The Last Slumber Party (reviewed by Lisa Marie Bowman)

Woo hoo!  School’s out for summer and that means that it’s time to have a slumber party!  It’s time to gather at the home of whoever has the biggest house and dance around in your sleepwear before falling on the couch, watching a really bad TV show, and talking about how all the boys in town suck.  What fun!  Seriously, I used to love slumber parties!  Of course, the parties I went to were a lot more fun than the one featured in the film that I am about to review.

The 1988 film, The Last Slumber Party, is called The Last Slumber Party because it features an escaped homicidal lunatic who wears surgical scrubs and mask and who carries around scalpel.  The lunatic shows up at the party and makes sure that, for the majority of the cast, it is their last slumber party.  But, to be honest, I think this would have been the last slumber party even if the killer didn’t show up just because the party sucks so much that I don’t think anyone would ever want to run the risk of throwing another one.

Seriously, this is the most boring slumber party that I’ve ever seen.  First off, there’s only three guests and only one of them, Chris (Jan Jensen), has a personality.  Of course, that personality is not a particularly likeable one, in that it leads to Chris constantly cursing and making fun of every boy at the school for being, in her opinion, gay.  Speaking of the boys at the school, four of them attempt to crash the slumber party but again, none of the really have a personality beyond not being able to open up a can of beer without spilling it on their shirt.  As well, most of the guys are quickly dispatched by the scalpel-wielding killer.  The girls are a bit perturbed when the guys start to mysteriously disappear but none of them are upset enough to actually look for them or to pay attention to the reports on the television about an escaped murderer.  Instead, Chris just suggests that the boys got scared off because they were gay.  Seriously, Chris is a bit obsessed.

Also obsessed with Dr. Sickler (David Whitley), who is the father of one of the girls and who was scheduled to give the escaped lunatic a lobotomy.  Of course, Dr. Sickler isn’t obsessed with his missing patient as much as he’s obsessed with remembering to pick up some orange juice.  His wife really likes orange juice and there’s way too much talk of orange juice in this film.  Oddly enough, Dr. Sickler never actually picks any up.

I’m grasping at things to say about this film because there’s not really a whole lot to be said about The Last Slumber Party.  Judging by the accents of the majority of the cast, The Last Slumber Party was a regional production and it was made down in my part of the world.  I actually enjoyed hearing the familiar accents but I just wish the characters had been a bit less unlikable and the dialogue had more of a natural rhythm.  As it is, this is just one of those slasher films that’s full of padding and feels considerably longer than just 77 minutes.  For the majority of the film’s characters, this would indeed be their last slumber party.  It’s a shame they couldn’t have ended things with a better get-together.