Martin Bradley 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.

keithbrown-90195 The House on Sorority Row is formulaic, but I'm sure it only feels that way because so many slashers have taken its template and mined it for their own use. We follow the good girl, the girl who is sure to be our final girl, and we're introduced to the other characters who all reveal flaws that will surely lead to their deaths at the hands of our killer.In this movie, the first act introduces a motive for our killer, and we spend the rest of the movie trying to guess who it might be, while also wondering when and where our next victim will be offed. Some kills are better than others, but that can be said for all slashers.Unlike the best the genre has to offer, the movie never makes you truly care for any of the victims, they all played a part in a crime early in the movie, and that hinders the movie's ability to get you invested in their fates, but it's still a fun time. I enjoyed the scenes at the party, particularly one scene where the camera in one smooth shot follows each of our sorority sisters as they try to act naturally as they keep a terrible secret.For any slasher fan this is a can't miss. For anyone looking for something more, you can probably do better elsewhere.

Roman James Hoffman 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.

chaos-rampant It's hard to imagine how low the bar was set in this field, that relatively early in the slasher something like this passed muster. If you want a prototype example of what is completely cliché and uninspired about this type of film, look no further. We tend to idealize originals and chide remakes for pilfering artistic vision, but this is no less of a soporific cash-grab than the 2009 remake.A bunch of sorority girls planning a party, a prank gone awry, the evil house mother. We see a girl put on lipstick (bright red), and she's the first to die. One of them is the bitch, the ring leader, another is the good one who tries to dissuade the rest.It doesn't take a genius to make a film like Scream then. Only someone with basic observation skills. The only difference between the Wes Craven parody and this, is that Wes Craven understood how laughably derivative a lot of this is.