Another slasher movie in which a bevy of beautiful sorority girls are diced and sliced and all because of something that happened 20 years previously. It's hardly "Halloween"; it's not even "Friday the 13th" but "The House on Sorority Row" is a suitably sleazy creep-fest nevertheless. Of course it's also totally predictable right from the pre-credit sequence. The acting is terrible and the script is no better and sometimes it's hard to tell if the laughs are intentional or not but that's all part of the fun where trash like this is concerned. This is strictly Midnight Movie material; seeing it in the cold light of day may not really be such a good idea.

This movie isn't very scary, but it's never boring. The basement and the climax have tension, but the rest of the movie just isn't scary. In fact, there are more funny moments than scary ones: some girls at the party gush over how cute an average guy is when he gives the goofiest, cheesiest smile imaginable; Mrs. Slater tries to be intimidating, but the acting just comes off as cheesy.There are some things that are confusing: the prank scene and Eric. When Vicki points the gun at Mrs. Slater, the girls think it isn't loaded because Vicki said it wouldn't be. She then points it at a lamp post and shoots it, breaking the glass. A friend comes up to stop her, and Vicki shoots her in the leg. They then reveal that it was a prank, and Vicki wasn't really shot. Then the gun goes off and Vicki accidentally shoots Mrs. Slater for real. What was really in her gun? Blanks, bullets, or a mix? If Vicki shot her friend with a blank, then where did the fake blood come from? And how did the lamp break if she was using blanks? For the lamp to break, she had to have been using at least some real bullets, but the movie never really explains how all this happened. The second confusing thing is Eric. The doctor says Eric died at birth and Mrs. Slater just pretends that Eric lives to make herself feel better. But during the climax, Katie fights the killer, who appears to be a man, and Ms. Slater seems to have been dead the whole time. If this were true, then how would the doctor have not realized the baby was alive? The baby he delivered was either already dead or died soon after, certainly before Mrs. Slater woke up. So assuming she got her baby back after for a funeral, the doctor should have realized the baby was alive. If this is what happened, the movie didn't make the twist very clear.

I sat down to watch this not really expecting that much. I am a fan of Slasher movies in general and movies from the Slasher Golden Age (1974 – 1984) so came across "House on Sorority Row" by simply going through the back catalogue. One quick look at the lurid cover, the title, and a quick scanning of the plot I figured I would quickly be struggling not to turn it off from being bored by pedestrian acting, woeful direction, and a plot that was exploitative and, even worse, cliché…even back in 1983. Still, in the interests of better understanding the genre, I decided to give it a go and must admit to having been very pleasantly surprised.The house in "House on Sorority Row" has been occupied for the past few years by a group of average, fun-loving, all-American college girls who are keen to organise an end-of-year party. However, for the past few years they have had the misfortune of being supervised by the mean and austere Ms. Slater who forbids the party going ahead. Undeterred, the girls decide to play a prank on her which goes horribly wrong and results in the death of Ms. Slater. The girls try to hide the body but as people start being brutally murdered the girls begin to wonder if Ms. Slater did indeed die or if something more sinister is responsible.The movie has all of the plot devices of a bog-standard slasher: anniversary of a gruesome event long kept secret, hot teenage victims who question authority, imaginative kills, and the final girl. However, the movie does a good job piecing these tropes together and, with the respectable performances from (most of) the cast, a good use of location, and a reputable directing job, manages to establish characters early and build the atmosphere into a suspenseful and watchable slasher thriller.Sure, there are better films in the slasher genre (obviously the likes of 'Black Christmas' (1974) and 'Halloween' (1978) as well as lesser-known slashers like 'The Burning' (1981))…but then again, there are many, many worse films you could spend an hour-and-a-half with.

This is exactly the type of film that embodies the 80's slasher-horror genre.This film has great atmosphere, suspense, and some great kill scenes.While the mystery and the twists are easy to see coming, that is mostly the fault of the genre over-doing this in the thirty years since this movie was released. Spoilers:As someone who has seen a lot of horror movies, I fully expected the killer to be someone else other than the mother. Early on, I never assumed the pregnancy had ended in a stillborn baby or anything like that. The movie does a good job of trying to get the viewer to buy that it is the mother who is borderline psychotic, and had I not been fully expecting a twist, I would have followed that line of thinking.The acting is good enough for a movie like this. I think sometimes people expect Academy Award-winning acting out of horror movies and I think they miss the point. The acting isn't intended nor does it need to carry the film like in a drama.The death scenes are done very well. In the age before CGI and multi- million dollar horror films, the production crews of these films had to use their minds to figure out how to do the impossible; kill someone on screen. Movies like this and Halloween do the death scenes very well. Action-in-the-shadow is a simple yet effective technique, as are the quick shots of someone getting stabbed. The shots are quick enough so the mind can't register that you are in fact looking at a fake body or a fake weapon, but just long enough so you see the person getting it.I really can't fault this film for anything that other reviewers did. Maybe younger people, who didn't live in the 80's wouldn't appreciate something without top-notch effects or gallons of fake blood...I don't know.Anyway, this is a classic slasher-horror film, before the genre got stale (forever) with constant sequels and remakes.