Murder Party (film): A low-budget masterpiece

The film is horror / comedy and it is quite evident from the start that the producers were not dealing with a tremendous amount of money. It almost looks like a student project but this film manages to be more entertaining than a vast majority of the Hollywood multi-million-dollar-budget train wrecks that exist in the marketplace.

source

The story is like this: A parking enforcement officer with the New York Police Department has a rather boring and routine life where he is very aware of the fact that it is his job to just irritate people for a living. He lives alone with his cat (who also doesn't respect him) and spends life alone for the most part. The thing I love about the fact that I know this was not that I was TOLD this information by a narrator, I was shown it during the opening credits.... Because the people who made this film are great story tellers.

He find an invitation to a party on the street while he is on his way home. It is called a "Murder Party" and he decides to make a costume and attend not realizing that he is actually the guest of honor that will be killed at it.

source

He is almost immediately captured by the team of people who intend to kill him but here is the twist: They are a group of bumbling "artists" who can't seem to agree on how to kill him but they know they need to do it in an artistic fashion. None of their ideas are artistic enough for the other artists so this gives him time to escape multiple times.

As someone that has been exposed to the New York artist scene I can tell you from first-hand experience that these people are truly in a delusional world all their own. The art shows and galleries I have been to are essentially collections of garbage and the people who created them.... well, the are very "odd" to say the least. As an audience we start to hate them because of their holier-than-thou attitudes rather than the fact that they want to brutally kill this innocent person.

source

There are a lot of throwback moments to 80's horror films including a guy who very closely resembles "Leatherface" from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the twist is that he is using an electrical chainsaw so he always needs to find an electrical outlet before he can terrorize his victims.

They also intentionally use opening credit graphics that were very typical in 80s films despite the fact that doing so is likely MORE difficult than their modern couterparts these days.

I think one of the things I found particularly humorous was the fact that they didn't stick to any sort of time-period timeline. In one scene we have a guy renting video tapes (like VCR tapes) from a video rental store (I don't think those exist anymore) and then walking out of that store and the first car you see is a early 2000's Hyundai, which is a car company that didn't even exist in the USA until the 90's. Plus people are using their cell phones. It is difficult to determine where we are meant to be in time and space and that is part of the fun.

Fast paced and fun, this movie is something that fans of film-makers thinking outside the box will definitely appreciate. The fact that they really spend the entire film making fun of the pretentious NYC artsy scene really appealed to me. I have met these people and it is difficult to talk to them and not want to punch them in the face whenever they say just about anything.

I can't call this movie top drawer, because it does have it's limitation such as a couple of people that could use some acting lessons... but overall I found this film with a budget of around $200,000 to be MUCH better than movies with films with 100x this budget. However, i would imagine you would need to appreciate the type of horror films that were all over the place in the 80's in order to get some of the subtle jokes.