The House on Sorority Row: 25th Anniversary Edition

The 1980s were the heyday of teen slasher movies, a time when films such as Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street became genre classics and spawned sequels. The House on Sorority Row (1983) is a thoroughly mediocre entry, in which a group of graduating seniors—including Vicki and Katherine (Eileen Davidson and Kate McNeil)—kill their nasty housemother (Lois Kelso Hunt) and then dump her body in a swimming pool, after which the corpse mysteriously disappears, and the girls wind up being stalked. While there are echoes of Diabolique in the missing-body business, the film has little else in common with that 1955 classic. Instead, writer-director Mark Rosman falls into the conventions of the time, serving up lame flashbacks about a deformed child the murder victim gave birth to many years before—signaling to the viewer precisely where the story's heading. With its amateurish acting and threadbare production, this may appeal to diehard aficionados, but most others will likely find it unintentionally funny. This “special edition” DVD features a good anamorphic transfer and a handful of extras, including an audio commentary by Rosman, Davidson, and McNeil, storyboard comparisons, a photo gallery, and a brief discussion of a more downbeat alternate ending. Optional. (F. Swietek)