THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE
No, there's not a level to this movie you're not seeing
The claim to fame of this series is that these films are written and directed by women. So, you'd think that there'd be some kind of feminist slant to things, or that at least these ladies would find something to show you in the slasher subgenre that men have been unable or unwilling to portray.
No such luck, and you should've known better (and so should have I) than to think it. Women are probably every bit as happy to exploit women as men are, even if the evidence so far suggests that they're not as good at it.
There's an escaped mental patient out there, and he's got a big drill. But that you could tell from the cover art, which is amongst the most ridiculously lurid I've seen (the killer standing over his victims, legs spread, the drill thrusting down like a mighty spinning phallus of steel). He's got his sights on the slumber party in L.A. suburbia, while two girls next door spend the night doing each other's hair so that they can finally do something useful in the last act.
It's about as gory as you'd expect, and it's actually got considerably more nudity than most slasher films (and what is has is far, far more gratuitous - not that I'm complaining). It's got all the cliche'd false scares (False Scare By Cat, False Scare By Male Prankster).
The women are all sobbing victims, without any apparent personality, with the exception of the basketball coach, who of course dies after two scenes. Only one man stands out as interesting (dies after three scenes) - the rest are feeble wimps, both physically and intellectually, and the killer, oh, please. He doesn't say a thing until the end, and then he just spouts a bunch of "abusive male" cliche's...maybe that's where the film's feminism lies. Men are weak or abusive, and women are their helpless victims. That's the kind of unbelievably simplistic and stupid feminism that I think most of us can do without, and should probably embarrass genuine feminists.
Writer Rita Mae Brown is a feminist activist, I hear. I'd like to hear what her point was with this film, because I sure don't see it. It doesn't work as parody, satire, or a particularly good horror movie. So, basically, the film's only real claim to fame/infamy is a joke - these ladies have crafted a film that's largely indistinguishable from the ones churned out by their male colleagues.
All this having been said, this is about an average slasher movie, perhaps a little better than most because of the wealth of T&A. But for my money, the first sequel is a lot more fun, featuring the coolest guitar I've seen.