MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*
In addition to the three entries in this psycho-killer series, the basic idea seems to have been copied not only in the eighties but also into the streaming era. The script for PARTY #1 was written as a parody of slashers by feminist author Rita Mae Brown, but the production company and director Amy Jones reworked the story into a straightforward horror movie with only a few over-the-top elements.
The most obvious such element is the one that got up-front promotion in the above lobby card: that of a bunch of screaming 20-something girls being menaced by a maniac with a power drill poised unsubtly between his legs. But though serial killer Ross Thorn (Michael Villella, then about forty years old) is technically the star of the show, the finished script says nothing about what to led him to start his spree killings, and only toward the very end is it loosely suggested that he views his drill as a penis-substitute.
It's the girls who get all the screentime (scream-time?) However, they're not any better characterized than the killer or the majority of teen victims in psycho-killer films before or after this one. Two of them rank as the movie's "final girls:" Trish (Michele Michaels), who invites other high school girls to her house for a slumber party because her parents are away, and her neighbor-classmate Valerie (Robin Stille), who gets invited but chooses for Reasons to stay home and babysit her younger sister Courtney. No boys are supposed to attend, though the "slutty girl" invites her boyfriend, and two dateless losers peep on the party as well. Thorn, who's already killed off two young lovelies with his drill, finds out about the soiree and invites himself.
The dialogue is adequate but dull, and Jones' direction has a no-frills sort of TV-show feel. Not much beyond jump-scares happens until the final half hour, when the girls are trapped in the house with the killer and, amid much carnage, the two Final Girls must step up to end his reign of terror. The scene in which Valerie wields a machete to slice off the end of Thorn's drill is the highlight, but no one's psychology goes beyond the basics. and the male/female social matrix doesn't amount to much either. It may be significant that the only "normal" males who get much screentime are the two peepers-- both of whom get killed-- mention that they've peeped on the girls before and got beat up for it. Maybe it's just as well the world wasn't exposed to Brown's original satirical wit.
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