"Slumber Party Massacre III" is an 80's holdover featuring big hair, cheesy music, and tons of 80's flair. It's also the best entry in the Slumber Party Massacre Trilogy.

The Plot: After a day of intense volleyball at the beach, a group of high school girls decide to throw a slumber party. A group of horny boys crash the proceedings...as well as a masked killer with a giant drill. With the police ignoring their calls for help, the girls must fight back on their own against the driller killer.

"Slumber Party Massacre III" is an entertainingly cheesy slasher that manages to also feature scenes of disturbing terror. It's a strange blend of low budget cheese and raw brutality. For (almost) every laughably amusing scene there seems to be a scene of genuine disturbance. It''s definitely one of the better slasher films to come out during the last half of the 80's and early 90's.  Part 3 has nothing to do with the first 2 films in the series and comes off more like a re-boot.

The backstory of the killer is pretty disturbing. From what I could piece together, it seems the killer (Brittain Frye-"Hide and Go Shriek") was molested by his police officer uncle and now seems to have problems getting it up for the ladies. The drill is his phallic penis and he returns home from medical school to wreck havoc on a group of sorority sisters...in particular an old friend's little sister. It's an interesting, if slightly vague, backstory. And Frye is amusingly disturbing as the killer. Throwing out one-liners, wearing a creepy disguise for the first few kills, and having a pyscho-killer headquarters in a van parked outside the house...complete with corpses and burning candles!

The cast is a mixed bag. Lulu Williams is the slut of the group and is probably the hottest girl of the bunch. David Lawrence (who plays Frank) is a dead ringer for "Family Guy" comedian Seth MacFarlane. And the one actress that actually surprised me in this was semi-scream queen Maria Ford. The majority of films I've seen her in, she has been painfully wooden and downright terrible. But she manages to turn in a haunting and realistic death scene involving a semi-rape and disembowelment by drill. She is hot as ever in "SPM3" but the red wig is a little distracting.

"Slumber Party Massacre III" features a few original kills (including a death by vibrator) and a few lame ones. One of the lamest kills involves Marta Kober (the big breasted Sandra from "Friday the 13th Part 2") as a pizza woman who gets chased down a suburban street and slowly drilled to death without any residents noticing. The street is over populated with vehicles and there are houses on both sides...it just comes off a bit unbelievable and lazy. The special effects are decent and the drill kills are solid.

"Slumber Party Massacre III" starts off as a bit of a whodunit for the first half of the film and features red herrings galore. Could it be the creepy guy from the beach? The creepy neighbor who spies on the girls with a telescope and reads human anatomy books? But suddenly the film reveals the killer and in one of the rare occurrences in slashers, the killer straight up says, "fuck it!", and just goes through the front door weapons blazing (or drill spinning)! It's an amusing approach and the film really picks up steam in the second half. There's also a twist concerning the final girl.

"Slumber Party Massacre III" features a front seat drilling, a cheesy car cruising scene, death by yard stake, whiskey dick, a sledgehammer fight, useless authority, and a classic closing credits songs called "Twist & Scream" by Jamie Sheriff (sounding a lot like Billy Idol).

GORE SCORE-3.5/5

Tit-O-Meter-4/5

New Concorde/87mins