BODY BAGS (1993)

Made by Showtime as a test run for a "Tales from the Crypt"-style horror anthology show, BODY BAGS has horror legend John Carpenter dressed up like a corpse in a morgue.  He greets the audience and tells some fucking horrible jokes.  It's pretty bad.  Cheesy jokes are forgivable though as long as the stories are dope.  They're not...

"The Gas Station" The best thing I can say about this one is the main actress, Alex Datcher, is a good actress.  Unfortunately, the script gives her nothing to work with.  There's barely even a story.  She reports in for her first night as an overnight attendant at a secluded gas station.  Random people show up...including a serial killer.  That has the potential to be scary, but nothing here is even remotely scary.

"Hair" Stacy Keach (who's performance is the highlight of the entire movie) plays a dude who is super sad about his thinning hair.  He tries various concoctions, but none of them work.  Eventually, he goes to a hair growth doctor he saw on TV and before you know it, he's hairier than Cousin Itt's ballsack. 

"Eye" Luke Skywalker is an up and coming baseball player on his way to the big leagues.  Unfortunately, he can't drive for shit and while looking for a B-52's cassette (of all things), he wrecks his whip and ends up with piece of glass in his right eyeball.  The hospital replaces his damaged eyeball with an eye from a serial killer.  You can guess what happens next.

Book-ending the stories and sprinkled between them are more bad jokes by John Carpenter about drinking formaldehyde and stuff like that.  It's pretty easy to see why this was never made into a TV show.

BODY BAGS is more watchable now than it was in 1993, because when I watched it back then, it was just lame and the stories all drug on forever...but nowadays, it's an interesting time capsule full of 90's as fuck fashions and hair, a truly impressive cast of genre legends, Barney the Dinosaur on the cover of TV Guide, vintage electronics and so on. With a runtime of 91 minutes, there should have been four stories instead of three. Also, bump up the terror and blood. Three scary stories and one campy one. Or a mixture like in CREEPSHOW.

THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE (1982)

A group of 20-something year-old teenage girls get together for a slumber party.  It's all fun and games and rizzing with boys...until the madman with the giant drill crashes the party!

I don't know if it's because THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE features both a female director and a female writer, but it definitely has a different feel to it than most 80's slasher comedies.  One thing (and this is a big positive in my book) is there's more character development than usual.  Personally, my favorite part of the film is the slumber party scenes before the killer goes full rampage...the girls are simply chatting away, the boys are sneaking around outside and the new girl in school (who lives next door with her hilarious little sister who pretty much steals the show) is getting all jelly that she's not at the party.  It's actually a fun film, then the killer shows up and...meh.  Luckily though, his kills are spaced out and mildly entertaining.

Below average amount of blood, zero gore, peeping toms, naked chicks with 80's bodies, flexible fire poker, hand chopped off, high school shower scene, a plateful of Twinkies, poor lighting, how to make Kool-Aid, Playgirl magazine, Maui Wowie, laughably bad dialogue, a horrendous peephole installation, amazing 80's fashions, a cold wiener to the face.

Even after a dozen viewings (or more) over the years, I still enjoy THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE for it's simplicity and goofy qualities.  If you have a good sense of humor and love 80's slasher comedies then check it out!

Part 2 - Slumber Party Massacre II (1987)
Part 3 - Slumber Party Massacre III (1990)

"Emergency Drill Procedures"