Drilling Her To Death

When thinking about slasher flicks, one can’t pass up that fact that many of them are known for having male killers who use sharp protruding weapons. Michael Meyers has a knife, Leatherface has a chainsaw and The Miner has a pickaxe. All these weapons have been analyzed, especially Meyers’ knife, and general consensus is that they are all phallic symbols. They’re all metaphors for the male genitals and when you think about how they’re meant to attack helpless women, the similarities are uncanny. Does this mean that most slashers are feminist movies? Maybe. Maybe not. I do want to bring up a slasher flick that has a weapon that fully embodies the male sex organ, mainly because when men talk about having sex with a woman they sometimes refer to it as either “nailing” or “drilling.” I’m going to hell for this but I am talking about The Slumber Party Massacre and the weapon of choice in this flick is a massive drill. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing a sweaty, psychopathic man promiscuously penetrating every girl and guy that he sees with his drill.

NOTE: This is probably going to be a very trivial yet raunchy article.

There is a reason as to why I think a drill is more of a phallic symbol than any other weapon but also keep in mind that I haven’t seen that many slasher movies to compare this to. Most of the slasher movies that I’ve seen usually involve knives, bare hands or whatever is lying around the killer at the time. The drill’s appearance has the closest resemblance to the penis than any other weapon, but than you can argue for the chainsaw’s appearance from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. It’s true that the chainsaw may look a penis but it’s only in a 2-dimentional form, whereas the drill is 3-dimentional. And, in the additional dirty sense, both the drill and the penis have “heads” that come to a point.

I really am going to hell, I know.

Even more so, the killer shows more traits of a repressed sexual molester than most cliché-ridden slasher villains. I think one of the biggest examples of being a sexually harmful slasher is that when he confronts our main heroine he begins to talk to her, hauntingly admitting that he loves her and that she should love him back. He says it a quiet yet nervous whisper, like he’s slowly getting aroused by it but then again, I’m well aware that a lot of slasher villains to the same thing. However, how many slasher villains out there hold on to their weapon as though it was their pride and joy? The killer in this film is shown grasping on to his drill as if it gives him power, which only furthers my theory that the drill is more of a phallic symbol than any other slasher weapon. Then, as the girl screams he “turns on” the drill and begins to kill her. I believe this may be the first phallic weapon that gets “aroused” by girls screaming.

This is a little off topic but I think it’s funny that as I was watching this I immediately thought of phallic objects because apparently this is a feminist movie. I’m not sure how, exactly, this qualifies as a feminist movie but word around the campfire is because it’s directed by a female… but even still I just don’t get it. During the initial viewing of the film I didn’t catch anything that seemed ‘feminist’ because it seemed like the girls in this movie were all inept. One of them even went as far as to eat the pizza that the dead delivery boy had in his hand because she was hungry from nervousness. Sure it adds to the comedic value but I don’t think that reflects feminism unless I, myself, don’t understand what feminism really is. Either way, if it is meant to be feminist than the drill is certainly a “manly” weapon.

I am aware that this was a very pointless and pretty random topic to discuss but it was the first thing that popped into my head. After spending little over a year looking for this movie, I thought it would be something great or exceptionally cheesy but instead I got a very average slasher with one exception: a perfect phallic weapon. I’ll hand it to the creators that an enormous battery powered electric drill is a pretty clever weapon next to a chainsaw or a pickaxe. Either way, I hoped you enjoyed this pointless and ‘classy’ thought on Slumber Party Massacre.