Dude Bro Party Massacre III: The First, Last, and Only Chapter

Dude Bro Party Massacre III is the pinnacle of modern horror-comedy — and don’t worry, you won’t need to watch Dude Bro Party Massacre 1 or 2 to understand why, because they don’t exist.

Dude Bro Party Massacre III is both an absurd parody and genuine love letter to campy old-school slasher movies with ridiculous titles and too many sequels. Similar to the framing device of Garth Marenghi's Dark Place, Dude Bro is presented as a “lost 80’s slasher” banned by Reagan, of which the only surviving copy is a late night television broadcast recorded by some teen onto a VHS tape — it even contains some goofy little commercial breaks sprinkled in à la RoboCop.

While many horror parodies rely on reference alone, Dude Bro Party Massacre III truly understands its genre. It nails the structure, pacing, and excessive gore with such sincerity that it doesn’t just mock slashers, it becomes a great slasher in its own right. Think Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, or Slumber Party Massacre — satire that respects its roots and commits to the bit.

Inverting The Slasher Formula

A classic slasher setup with a gender-bent twist: instead of nubile teens getting chopped to bits by a masked maniac for showing skin, having sex, or smoking the devil’s lettuce, Dude Bro hands the knife to a woman — Motherface — and sets her loose on a crew of obnoxious, beer chugging frat bros with names like Turbeaux, Z.Q., and Sizzler. No virgins. No cheerleaders. Just ripped tank-tops, noxious farts, and enough homoerotic tension to fill three Call Me By Your Name sequels.

And no, it doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test. In fact, the film was internationally designed to fail it — a tongue-in-cheek jab at the sexist genre conventions rampant in the era of film Dude Bro is satirizing. If the male gaze was a camera, Dude Bro Party Massacre III flips it and smashes it with a kettle bell.

Some have lovingly referred to Dude Bro as “Friday the 13th meets Wet Hot American Summer,” and if you’ve read my first article on Peliplat here, you know how I feel about Wet Hot. It’s the same brand of stupid genius and creative flair.

Side Note: Interestingly enough, Finn Wolfhard’s directorial debut, Hell of a Summer, which gets wide release this friday on April 4th, has been getting similar comparisons, so you may catch me checking that one out too.

The “Plot”

The story begins with Brock — our beefy, trauma-stricken frat hero, played by Alec Owen — trauma dumping on his therapist by recapping the events of the first two nonexistent films through a series of quick and gory flashbacks. In the first film, he and his Delta Bi brothers killed the original Mother, a sorority mother who went mad and terrorized their fraternity.

Naturally, this segues directly into the events of Dude Bro Party Massacre II, where the daughter of the original mother returns to skin her mother’s face and wear it as a mask, becoming the first Motherface — surely a nod to how Pamela Voorhees was the killer in the original Friday the 13th movie, with Jason only becoming the villain of the franchise in Friday Part II. Following another series of comedically over-the-top gory vignettes, the Dude Bros dispose of Motherface by lighting her on fire, and all is well again.

That is, until Brock’s therapist is revealed to be the new Motherface — the sister of the original — as she slices Brock’s throat, kicking off Dude Bro Party Massacre III.

Enter Brock’s twin brother, Brent — also played by Alec Owen — who joins Delta Bi to investigate his brother’s death. After a prank-gone-wrong results in a horrific plane crash (as many innocent pranks often do), the Dean punishes the boys with a weekend at The Old Sorority House By The Lake™. But of course, the new Motherface is already there laying in wait.

What follows is pure chaos: one-liners out the wazoo, wall-to-wall kills, surreal cutaways, gratuitous shirtlessness, and so much homoerotic subtext it basically becomes text.

So Who Made This Thing?

Dude Bro Party Massacre III is the debut feature from the 5 Second Films team, an internet comedy troupe famous for — you guessed it — 5-second comedy skits. Dude Bro was originally conceptualized as one of their 5-second shorts, which gained a fair bit of traction online. They ended up turning it into a full-trailer, which they used as a proof of concept to get the film greenlit. After a very successful kickstarter campaign where they crushed all of their stretch goals, raising over $240k — which was later matched by a producer, bringing the total budget to ~$500k — they were able to shoot the film.And honestly? I have to imagine most of that budget went to the practical blood effects and gore prosthetics, because they look phenomenal and there are a LOT of them. I’m talking gallons of blood, limbs flying, heads exploding, and harpoons aplenty.

You may recognize some familiar faces as Video Game High School alumni, such as Jimmy Wong, who played Ted; Joey Scoma, who played Jumpin Jax; and Brian Firenzi, who played “The Law”. Fun fact: the latter of which is actually the founder of 5SF, who also edited the film.

Among the aforementioned cast is a 35-year-old Greg Sestero of The Room fame, embedded among the college kids as one of them. The film also features guest appearances and cameos from celebrities such as Patton Oswalt, Larry King, John Francis Daley, and TomSka — a YouTuber famous for the asdfmovie series.

A Glorious Frankenstein of a Script

The story was written as a collective by the 5 Second Films team — who also play a majority of the cast as well — except, none of them were allowed to actually collaborate. Everyone was assigned a scene and wrote them entirely in a vacuum. Then, Alec Owen — who plays Brock & Brent — bolted and stitched the vignettes together into a loosely yet surprisingly cohesive screenplay, all things considered.

What results is a fever dream of a film, with a breakneck pace and a borderline overwhelming jokes per minute, held together with Elmer’s glue and good vibes. If you look away from the screen for a second, you could miss three jokes, two kills, and a bronze bust of Ronald Reagan.

Drinking Game Potential: Dangerous:

Dude Bro Party Massacre III is an official member of my Halloween rotation, and it absolutely deserves to be in yours too. This year, I’m devising a drinking game for a spooky watch party that just may kill someone. Here’s the working draft:

• Drink every time someone says “Dude” or “Bro”
• Drink every time a character dies
• Drink every time Motherface appears
• Drink every time you see Ronald Reagan
• Drink every time something homoerotic happens
• Drink every time someone rips off their shirt
• Finish your drink if someone rips off their shirt homoerotically
• Finish your drink every commercial break

That alone should be enough to crush a 6-pack within the 91 minutes of film and 10 minutes of Kickstarter campaign credits. In fact, you may need more than a 6-pack.

Un-Installment Royalty

As far as fake sequels go, I can’t say I’ve seen anything better. Troll 2 is a gimme, but that’s barely a movie to begin with. I’ve also heard good things about Surf II: The End of the Trilogy and The Third Saturday in October: Part V but they’ve yet to earn the official View of Approval™. Zombi 2 by Lucio Fulci is certainly a contender prosthetics-wise (zombie vs shark fight, anyone?), but that was only an alternate title used in marketing to capitalize off the success of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead — I prefer the other alternate title: Zombie Flesh Eaters. Look out for an article on that one someday too by the way, because it definitely deserves to be talked about.

Final Verdict

If you’re a fan of blood-soaked satire, absurd gags, or frat boy takedowns — Dude Bro Party Massacre III is mandatory viewing. Everyone I know who has seen it has loved it, but that list of people is still criminally too low. It’s hilarious, self-aware, and filled with more creativity than most mid-budget studio comedies. It’s a love letter to gore and masculine idiocy, wrapped in Reagan-era parody, and soaked in enough fake blood to drown a sorority.

You don’t need Parts I or II — you just need a six-pack, a few dudes, a few bros, and a taste for chaos. Long live Motherface.