Party Crasher
Director: Mark Mason
Writer: Mark Mason
Starring: Jeff Howard and Asya West
Body Count: 11
Review: Writer/director Mark Mason has always wanted to make a horror movie, inspired by his two favorites, Carrie and Halloween. In 1995, he began production on Party Crasher 1, finished it in 1996, and it sat on a shelf awaiting distribution until Hollywood Video picked up the rights to it via their First Rites series. Mason intended Party Crasher to be better than any of the Halloweens, better than the Friday the 13ths, and better than any of the Nightmare on Elm St. movies. Unfortunately, he didn't succeed.
Not to say he didn't try, of course. Party Crasher tells the story of a 17-year-old rich kid whose parents pay for him to throw a party at a swank...uh, Motel 6, where someone drops 25 hits of acid into his drink and he goes nuts, killing some of his classmates.
15 years later, the kid (played by Mason, after the original actor was arrested and sent to jail for wife-beating!) returns home. The tension between he and his former classmates is still there, and it's not long (well, okay, actually it is a long time) before the killing starts again.
Okay, this is an independent, low-budget film, and you've got to take movies like that with a grain of salt. All that aside, this is coming from a man who proclaims to love movies like Carrie and Halloween, yet doesn't come anywhere close to those films with Party Crasher. The story is kinda okay in slasher terms, but the film itself is just hindered right and left. The acting is way uneven (there's maybe two decent actors in the entire lot), the script is disjointed and full of ridiculous leaps of logic. There's some blood (once the nut finally starts killing), but very little creativity in terms of gore or death scenes. Mason shows a little bit of prowess with the camera, but not enough to carry this flick through its seemingly endless 90-minutes. Even all of those charming low-budget elements are lacking, putting this even below the "so-bad-it's-funny" category.
Party Crasher 2 is on its way, a good sign that Mason hasn't been discouraged by a lackluster debut film. Let's just hope he gets it right next time.
