As a youngster growing up in the 80's and early 90's there was always two names I'd look for on the video boxes in order to guarantee myself an odd, low-budget time once I got home from the store: Full Moon and Troma. Yeah, Full Moon had a heck of a run in it's first five years of existence before going through bankruptcy and reimerging in the last few years putting out dull, padded product that's hard to find in most rental and retail outlets. But, Troma, the brainchild of Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz continues to soldier on recently celebrating three decades in the business. It's just too bad that most of their output lately turns out to be shit-sandwiches like Slaughter Party.

From the makers of 2003's Zombiegeddon (another Troma release), Slaughter Party insists on being another one of those jokey slashers that not only annoy me but seem to be a prolific sub-genre for indie filmmakers to tap into - there's even more of these out there in the past five years than dull, artsy vampire movies and that's quite a feat considering the state of shoestring horror in the past. There's way too many of these out there constantly slapping their viewers in the face with groanable jokes, low-scale gore and a lack of respect for the genre. It makes it harder for the more serious indie slashers out there (like David Buchert's Blood Oath) to get an audience as most people have grown tired of this type of movie thanks to the glut of "smart alecky" ones.

Three high school friends decide to go on a trip to check out an old cave in the middle of nowhere that they've heard is either a) haunted or b) the dwelling of an insane killer. Well, it turns out that the latter is quite true as a wisecracking psycho who takes himself to be a doctor (Ford Austin) attacks them, killing two of them before stringing the midget of the group, Craig (Mighty Mike Murga) up in a tree.

Craig doesn't die though and soon enough he's stalking around with a knife and killing all sorts of various, usually undressed, women. It's never really explained why he's doing it (I guess the makers think we'll assume his attack at the doc's hand drove him bat shit) and we really don't care. The novelty of having a smaller-statured killer wears off almost as quick as it's introduced as there's little to enjoy as Craig pulls many stupid-looking "mean" faces and cracks one-liners while assaulting his female prey (he even has sex with our first victim's wound - a lame attempt to add some offensiveness to the whole thing).

At the same time two detectives (played by porn filmmaker Adam "Seymour Butts" Glasser and former professional wrestler Ric "The Equalizer" Drasin) are trying to track down our killer and Tara (Felissa Rose) heads off to a beach near our mad doctor's cave with some friends in order to try and forget about the death of her sister (who died at the hands of Craig).

If you've gotten the idea that Slaughter Party is pretty lacking in story structure, you'd be exactly right as we have seemingly random attack scenes from both our midget killer and mad doctor (who is apparently collecting body parts to create an army of freaks), dull scenes of our detectives questioning people (we're told it's three weeks after one woman is killed at bar that they're questioning the patrons, but they say "last night" more than once), minimal flashes of skin and ho-hum attempts at gore. They've even thrown in the usual "indie cred" cameos as Lloyd Kaufman and Ron Jeremy show-up briefly.

You know, if you're going to make this type of movie you'd better damn well make sure that it's either funny or gory, two things which Slaughter Party is not. It's quite a painful ride thats inanity hits its pinnacle in the finale and the only real positives I could drag out of it were that there's a few decent songs on the soundtrack and that Austin is actually more amusing in his role than this movie deserves. I guess the casting of Rose should've been a sign as since she's returned to the genre (she's best known as playing "Angela" in the original Sleepaway Camp) it's been in a bunch of no budget, mostly garbage, indie flicks. (Chris Hartley, 6/26/07)

Directed By: Buck Jones, Jr.
Written By: Fred Rosenberg, Jr.

Starring: Felissa Rose, Ford Austin, Mighty Mike Murga, Adam Glasser.