The Slumber Party Massacre

Fun ensues, including extensive nudity, phallic power tools and a girl wielding a machete with great success. The cult classic was a huge success upon release, creating not only two sequels, but also a major critical furore. Janet Maslin wrote in the New York Times that The Slumber Party was akin to “violent pornography”, and no “less bloody, sexist or ugly than comparable films made by men. But it’s a little more reprehensible” because its writer Rita Mae Brown and director Amy Holden Jones “ought to know better”. When a woman is a horror filmmaker, does her gender mean that she is held to different standards than men?