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House On Sorority Row, The
List Price: Unknown [Buy now and save at Amazon]
When I told a friend of mine that I was adding "The House on Sorority Row" to my humble little DVD collection, he thought I was talking about porn. Yeah, the title and pro-vac-a-tive cover art might give the wrong impression, but this overlooked 17-year-old gem is a slasher and a pretty darn good one at that.
Plotwise, "The House on Sorority Row" lies somewhere in between "Black Christmas" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer". A sorority is renting a house from Mrs. Slater, who, like most adults in '80s college-themed flicks, is crotchety and doesn't get along with the kids. Mrs. Slater is against the gals having a wild party to celebrate graduation (and since most of these actresses look like they're in their mid-to-late 20's, I'd be celebrating too), and th' ladies decide to get revenge on Mrs. Slater. Their practical joke goes horribly wrong, of course, and Slater ends up dead. The girls hide the body and go ahead with the party as planned. During the bash, the corpse turns up missing, and the gals are knocked off one by one.
I don't watch '80s slashers expecting brilliant acting, Oscar-caliber special effects, or...well, anything but scantily-clad nubile young women being stabbed, decapitated, and mutilated in creative and inventive ways. "The House on Sorority Row" succeeds there, and with an underlying intelligence that puts the film in a different class than similar movies from the same time period. I liked "The House on Sorority Row" quite a bit, and Elite has given the film a very respectable presentation on DVD.
Video/Audio: Like most recent Elite releases, "The House on Sorority Row" is enhanced for widescreen televisions, presented at th' usual aspect ratio of 1.85:1. For an '83 microbudget release, the video is about what I expected -- acceptable levels of grain and assorted specks, occassional softness, but overall clear and fairly sharp. The image doesn't look quite as nice as my other Elite disc, "Mutant", but it's a bit above average for a movie of this age, budget, and obscurity. As for the audio...this disc is yet another jaunt into that zany, wonderful world of monaural sound! A decent mono track, free of hiss and distortion. These sorts of tracks are boring to review, so I'll just say something generic like "it's serviceable!" and move on.
Supplements: Just a full-frame trailer.
Conclusion: How much you'll enjoy "The House on Sorority Row" depends on your taste for '80s slashers. Yeah, yeah...'80s slashers don't have the best reputation, but they have their fans, and "The House on Sorority Row" is one of the better films of this subgenre. The disc retails for $24.95, and a few online stores have it priced to where it can be shipped for under the magic twenty-dollar mark. Slasher fans ought to give this at least a rental, and at this price, they might as well go ahead and buy it. Highly recommended, and kudos to Elite for giving overlooked gems like this such a nice presentation on DVD.
Plotwise, "The House on Sorority Row" lies somewhere in between "Black Christmas" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer". A sorority is renting a house from Mrs. Slater, who, like most adults in '80s college-themed flicks, is crotchety and doesn't get along with the kids. Mrs. Slater is against the gals having a wild party to celebrate graduation (and since most of these actresses look like they're in their mid-to-late 20's, I'd be celebrating too), and th' ladies decide to get revenge on Mrs. Slater. Their practical joke goes horribly wrong, of course, and Slater ends up dead. The girls hide the body and go ahead with the party as planned. During the bash, the corpse turns up missing, and the gals are knocked off one by one.
I don't watch '80s slashers expecting brilliant acting, Oscar-caliber special effects, or...well, anything but scantily-clad nubile young women being stabbed, decapitated, and mutilated in creative and inventive ways. "The House on Sorority Row" succeeds there, and with an underlying intelligence that puts the film in a different class than similar movies from the same time period. I liked "The House on Sorority Row" quite a bit, and Elite has given the film a very respectable presentation on DVD.
Video/Audio: Like most recent Elite releases, "The House on Sorority Row" is enhanced for widescreen televisions, presented at th' usual aspect ratio of 1.85:1. For an '83 microbudget release, the video is about what I expected -- acceptable levels of grain and assorted specks, occassional softness, but overall clear and fairly sharp. The image doesn't look quite as nice as my other Elite disc, "Mutant", but it's a bit above average for a movie of this age, budget, and obscurity. As for the audio...this disc is yet another jaunt into that zany, wonderful world of monaural sound! A decent mono track, free of hiss and distortion. These sorts of tracks are boring to review, so I'll just say something generic like "it's serviceable!" and move on.
Supplements: Just a full-frame trailer.
Conclusion: How much you'll enjoy "The House on Sorority Row" depends on your taste for '80s slashers. Yeah, yeah...'80s slashers don't have the best reputation, but they have their fans, and "The House on Sorority Row" is one of the better films of this subgenre. The disc retails for $24.95, and a few online stores have it priced to where it can be shipped for under the magic twenty-dollar mark. Slasher fans ought to give this at least a rental, and at this price, they might as well go ahead and buy it. Highly recommended, and kudos to Elite for giving overlooked gems like this such a nice presentation on DVD.
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