The Slumber Party Massacre offered a (somewhat) feminist spin on the slasher

Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. Because it’s Horrors Week here at The A.V. Club, we’re highlighting some of the best unsung slasher movies.
The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)
Filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich, who got their start working for B-movie impresario Roger Corman, often talk about the creative freedom afforded by Corman’s commercial formula. So long as they stuck to the budget and delivered enough action, violence, and sex to satisfy the audience—or at least enough to cut into an exciting trailer—they could play around some with style and content. That’s how Joe Dante was able to turn the shameless Jaws rip-off Piranha into a sly parody, and how Jonathan Demme could make Caged Heat into a women’s prison picture that didn’t feel like sleazy exploitation. And that’s why director Amy Holden Jones and feminist firebrand writer Rita Mae Brown figured that Corman’s New World Pictures would let them skewer the overt misogyny of the slasher genre with their horror satire The Slumber Party Massacre.