The House on Sorority Row (1983)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Unaware that the owner of their sorority house has psychological problems, a group of students inadvertently push her to her limits in this unusual slasher movie, best entered into with as little prior knowledge as possible. Suffice it to say, the plot takes some unexpected turns with twists that cause the characters to contemplate whether something supernatural is happening. There is also a lot to like in how the characters here have real personality and are not just the mindless teens of the 'Friday the 13th' series. For a slasher though, 'The House on Sorority Row' is oddly light on the violence and gore. The killings all occur extremely quickly and the death scenes are not particularly creative. There is one very unsettling image involving a toilet, but precious little beyond this. The revelation of the murderer also leaves a little to be desired and the film ends on a bit of a low note. The vast majority of the movie is surprisingly gripping though. The scenario that the sorority sisters get themselves embroiled in is pretty creepy and Lois Kelso Hunt is a good choice to place the house's unpleasant, temperamental owner. The film additionally has a pranks angle that brings to mind the latter 80s horror film 'April Fool's Day' in the best possible way as its characters pay the price for not thinking twice about whether their pranks are funny for everyone.

THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW is a standard slasher outing of the 1980s with an almost all-female cast. The plot has much in common with I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, which came much later, and features a group of college friends who pull an unfunny prank that leaves a middle-aged lady dead. They decide to dump her body in a swimming pool to make the death look like an accident, but then the murders start...This rather cheap film is pretty much par for the course for the genre. It goes for the gory rather than scary approach although the crude nature of the special effects work puts this far below an equivalent production like BLOOD RAGE. The back story is pretty ridiculous and clichéd and the film is never scary, but on the other hand it is fast paced with lots of incident. The best and most mysterious aspects of the script are ripped off the French classic LES DIABOLIQUES.

The House on Sorority Row is formulaic, but I'm sure it only feels that way because so many slashers have taken its template and mined it for their own use. We follow the good girl, the girl who is sure to be our final girl, and we're introduced to the other characters who all reveal flaws that will surely lead to their deaths at the hands of our killer.In this movie, the first act introduces a motive for our killer, and we spend the rest of the movie trying to guess who it might be, while also wondering when and where our next victim will be offed. Some kills are better than others, but that can be said for all slashers.Unlike the best the genre has to offer, the movie never makes you truly care for any of the victims, they all played a part in a crime early in the movie, and that hinders the movie's ability to get you invested in their fates, but it's still a fun time. I enjoyed the scenes at the party, particularly one scene where the camera in one smooth shot follows each of our sorority sisters as they try to act naturally as they keep a terrible secret.For any slasher fan this is a can't miss. For anyone looking for something more, you can probably do better elsewhere.

Mostly a typical slasher flick from the '80s. In this case, a strict house mother is presumably killed by her tenants, a bunch of nursing students. Sure enough, they start getting killed one by one. As can be expected, there's some nudity - plus some drinking; remember what they said in "Scream" - and the strict lady's history eventually gets revealed. Although "The House on Sorority Row" isn't anything great, it's certainly enjoyable, and that's what counts. Seeing that the movie got filmed in Baltimore, I now wonder how it would have come out had either of Baltimore's famous directors (Barry Levinson and John Waters) directed it.Anyway, nothing special, but entertaining. Am I the only one who thinks that one of the girls looked like Carrie Fisher?