4K UHD & Blu-ray Reviews The House on Sorority Row MVD Blu-ray Review
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In comparison to other living options in Westwood, Greek life can be a bargain. Not only that, but the characters’ overall lack of moral principles makes this story even more disturbing, with the main antagonist being the closest thing to a decent person among the main cast despite also being a brutal vigilante. If you can stomach the deliberate pacing, you’ll likely be fascinated by this stylish nightmare about morally questionable people becoming trapped in a needless cycle of violence and retaliation. Not only is the photography impeccable, turning the rain-slicked streets of Bangkok into a neo-noir playground, but the bizarre characters and performances also help to make this an undeniably memorable movie.
Genres
Going by everything I know, the theatrical presentation doesn’t look great or even good, while the alternate version may actually be sourced from the excellent 2018 Scorpion work. Some of UCLA’s Greek-letter organizations maintain their own private housing adjacent to campus. The average capacity for a fraternity house is 40 students, average capacity for a sorority house is 50 students. Fraternity and sorority housing is generally available the second year of membership and members are encouraged to live in the facility for at least one year. From realistic maimings to brutal fist fights that feel more painful than thrilling, the “action” label on this flick seems downright questionable when the majority of the experience has you wincing at genuinely scary acts of grisly violence.
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The House on Sorority Row asserts Vicki (Eileen Davidson) as the coverup mastermind so that we can sympathize more with her sorority accomplices. Sorority Row implicates everyone immediately — in the latter, we’re rooting for deaths from the shocking roofies-and-voyeurism prank introduction. Looking for retaliation, Vicki and her friends pull off a prank on Mrs. Slater that goes disastrously wrong, resulting in an accidental death. Thinking of her future, Vicki stupidly believes covering up the death makes more sense than reporting it. The wild graduation party proceeds forward in full swing as the sorority sisters start getting killed off by a mysterious figure dressed up in a clown costume. Sometimes you want to watch Grade-A trash get every fatal stab, blunt force trauma, and punctured artery they deserve.
The House on Sorority Row
It was actually Ryan Gosling who convinced the director to tackle the more commercially viable Drive first, as he wanted to cement his partnership with the filmmaker in a more traditional movie before tackling a deeply strange project. This would pay off during the production of Only God Forgives, as the filmmaking duo was forced to use their notoriety to scrounge up money at a Thai film festival when local authorities began demanding bribes in order to allow shooting to continue. The House on Sorority Row is a 1983 Slasher Movie and one of many released in the wake of other popular Slasher Movies like Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
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.
Kryptic ( Review (Calgary Underground Film Festival)
How Sorority Row Could Have Been a Good Horror Movie - CBR
How Sorority Row Could Have Been a Good Horror Movie.
Posted: Fri, 27 Jan 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Jessica (Leah Pipes), Claire (Jamie Chung), and Chugs (Margo Harshman) initially defend their Theta bestie by pranking Chugs’ brother Garrett (Matt O’Leary) because he’s a terrible boyfriend to Meghan (atop countless other frat-pest offenses). Unfortunately, Meghan’s fake-out overdose ends in actual death when Garrett plunges a tire iron into the sorority hottie’s supposed corpse. Cassidy (Briana Evigan) insists the Theta’s phone an ambulance, but Jessica demands guilty parties take the secret to their graves lest their post-graduate years be spent in prison. Everyone holds the information until graduation day, when a threatening picture message and the appearance of Meghan’s sister causes Theta Ellie’s (Rumer Willis) wits to crumble — then bodies start hitting the floor. Mark Rosman’s position as Executive Producer on Sorority Row doesn’t mean there’s a preciousness about following The House on Sorority Row like a blueprint.
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.
Before attending NYU, he was part of a fraternity at UCLA, and he based his concept on his college experiences. Rosman’s script focused on sorority sisters being threatened after a prank gone wrong but were more than just victims. After gathering a budget of $300,000, Rosman started casting in New York and Los Angeles before filming began in 1981. The movie was shot on location in and around Pikesville and the University of Maryland, though the production struggled financially. After principal photography wrapped, Film Ventures International picked the film up for distribution and gave additional funds for post-production. Richard Band, who later scored Re-Animator and Puppet Master, composed the score with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Top cast
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.
It was moderately successful when it was released and is now a cult classic among fans of the genre. More disappointing is the mono audio on the alternate director’s version, heard in lossy Dolby Digital. It lacks the presence and punch found in the PCM audio heard on the other version. The House On Sorority Row has maintained its popularity over the decades as a cult favorite in the slasher genre thanks to a lively cast and the fine direction from Mark Rosman. There’s peer pressure, there’s social acclimatization, there’s the freshman 15, there’s the daily grind of keeping one’s grades in check to maintain that almighty scholarship, and then there’s the relationships. The social bond that’s created can be a lasting and spiritually satisfying affinity, but the bond can go so deep that it’ll eventually turn collegiate relations sour and crazy.
One memorable example of this is Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2013 revenge thriller Only God Forgives, a film so brutal and inaccessible that quite a few critics ended up treating it like a snuff film from hell back when it was first released. Special Effects Coordinator Steve Riley nails the gruesomeness of spectacle deaths that outshine the humble bloodletting in The House on Sorority Row. Chugs’ wine bottle deepthroat in Sorority Row is an all-time slasher elimination, as the glass vessel fills with choked-up blood after the killer slices her throat. Visual effects also accentuate the grim practical artistry, specifically when Claire eats a blistering-hot flare that boils her facial skin like overcooked cheese pizza. Hendler’s cast teeter-totters between despicable and sorrowful (typically back to despicable), and the twist is an outlandish commentary on the hubris of performative nice guys. Yet, Sorority Row most successfully lives up to its 00s slasher bargain of remakes with infinitely outdone death sequences.
The opening montage quickly gives way to the end of the school year as were introduced to seven sorority sisters – Katey, Vicki, Liz, Jeanie, Diane, Morgan, and Stevie. The film borrows elements from “Black Christmas” (1974) and the French horror “Diabolique” (1955), like the unused swimming pool to conceal a body that later disappears. The first act is quite good, particularly the accidental death scene, which is well-acted for no-name actresses. Diane goes to an outlying garage to start the van to transport Slater's body, but is murdered by the killer, who soon after decapitates Jeanie. Meanwhile, after finding Diane missing, Vicki and Liz drive to the cemetery without her to bury Slater's body.
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.
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.
Stewart Hendler leans into the pettiness and dysfunction of Greek life traditions, from slut-shaming to scathing disses about physical appearance. Sorority Row has no filter (positively and negatively), which leads to hilarious moments as Pipes accentuates the shallow mercilessness of Jessica when making jokes about Meghan’s death. She’s the Vicki replacement and performs well beyond her comparison because Sorority Row lets its Theta Pi sweeties act like frat bros would in any other reductive slasher about collegiate stereotypes. The men of Sorority Row are all sharks sniffing blood from HR nightmare in training Mickey (Maxx Hennard) to horny psychiatrist Dr. Rosenburg (Ken Bolden) — and they’re handled by the killer’s pimped-out mechanic’s weapon. Stolberg and Goldfinger lay an exploitative foundation that skewers disturbing fraternal behaviors a decade before 2019’s Black Christmas would do the same, even if their methods can be a bit abrasive in the name of authenticity. Without having the Scorpion disc at my disposal, I can’t tell you if this MVD presentation is a marked improvement.
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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