Break out the pastel polo shirts and grab your beer bongs – it’s time for some unadulterated bro-on-bro horror from the guys over at 5-Second Films. Packed with bare-chested dudes and a lackadaisical assault on the English language, Dude Bro Party Massacre III is a hilarious spoof of every 80s slasher flick you’ve ever seen. We could spend hours listing all the schlocky classics that influenced this “long lost” VHS splatterfest, as the 5-Second team put their own gratuitously homoerotic spin on one of horror’s more well-known subgenres. It’s stickier than a beer-coated frat house basement, bloodier than a sorority catfight, and dumber than a 9th-year senior – exactly how a dude bro party should go down.
The legend of the “Dude Bros” is one that history almost forgot, since the first two Dude Bro Party Massacre films were lost forever. Dude Bro Party Massacre III, the only remaining franchise entry, almost suffered a similar fate – until a nameless hero recorded a midnight television showing of the rare film (commercials and all). This is the pirated version we’re shown, before torrenting and streaming movies was a thing. Without this recovered copy, the film’s female villain, Motherface, would never make the horror history books – but her third attack on Delta Bi Theta may just be her most famous.
In the latest frat-tastrophy, Brent (Alec Owen) joins the Delta Bi brotherhood to investigate the murder of his lookalike brother, Brock (Alec Owen), only to find himself stuck in another string of Motherface murders. The Deltas find themselves trapped at The Old Sorority House by the lake, where Motherface starts killing each brother off one at a time. There’s also a police Chief (Patton Oswalt) who needs a virgin sacrifice, endless kegs, an orange shortage, and a baby with a mustache. Because why not, bro?
Even though it’s just a movie, Dude Bro Party Massacre III feels like one of the guys. It makes fun of its own ridiculous plot holes and low-budget production before you and your bros (or brahs) will even get a chance. The ten-man writing team behind this overly masculine cult nightmare is in on every single joke, and calculates each inconsistency with precise accuracy. Like I’ve echoed time and time again – it takes a damn smart creative team to craft a movie so bad that it’s legitimately good. Most of these cinematic miracles happen by accident, but every once and a while you get a movie that’s made with the best worst intentions, and magic happens. Dude Bro Party Massacre III is no accident – it’s a gift; an Everclear-soaked watermelon from the Gods, if you will.
It doesn’t take a genius to guess what gimmick powers the regular work of 5-Second Films (short, punctuated, comical shorts), and their attention-deficit YouTube mindset actually plays rather well into Dude Bro Party Massacre III. As previously mentioned, scenes are separated by commercial segments and fuzzy distortion, like a proper home-recording would display. In these quick snippets, we get hilarious advertisements that end up delivering some of the film’s most thunderous laughs. There’s something for everyone: pizza goblins, angry orange juice trees, and confused men driving off cliffs. Five seconds is all these jokers need to score a laugh, and while incomparably stupid, these segments also build a nostalgic atmosphere that brings us back to the late-night programming you’d sneak-watch when mommy and daddy went to sleep.
The bro-vibes that course through the very veins of Dude Bro Party Massacre III are far more than any Ray-Ban wearing rower named Chet could ever handle, and that’s why we love it. The wardrobe costs must have been astronomical given how many sweet tanks were torn open in fits of dude-broing.
Paul Prado leads the charge here as Turbeaux, the frat’s hazing-happy asshole, whose dialogue is riddled with erotically-charged banter that goes wildly unchecked. Then there’s Joey Scoma as Todd (T-O-Double-D for short), who constantly battles his girlfriend Samantha (Kelsey Gunn) because she wants to bone his brains out. And everyone knows sex is gross! Why have intercourse with a female when you can splash around in a body of water, shirtless, with your closest dudes? Cue a lake montage full of exploding beers and fleshy man bodies, and you’ve got a hilarious concoction of fraternity brothers who act more like clichéd sorority chicks. Bro-ner achieved.
I’ll admit that not EVERYTHING works comedically, as mindless ambition sometimes leads to blank faces in the audience. Officer Sminkle (Brian Firenzi), the poor bastard selected to be the Chief’s sacrifice, hopelessly makes up Top 10 Lists he’d love to read on David Letterman’s show, like that’s what’ll make him famous someday. This is funny, for a second, but the repetition factor runs each list straight into the ground. The same goes for a super-long scene that involves Turbeaux’s repressed fear of [oh no, I’m not spoiling this for you], but dammit if I respect the 5-Second guys for going THERE. Dude Bro Party Massacre III is unapologetically, aggressively dumb, but in the BEST way – you have to know that going in for maximum enjoyment.
Yet, if you’re a fan of horror comedies, this is one you can’t miss. Not only is the comedy aces, but Dude Bro Party Massacre III gushes gore like a punctured beer right before a proper shotgun. Heads aren’t just decapitated – they explode in a mess of syrupy red gunk and flying mannequin bits. Intestines are flushed down toilets, headless torsos spray blood like fountains, and fluffy bunnies munch on exposed entrails, all with the campy production of a true straight-to-VHS dumpster fire. But this is the charm of DBPMIII – an homage, a spoof, and a tip of the hat all mixed into a delicious, blood-rimmed cocktail.
All this talk and I haven’t even mentioned that The Room alumn Greg Sestero scores a leading role, along with the maestro of all parties, Andrew W.K.! Yup, the George ‘effing Washington of PARTY. ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!
Face it, Dude Bro Party Massacre III has everything a cult movie needs – (weird) nudity, (random) celebrity cameos, frat mockery, ass smacking, human glory holes, ghost-butt-humping, and a SLEW of other gory surprises for the bros of Delta Bi Theta. Invite over the gang, oil-up those bods, sneak a few butt-chugs in, and get ready to laugh until Natty Light comes out your nose. Party on, 5-Second bros, party on.
