Rita Mae Brown wrote a screenplay for a parody of teen/slasher flicks, and titled it "Sleepless Nights". However, when she submitted it to the producers, they filmed it as if it weren't a parody, and retitled it "Slumber Party Massacre". As a result, the movie displays a lot more humor, both intended and unintended, than others of this genre.
Amy Holden Jones is not very sympathetic to people who complain that she's a sellout to her gender, as a woman who produced an exploitation flick with a lot of naked girls in it. "That's what Roger Corman, the producer wanted, and that's how it's done, you give the studio what they want. Nobody complains that Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, and Ron Howard made exploitation pictures, but when a woman tries, she gets called a hypocrite and a turncoat. That's B.S." It should be noted that Holden Jones has parlayed this into a successful film career, producing such hits as Mystic Pizza, and The Getaway.
Andree Honore is the only cast member featured on the original theatrical one sheet poster. The blonde woman lying on the floor is Jillian Kesner, who isn't in the film.
In a 2018 interview, Brinke Stevens talked about doing nude scenes in this and other films: "Early in my career, nudity was simply the rule . . . what was expected of us. We just went along with it because we wanted to work. I've never been shy about nudity (she was a nude model before she started acting). Good thing, too -- my willingness to undress landed me a lot of good roles and helped to get me better noticed by fans. However, I was never comfortable doing explicit "love scenes" with a guy, so I tended to turn down those kind of parts. In almost every case, the directors have been very good about asking non-essential personnel to leave the set and we were treated respectfully. But then, there you are totally naked up on the big screen being watched by hundreds of people! I'm quite relieved that I've reached such an age where I'm no longer asked to do this and it's left up to the younger starlets."
According to the director, Amy Holden Jones, the movie was originally supposed to clock in at about 90 minutes - considering that the film only runs at 76 minutes. "There was a different ending. We reshot to punch it up. It must have been lame because I can't remember it. I think it was the same but without the pool. We ruined that pool with the reshoot but it was fun", Amy recalled. One other particular scene that was omitted for pacing reasons, as Debra De Liso recalled, was a scene with the girls playing with a Ouija board, spelling out the words: DEATH.