She may have only wet her feet in the blood red pool of horror cinema, but Amy Holden Jones left her mark on slasher films, a mark that has been recognized for decades after. Ms. Jones helped to write, produced, and directed the campy cult classic The Slumber Party Massacre in 1982. Not only was it a wild ride at the time, but it also revitalized the subgenre of horror film that features a group of attractive young women fighting for their lives against a masked intruder. It was a flirty, gory style of filmmaking that many have tried to copy, but very few have managed to duplicate Jones’ gusto and success in this category. Her “I don’t care” attitude remains still.
Since directing The Slumber Party Massacre, Amy went on to write a number of noteworthy titles and series, although they were in other genres of production. She wrote Mystic Pizza (1988) which starred Julia Roberts before she became a phenomenon. She wrote the dog family-comedy Beethoven (1992) and most of its following sequels over the next ten years. Recently, she served as writer and executive producer on the ABC drama, “Black Box.”
Her only other horror-centric credits include a featured extra role in the original Piranha in 1978 and writing The Relic in 1997.
Follow Amy Holden Jones on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aholdenj.
See her full resume on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0427468/.
