4/10
Average slasher.
16 February 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Sorority House Massacre II starts as five young & attractive female college students, Janey (Dana Bentley), Jessica (Melissa Moore), Linda (Gail Harris as Robyn Harris), Kimberly (Stacia Zhivago) & Suzanne (Michelle Verran), move into their new sorority house. However, as Janey explains, she managed to get the house so cheap because of the notorious history that surrounds it. Janey goes on to say that house belonged to Clive Hokstedter & was the setting for a series of grisly murders five years earlier in which several young & attractive female college students were butchered by Hokstedter... As the girls explore their new sorority house they discover an Ouija board & Jessica has the bright idea to hold a séance because it might be good for a laugh, these people deserve to die! They try to contact the spirit of Hokstedter but give up when things become spooky, as a violent thunder storm rages outside the girls decide to bed down for the night but they are soon to discover that they are not alone as a homicidal maniac starts to kill the girls one-by-one. Is it the vengeful spirit of Hokstedter, maybe it's the weird next door neighbour Orville Ketchum (Peter Spellos) or perhaps it's someone, or indeed something, else...

Casted & directed by Jim Wynorski, according to the IMDb wisely hiding under the pseudonym Arch Stanton, Sorority House Massacre II is another low budget conveyor belt production to come from the Roger Corman owned New Concorde production company & didn't particularly impress me, strangely this is the third film I've seen this week to include footage from The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) the other's being Slaughter Studios (2004) & Slumber Party Massacre II. The script by Mark Thomas McGee, James B. Rogers & Bob Sheridan plays more like a sequel to The Slumber Party Massacre than Slumber Party Massacre II does, it is as basic a slasher as I've ever seen, as soon as the film starts it introduces the disposable cast members, sticks them in the requisite isolated location & then pads things out a bit with boring dialogue before the killer shows up to kill a few of them until the stupid 'he's not quite dead yet' type twist ending that is there for the purposes of a sequel, it really is as simple & straightforward as that. The killings aren't that original, the killers identity is meant to keep you guessing until the shock climax but you'd have to be pretty dumb not to work it out & since the script can't be bothered to throw in any sort of red-herrings it becomes painfully obvious. Having said that if your looking for a slasher then you could do worse than Sorority House Massacre II as it moves along at a fair pace, there are no real sub-plots to bog things down & it delivers what one would expect from a slasher.

Hack director Wynorski has over 60 low budget horror/sex films to his name & Sorority House Massacre II was one of his first. There is one scene that still bugs me even now, Janey is attacked from behind & the film cuts to a white wall with a silhouette of a hook coming down, Janey is heard screaming & a gallon of blood splatters on the wall, with me? Right, now the very next scene within seconds of Janey being killed & one of her friends has come looking for her & looks in the kitchen where the walls are absolutely perfect. I'm sorry but you could not clean that amount of blood off a wall, & presumably the floor to, in the space of a few seconds without any form of cleaning aid, could you? It's totally impossible & that bit really annoys me even now. The rest of the film isn't exactly brilliant either & Wynorski makes sure his female cast have the least amount of clothes on possible as they spend most of the film either running around in their underwear or naked. The gore is tame, a few blood spurts, a few knife wounds & someone has their foot trapped in a bear trap. There is a fair amount of nudity though, if that's your thing.

Technically Sorority House Massacre II was obviously made on the cheap & it shows. The acting is poor by everyone involved especially Spellos as the weird fat neighbour, there are a few porn stars in here as well if that sort of thing interests you...

Sorority House Massacre II is an OK slasher, it does what one would want but it's not that well made, the gore is tame & the story is a bit to basic. Die-hard slasher fans might like it but in an already over saturated sub-genre it does nothing to distinguish itself from far better competition.
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