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Cult UK distributor 88 Films also put out a Region B release with completely different special features. Mrs. Slater (Lois Kelso Hunt) is the matronly house mother for Pi Theta sorority. The lovely girls of Pi Theta are looking to host one last party before leaving college behind. The vivacious Vicki (Eileen Davidson) is their ring leader who butts heads with Mrs. Slater when the elderly woman demands the co-eds call off their party for mysterious reasons. A haunting opening scene hints at deeper psychological problems for Mrs. Slater after a failed pregnancy years ago left her mentally scarred from the trauma. While this is a slasher film, it could almost be seen as a thriller on par with Brian De Palma.
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You’ve got an isolated setting with the sorority house, plenty of young women to pick off, and some gruesome kills. What separates this from other slashers is that the victims are, in a way, responsible for what’s happening to them. Sure, you feel bad for the girls getting killed, but you can’t help but feel like they might’ve deserved it.
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Renovation on sorority row continues with 2 new houses - The Crimson White
Renovation on sorority row continues with 2 new houses.
Posted: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Under her face shield, N95 mask, and sunglasses is the face of Jeanne Pritzker, one of the richest women in Los Angeles—a billionaire. Over the last year, she bought a $50,000 imported rug for the main floor, as well as bedding, outdoor furniture, and a painting by the Vietnamese artist Lê Thiét Cuong. She wanted to make sure there would be plenty of clothing available for job interviews and class presentations, so she packed a communal walk-in closet with professional attire for men and women. Despite being a huge fan of Drive, I avoided Only God Forgives for a long time because of its poor critical reception and excessively esoteric presentation.
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Sorority Row is the remake with no flippin’ mercy that undergoes a total attitude makeover — appreciation will vary in that regard. My column isn’t about which release I prefer, because there’s more to remakes and originals than rankings. The House on Sorority Row and Sorority Row fulfill different cravings of horror cinema and pose quite the contrasting yet complementary double-bill. Two deadly collegiate slasher sprees showcase opposite methods of subgenre expression, from the familial whodunit with ponderous investment to the kill-em-all assault hinged on grosser and more elaborate demises. Vicki, the unofficial sorority alpha queen, decides that it’s time to get back at Mrs. Slater in the prankiest of all pranks — stealing her old and ratchety cane.
Mike’s Review: House on Sorority Row (
Sadly, while we’d never see House on Sorority Row II, we did at least get a middling remake of House on Sorority Row, so that’s something. The girls hide Slater’s body and in an Edgar Allen Poe-esque Telltale Heart evolution, the girls begin to become paranoid all the while dealing with a killing-by-numbers killer who’s out to kill them. House on Sorority Row unfolds with a solid 40+ minutes of torture, mayhem, and murder where Katey, Vicki, Liz, Jeanie, Diane, Morgan, and Stevie ultimately get what’s coming to them. Try as they might, the ghost (?) of Mrs. Slater, or her proxy, will not let them off the hook for their dastardly deed. The House on Sorority Row is 9206 on the JustWatch Daily Streaming Charts today. In the United States, it is currently more popular than The Discoverers but less popular than Crazy on the Outside.
These 37 students, who now live within walking distance of Beverly Hills, are changing their lives with great determination despite the tumultuous events of the year. The city relies on them but doesn’t return the favor, hence the need for benefactors like the Pritzkers and others. And the project has just begun—the house has the capacity to house 50 students, plus three staff members. She’s dressed in platform Converse sneakers, army-green drop-crotch harem pants, and a fitted black T-shirt.
The House on Sorority Row (also known as House of Evil in the United Kingdom) is a 1982 American slasher film written and directed by Mark Rosman, produced by John G. Clark, and starring Eileen Davidson and Kathryn McNeil. The plot follows a group of sorority sisters being stalked and murdered during their graduation party after they conceal a fatal prank against their house mother. Sorority Row feels ahead of its decade in how it subverts slasher expectations like women being helpless fawns and men getting away with sleazy behavior as locker room heroes.
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Then again, despite what the creators behind Sorority Row claim, it’s a remake of The House on Sorority Row. Homages and callbacks are sprinkled throughout, from a broken top-floor window during the film’s opening to Cassidy’s beak-tipped cane weapon when she attempts to rescue Claire. A steamy shower encounter recalls Jeanie’s (Robin Meloy) bathroom decapitation. Rosman University is dedicated to Mark Rosman because without The House on Sorority Row, there’d be no Sorority Row. It’s almost like Hendler attempted to shake the original’s mojo by deeming Sorority Row an adaptation of Rosman’s screenplay Seven Sisters — the earlier iteration of what would become The House on Sorority Row.
Both films are byproducts of their eras, definable by the celebratory liquor and booze toasts in each iteration. The House on Sorority Row circles its ladies as they jokingly rib but adore one another, while Sorority Row uses the ceremonial pre-game to highlight the problematic bitchiness of its backstabbing, shit-talking characters. Rosman’s adoration of 1955’s Les Diaboliques stresses suspenseful investigations as Katey (Kathryn McNeil) pieces together clues that lead to a jester-dressed manchild under the prude Slater’s (Lois Kelso Hunt) care. Hendler approaches villain stalks more linearly like I Know What You Did Last Summer or Scream, where it’s more about faces in a crowd and the spectacle of 2000s horror era slayings. The original implements morbid hallucinations and psychological unrest, while Summit Entertainment’s remake hacks through bodies without grand conspiracies or further embellishment. In Sorority Row, Meghan (Audrina Patridge) is missing — or that’s what the sisters of Theta Pi want authorities to believe.
Danté, Juan, Breyon, and the 34 other college students who live in this house were once statistics of the housing-insecurity problem in the United States. If not for this place, they’d be part of the estimated 14 percent of college students who were homeless as they entered the fall semester last year. Today they are enrolled at more than a dozen colleges and universities across L.A. That being said, there are exceptions to this rule, as some movies manage to terrorize audiences into leaving the theater regardless of genre.
Hendler doesn’t shy away from nudity, introducing Theta Pi with a pajama pillow fight party where a trampoline-hopping attendees’ bare rump flashes to all. There’s more flesh in Sorority Row than I’ve seen in the last three years worth of horror releases, as well as cringey-but-perfect needle drops that again summon a rather 80s attitude of treating horror like this after-midnight party. No one’s shy about their intentions with Sorority Row, as the film achieves a rarer blend of ferocious 2000s slasher intensity while still channeling freer 80s boundaries that loved sex, blood, and rock n’ roll. The lure for MVD’s edition is the director’s preferred re-timed, pre-credits sequence in black and white appended to the film’s opening, though MVD for some reason includes the original monaural soundtrack for that version in lossy quality. It’s also hidden away in the special features menu when it should have been given more prominence. Mark Rosman‘s The House on Sorority Row (1982) and Stewart Hendler‘s Sorority Row (2009) feel shoved aside in their respective horror classes.
Seeing the rational Katey and the vindictive Vicki argue over how to handle the situation drives this point home. It helps that Kathryn McNeil and Eileen Davidson give solid performances and make these characters feel real. The other sorority sisters also do an excellent job of feeling like a group of girls who’ve been long-time friends. After graduating from NYU’s film program, Mark Rosman got an idea for a movie when he returned home to LA.
Just when you think the girls have gotten away with the murder, something comes along to jeopardize it. Plus, the plot has so many twists and turns that it keeps you engaged and constantly guessing. Admittedly, the movie goes off the rails in the last twenty minutes when the killer’s identity is revealed. Thankfully, Mark Rosman and cinematographer Tim Suhrstedt keep the suspense and tension going as it turns into a cat-and-mouse game. Also, Richard Band’s score is fantastic, adding a surreal, dreamlike quality to the film, enhancing some trippy moments. Though I wouldn’t call this one of the greatest slashers ever, it’s still a well-made and well-acted thriller worth seeing.
The girls, somewhat unbelievably, obtain and gun and force Mrs. Slater to hunt for her cane near the outdoor sorority house pool. Pranks are, of course, only as good as their execution, and Vicki’s coke-addled synapses don’t have the wherewithal to implement the frolicking tomfoolery. The gun goes off and the girls (Katey, Vicki, Liz, Jeanie, Diane, Morgan, and Stevie) inadvertently shoot Mrs. Sleater dead — well maybe.
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