Guilty Pleasure: Sorority House Massacre 2 and Hard To Die

I've always been the horror movie buff of my family. But among the Nightmare on Elm Street and Hellraisers, there's also been those guilty pleasures. You know, the ones you get to enjoy T &A, and the scream queens, and you can practically guess the killer is by looking at his or her clothes? Yeah.

I'm a devoted fan to the "Golden Age" of the slasher film...those of the 1970s and 1980s...the ones where the casts are unknown thespians, and the plot was more important than Josh Hartnett or Buster Rhymes or Kelly Rowland's appearance in the film.

Anyway, while renting movies from my favorite spots, i came across a little gem called Sorority House Massacre II. The story is simple: five sorority babes buy a house where, five years prior, a family was murdered by their father. This is where the fun starts, lol.

To explain the murders, footage from Slumber Party Massacre was used...so the crazed killer in said footage(who wasn't linked to the family, if i remember correctly) kills his daughters Ginger and Mary Ann(i laughed when i caught the joke. Where's Skipper?). Oh, and our cast of Sorority Heroines(tm?)? Gail(Robyn)Harris is the lead character, a hot British Chick(my nickname for her) with a nice...ahem...smile. She's the lead character(introduced in a nice framing device..."Is it over? Oh God, is it over?" with a nice Brit accent) followed by Melissa Moore, a giant blonde who towers over the others(Sailor Jupiter). The others escape my mind at the moment; push comes to shove, they are dispatched by a guy with a hook(years before The Fisherman showed up) resulting in a large spray of red stuff on the walls. No, literally...the deaths are shown off camera, but you can see the shadows on the wall...hook comes down, blood squirted on the walls.

In the end, British Chick is "The Final Girl" left to battle the resurrected family killer. I don't want to spoil it for you, so i won't tell you who it is(*cough*Jupiter*cough*) But sadly, British Chick did not make it out alive of this one...:(. Oh, and i forgot to mention the other main attraction of this movie...Orville Ketchum, a mix of Wolverine and John Goodman, with the speech pattern of a retarded ape.

Seriously, this guy(who...should he even be considered a red herring?), a neighbor, is extremly creepy, and nearly gives the girls a heart attack when he appears. He later appears in the house, when the girls are on red alert from the killer. Let me tell you, this guy has a healing factor...seriously. He's stapped multiple times, choked by British Chick with a cord, drowned in the toilet, blown away by policemen...and he is still alive when the credits roll, even getting a hot nurse as a bonus. Must be all the bloody raw meat he eats, lol.

British Chick and most of the same cast return in "Hard to Die". Imagine my surprise when the film opened the exactly same way, with the exact same framing device. This time, our heroines, under different names, work in a highrise building. We have new "members" on the team, including another English Babe(British Lady) and Stripper Girl(she was a hot stripper in Sorority House Massacre II). British Chick is back, as well as Sailor Jupiter and the other chick(i might call her Country Chick, 'cause she had a southwestern drawl to me).

Anyway, this time, we learn that the family killer practiced occult magic, and had split his soul into three parts, one part in a Egyptian-styled box that British Lady opens. I enjoyed that concept, as well as the links between the movies. Oh, Orville returns. When the s*** hits the fan, he goes through the same punishment...even being thrown off of the highrise...and surviving!!
The finale involves another possessed babe and guns...lots of guns. It was halirious to see the possessed woman and Orville shoot each other and slump down in a bloody heap...only to keep getting up and shooting each other again.

Other running gags and subplots included a detective duo, a man and a woman, investigating Orville Ketchum and blaming him for the murders(thinking he had something to do with the first set of murders(the family) and then killing the Sorority Girls(Hard to Die). It was funny to see the man going to different erotic locales to find information...on Sorority House, he went to a Stripper Bar and talked to a stripper, and in Hard to Die, a Porn Star on set. Both, much to his lady partner's chagrin.

I really wish these two movies were part of an official trilogy, with Gail Harris's character surviving the first movie only to have to battle the killer's spirit again and again. I swear, when i obtain professional status, i will write the remake of Hard to Die as a trilogy.

Trailer For Sorority House Massacre II:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2NOgOpvOYs
Trailer for Hard to Die:
There isn't one:(