The House on Sorority Row (1982)

(In French, On Cable TV, October 2022) The year is 1982, the genre is slasher, and the setting is a sorority row. Do I really need to write the rest of the review? 1982 was the peak slasher year, and of all the slashers released that year, The House on Sorority Row was certainly one of them. Maybe the most average. Maybe the one that combined the most cliché elements of the genre together. You can probably watch it and not remember a single stupid thing about it the next day. It is a bit less gory than most, but it veers in a weird direction as the young women show remarkable cruelty to their (admittedly overbearing) house mother. The plotting doesn’t make sense, but the film tries to go for studied atmosphere at times, with writer-director Mark Rosman remixing a few memorable moments and styles from previous horror films. Still, it remains a slasher very much in the vein of what was popular in 1982 and there are so many of those films kicking around. If you’re a fan, it’s probably part of the canon. If you already despise slashers, The House on Sorority Row won’t do anything to change your mind.