'The House on Sorority Row’ 1983) - Mark Rosman.

‘The House on Sorority Row’ might also be ascribed the appropriately lurid, Giallo-sounding title of ‘Curse of the Bird-Headed Cane’, as said murderous weapon of muff destruction is frequently featured in a somewhat fetishistic manner in this smart, sassy, agreeably gash-heavy slasher! Once more we are garishly presented with an attention-grabbingly hysterical prologue, darkly suggestive of gross medical impropriety, before the resolutely serious matter of sinuously salacious Sorority House mass slaughter begins in Technicolour earnest!

The more than capable director, Mark Rosman’s archetypal, college-set carnage circus, thankfully leaves little to the imagination and hurriedly sets the scurrilous scene for one of the more righteously intense dorm room destruction epics! After the ill-conceived prank by wantonly waterbed-rutting, gun-toting campus bad girl (Eileen Davidson)on their wonderfully sinister spinster dorm mother, Mrs. Slater (Lois Kelso Hunt) goes catastrophically south, the Graduation party goring proceeds in bloody earnest! Gruesomely winnowing our errant clique of vivacious co-eds down to one of Slasherdom’s more eternally endearing Final Girls, sweet natured Katherine, charmingly played by the talented, Kate McNeil.

This slickly entertaining, babe-alicious blood-spiller remains one of my absolutely essential go-to Girl-goring favourites. The singular amicability of the film’s nubile, negligee-sporting cane fodder, plus the plasma-packed plot shenanigans of shadow stalking psycho is given enough heavy-breathing space for the viewer to sympathise with our perky protagonists gruesome, wholly self-initiated ordeal. As is so often the case, the original film remains a far superior work to the dully recycled, dross-laden re-make, and much like its sinister siblings, ‘Carrie’, ‘Prom Night’ and ‘April Fool’s Day’, ‘The House on Sorority Row’ is most certainly best viewed in its still entirely righteous, authentically 80s incarnation!

‘Mrs. Slater kept her ‘dirty little secret’ hidden for many years...but tonight it got out and cut more than mommy’s apron strings!!!!’ - Mahnfahrt Panzerflesh.