Rish Outfield's reviews
Once upon a time, when The Horror Film Compendium was a young, bright-eyed website, tyranist and I would have lambasted this film and called it a rainbow assortment of excremental names. Strangely, just a couple of years later, we found in Hard to Die a kind of Holy Grail of bad horror movies. No less than ten times did I exclaim, "This is great!" or "I love this movie!" In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we held this film up as a template from this day on as the perfect crappy horror film. It's no secret that the T&A slasher movie is my favourite kind of horror film, and it's no secret that poorly-made-yet-fun movies like Leprechaun: In Space are among the reasons I keep renting horror films. But wow, Hard to Die was just astounding. Astounding in its cheapness, ineptness, brainlessness and requisite nudity, and astounding in how entertaining it was.
Five young women are working one stormy night moving boxes of lingerie (yes, really) in an empty skyscraper. Except that it's not entirely empty. And that's basically it.
This was a sequel (of sorts) to Sorority House Massacre 2: Nighty Nightmare, which in turn was a sequel (of sorts) to Slumber Party Massacre, and it takes the elements that worked "best" in "Nighty Nightmare" and beats us over the head with them. It starred some of the same people, was directed by the same man, and even includes some of the same dialogue and one of the same sequences. The gigantic, lumbering Orville Ketchum returns (still wearing the same clothes and the same blank stare) to be brutally attacked by half-naked girls again, this time withstanding a punishment that would make the Terminator wince. Busty, accented (and somehow sweet) Robyn Harris also returns as the main half-naked girl, brave and blood-splattered. One by one, the girls shower, and one by one, they die.
I guess what really made this movie work was its sense of humor. I don't know if "Nighty Nightmare" was intended to be as funny as it was, but I imagine the filmmakers picked up on it eventually and decided to do it one better in this one. Some of it went a bit too far (like when it repeated the same joke six or seven times), but over all, Hard To Die was superior. I only wish there had been another installment to this exceptional (yet terrible) film series.
Best Scare: n/a
I'd Recommend It To: I suppose that on the Roger Ebert scale of filmmaking, this movie isn't very good. But to me, and people like me . . .
Note: Oddly, the video box showed two characters that were never seen in the film, and the end credits listed a couple of roles that I never saw (is there another, longer version of this film floating around somewhere?).

The tyranist's thoughts
I hate to admit it publicly, but Rish and I searched for this film for a couple of years before finally just buying it so that we could see it. We had seen all the films that lead up to it and had read the description of it somewhere. On that alone, we searched.
When it finally arrived we were well rewarded. As movies go this one is just plain bad, but it followed the same T&A slasher formuala that its predecessor, Sorority House Massacre 2, did to great effect. In my opinion, they are virtually the same film set in two different locales. I stand by "Sorority House" though as the better movie. At least it didn't feature a lame take-out-Chinese delivery girl.
Most of the cast is back including both the most and least attractive of the bunch. Orville is back. That's a huge bonus. The exact same bad lightning stock footage is at play. To its advantage the lame police subplot is gone. Instead it has been replaced with a Forrest J. Ackerman subplot that is actually related to the movie. Its still lame, but at least he didn't make a pit stop at a strip club for no apparent reason.
You owe it to yourself to see these movies. Both of them if you can. Hard to Die is harder to find because it is not visibly in the series. I would also check the action section of the video store since we found out (too late) that it is billed primarily as an action flick. Enjoy.