The Dorm that Dripped Blood

Year: 1981

Director: Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow

Written by:Stephen Carpenter, Jeffrey Obrow, and Stacey Giachino

Threat: Psychopath

Weapon of Choice: Car

IMDb page: IMDb link

      The Dorm That Dripped Blood

Other movies in this series:
None

Rish Outfield's reviews
This was a slasher movie, and I like those. It had a cool title. The killer wasn't terrible. The ending was pretty good, although there was a red herring that was left for dead, but wasn't. It had Daphne Zuniga in it, who I liked in Spaceballs and The Sure Thing, and I think was on Melrose Place a couple years back. It had some very cool deaths at first, especially Zuniga's. BUT, it's not really a keeper. It was excruciatingly slow-moving, illogical, hard-to-follow, poorly lit, overflowing with silly, useless subplots that went nowhere or were abandoned altogether, and the sound was bad. The music was really awful, but both tyranist and I commented (at first) that it was pretty good (it just never let up, and repeated endlessly).
Best Scare: You know, I'm coming up blank here.
I'd Recommend It To: Hard up slasher fans and amateur filmmakers (it was obviously cheap, and there's something to be learned in watching this kind of thing).

The tyranist's thoughts
The only thing this move had going for it was Daphne Zuniga and her fantastic death scene. The rest of it more or less sucked. Okay, the killer was pretty good once we found out who was doing it all, but even that became very predictable about fifteen minutes before they actually revealed who it was. The production was particularly poor and the lighting was abominable. I would say that only those of you interested in watching all of the films from Randy's list see this one. If you only want to watch one of them, see The House on Sorority Row. None of the rest are worth the time spent.
Really the biggest problem with this one is confusion. Because of poor lighting through most of the movie and a lack of coherent scripting, this movie just doesn't make a lot of sense. There is a scene that occurs about halfway through the movie that seems to be totally unrelated. Everything else is at least tangential, but sometimes very confusing. Another poor element is the fact that they couldn't keep the night/day thing from ruining continuity. Sometimes it was night then day and then night, when events had to be taking place within a few hours. Overall, it is just really poorly executed.

Total Skulls: 33

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears skull Daphne Zuniga
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise skull
Bad acting skull
Bad dialogue skull
Bad execution skull
MTV Editing
OTS skull
Girl unnecessarily gets naked skull
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location skull
Power is cut skull
Phone lines are cut skull
Someone investigates a strange noise skull
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer skull
Victims cower in front of a window/door skull
Victim locks self in with killer skull
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene skull
Shower scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare skull
Laughable scare skull
Stupid discovery of corpse skullskull
Dream sequence
No one believes only witness skull
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth skull
Music detracts from scene skullskull
Death in first five minutes skull
What the hell? skullskull
x years ago . . .
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim skull
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain skull
Blood hits camera
Poor death effect skullskull
Excessive gore skull
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots skullskull
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending