Whatever the specifics of their plots, almost all teen films are linked by a common dilemma: the clash between the uncertainty of the future and the irretrievability of the past. For the senior residents of the Theta Pi sorority, that dilemma has never been more concrete. Before them lies law school, stewardess jobs, marriage, and more; behind them lies a house of death. Deciding to stay on past their lease in order to throw one last blowout, the Theta Pis encounter the wrath of creepy house mother Lois Kelso Hunt, a cane-toting prude first seen consulting with a physician (Christopher Lawrence) about an unnamed "condition." No condition stands in the way of administering house rules, however, and when one resident (Harley Jane Kozak) decides to sneak her boyfriend up for a midnight tryst, Hunt responds with a swing of her walking stick, destroying Kozak's waterbed in the process. Not one to take such destruction lightly, Kozak springs into action, the next day announcing, "What we need is an old-fashioned sorority prank." This turns out not to be the best course of action when dealing with a potential homicidal maniac, particularly when the prank involves a loaded gun and a swimming pool, and ends in Hunt's apparent death. Still, the party must go on, and as the new-wave-inflected tunes of 4 Out Of 5 Doctors fills the Theta Pi house, the bodies pile up. Could the killer be Hunt, returned from the grave? As logical as that answer seems, it's disproved when her body turns up in the attic. Could it instead be Hunt's secret son, the product of a bizarre fertility experiment who's lived in hiding for decades and enjoys donning a harlequin outfit to murder recent college graduates? This turns out to be the more plausible explanation, as sole survivor Kate McNeil discovers after watching her housemates fall victim one after the other. As a final collegiate rite of passage, McNeil stabs her assailant in the chest, proving herself to be a highly motivated self-starter. Unfortunately, her decision to collapse in exhaustion next to the killer's "corpse" suggests her job options might narrow in the near future.
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