the whole “fam” takes off in a bit of a caravan consisting of one Winnebago and a truck. The family consists of Mom, Ethel (Kathleen Quinlan), Dad, Big Bob (Ted Levine), Sister #1, Brenda (Emilie de Ravin), Brother, Bobby (Dan Byrd), Sister #2, Lynn (Vinessa Shaw) with new born baby and new husband Doug (Aaron Stanford) in tow. With roll call out of the way the family’s trek across the desert has begun. But like any man on the road with a mission Big Bob decides to go off map and take a short cut, where, you guessed it, their caravan is stranded with a bunch of flat tires.

Our clan is left to make a decision to either sit in the desert and slowly die or send two of the men folk off in different directions and hope that one of them finds help. Everything is fine until dark when gruesome strangers show up and destroy a good percentage of the family, leaving the survivors out for bloody revenge upon the people who have done this to them.

This story becomes ultra violent and I don’t suggest it for the casual viewer. The hack and slash scenes are brought to life so well that I had to close my eyes a few times. The reason “Hills” really gets you is that you really like this little family and to see any of them…stabbed or shot is really painful to watch. But gives you the fuel to scream and chant for revenge along with the films heroes at the end. So…go get The Hills Have Eyes and Part 2. It’s a fun creepy gory watch. You’ll never want to drive across the desert into an abandoned nuclear test site ever again.

* Acting – 5
* Blood – 5
* Violence – 5
* Partying – 1
* Language – 4
* Humor – 1
* Predictability – 5
* Girls – 3
* Gore – 5
* Sexuality – 1
* Torture – 5
* Overall – 3