Careful! This review contains spoilers. They'll be coming up two paragraphs from this sentence.
Are you ready? Are you sure? Okay, here we go:
THE WHOLE MOVIE IS A DREAM. NOTHING THAT HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE ACTUALLY HAPPENS. A WHOLE EIGHTY MINUTES OF THIS NINETY-ONE MINUTE MOVIE IS ENTIRELY POINTLESS. DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE.
Are you still with me? Alright, good. I have no idea why, since that pretty much sums up the fatal flaw with the movie. But hey, maybe you figure that knowing the huge, disappointing ending will spare you the rage it would've caused otherwise and you can enjoy the movie on it's own merits now?
Well, there's not much else to look forward to here. The film is a fairly generic slasher film that borrows heavily from movies like Halloween and Friday the 13th (this movie even stole it's composer!) and probably even takes the time to borrow elements from Toxic Avenger, a movie that came out only two years prior.
The story revolves around Marty, a nerdy kid who gets picked on by the entire football team like crazy - the ENTIRE team, for no reason. What did this kid even do? Take a leak in the team Gatorade? Sleep with the quarterback's girlfriend? I dunno, doesn't matter. The point is these are generic movie bullies picking on a generic movie nerd. Eventually they go too far and Marty's face gets burned off, and he swears revenge. Then all the old gang are invited to a reunion at the old school building (now condemned and abandoned) to have one last big party for old times sake. But they better watch out! Because there's a mysterious killer there who will blah, blah, whatever. And then someone farts.
Everything you'd expect to find in a generic 80's slasher film is here in spades. We got thirty-five year old actors playing teenagers, we got nearly identical frat boys and easy girls getting killed, we got over-the-top death scenes that probably wouldn't even kill anyone, we got people dying while drinking and having sex because apparently all cheap slasher movies are very morally righteous, we got the last victim being a virginal woman (well obviously she's not a virgin, but she won't do porn!) and of course, the last ten or so minutes of the film is an extended chase sequence. All the horror movie elements that make you feel like you're watching the same movie over and over again. At the very end of the film it looks like they're gonna have a unique twist (even if it's confusing and makes no sense) where Marty is killed by the zombies of his victims - only for him to wake up in a mental hospital, where it turns out it's only been a few days since his face got burned off and it was all just an angry revenge dream. Then he kills the doctor and rips his own face off but you know what, Marty? It's too late to impress me. Your movie is over and you didn't kill anyone you actually wanted to. Maybe they were setting up a sequel? Fat chance. Especially since the actor who played Marty killed himself shortly after it came out. I watched this POS for an hour and thirty-one minutes and it was all one big waste. This movie is so full of clichés that they introduce a random black guy just so he can be the first one to die not five minutes later.
The movie was supposed to be called "April Fools Day" but another studio was making a movie with that same name and those guys had more money. You can tell this was supposed to be the title from the fact that the movie (and it's tragic back story) takes place on April 1st. You can also here references to it in the theme song. But it's not like "Slaughter High" is an inappropriate title; the whole movie takes place an abandoned school building. Must have been really cheap to shoot this.
This is a British film, in case you couldn't tell. That means fake American accents. I didn't really notice too much while they were speaking normally but occasionally they slip, leading to a bit of unintentional comedy. The only accent that's noticeably bad (and not just corny like the others) is the old black guy, who almost sounds like he's struggling to talk like a slave from an old Looney Tunes shot. If you don't know he's just trying to mask an accent (or assume that's what he actually talks like that) it gets kind of uncomfortable.
The costume is pretty underwhelming. If you're expecting Marty to run around in a crazy clown suit prepare for disappointment. It's just a boring jester mask and a letterman jacket. It doesn't really matter, though. Of all the problems this movie has the least of them is the costume.
I guess the lesson here is if a film is so bad the distributors have to put a guy on the cover defending it before you even open the box, that should probably be a warning sign. If you're looking for the most generic, by-the-numbers slasher movie you can find, you probably have a dozen better choices. But if this is what's on hand, you'll get exactly what you expect. I just hope you're not too afraid of spoilers to figure out the movie is all a DREAM SEQUENCE before you have to see it happen.
But honestly? I probably would have given this movie an extra 2-3 points if the ending wasn't so terrible.
Are you ready? Are you sure? Okay, here we go:
THE WHOLE MOVIE IS A DREAM. NOTHING THAT HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE ACTUALLY HAPPENS. A WHOLE EIGHTY MINUTES OF THIS NINETY-ONE MINUTE MOVIE IS ENTIRELY POINTLESS. DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE.
Are you still with me? Alright, good. I have no idea why, since that pretty much sums up the fatal flaw with the movie. But hey, maybe you figure that knowing the huge, disappointing ending will spare you the rage it would've caused otherwise and you can enjoy the movie on it's own merits now?
Well, there's not much else to look forward to here. The film is a fairly generic slasher film that borrows heavily from movies like Halloween and Friday the 13th (this movie even stole it's composer!) and probably even takes the time to borrow elements from Toxic Avenger, a movie that came out only two years prior.
The story revolves around Marty, a nerdy kid who gets picked on by the entire football team like crazy - the ENTIRE team, for no reason. What did this kid even do? Take a leak in the team Gatorade? Sleep with the quarterback's girlfriend? I dunno, doesn't matter. The point is these are generic movie bullies picking on a generic movie nerd. Eventually they go too far and Marty's face gets burned off, and he swears revenge. Then all the old gang are invited to a reunion at the old school building (now condemned and abandoned) to have one last big party for old times sake. But they better watch out! Because there's a mysterious killer there who will blah, blah, whatever. And then someone farts.
Everything you'd expect to find in a generic 80's slasher film is here in spades. We got thirty-five year old actors playing teenagers, we got nearly identical frat boys and easy girls getting killed, we got over-the-top death scenes that probably wouldn't even kill anyone, we got people dying while drinking and having sex because apparently all cheap slasher movies are very morally righteous, we got the last victim being a virginal woman (well obviously she's not a virgin, but she won't do porn!) and of course, the last ten or so minutes of the film is an extended chase sequence. All the horror movie elements that make you feel like you're watching the same movie over and over again. At the very end of the film it looks like they're gonna have a unique twist (even if it's confusing and makes no sense) where Marty is killed by the zombies of his victims - only for him to wake up in a mental hospital, where it turns out it's only been a few days since his face got burned off and it was all just an angry revenge dream. Then he kills the doctor and rips his own face off but you know what, Marty? It's too late to impress me. Your movie is over and you didn't kill anyone you actually wanted to. Maybe they were setting up a sequel? Fat chance. Especially since the actor who played Marty killed himself shortly after it came out. I watched this POS for an hour and thirty-one minutes and it was all one big waste. This movie is so full of clichés that they introduce a random black guy just so he can be the first one to die not five minutes later.
The movie was supposed to be called "April Fools Day" but another studio was making a movie with that same name and those guys had more money. You can tell this was supposed to be the title from the fact that the movie (and it's tragic back story) takes place on April 1st. You can also here references to it in the theme song. But it's not like "Slaughter High" is an inappropriate title; the whole movie takes place an abandoned school building. Must have been really cheap to shoot this.
This is a British film, in case you couldn't tell. That means fake American accents. I didn't really notice too much while they were speaking normally but occasionally they slip, leading to a bit of unintentional comedy. The only accent that's noticeably bad (and not just corny like the others) is the old black guy, who almost sounds like he's struggling to talk like a slave from an old Looney Tunes shot. If you don't know he's just trying to mask an accent (or assume that's what he actually talks like that) it gets kind of uncomfortable.
The costume is pretty underwhelming. If you're expecting Marty to run around in a crazy clown suit prepare for disappointment. It's just a boring jester mask and a letterman jacket. It doesn't really matter, though. Of all the problems this movie has the least of them is the costume.
I guess the lesson here is if a film is so bad the distributors have to put a guy on the cover defending it before you even open the box, that should probably be a warning sign. If you're looking for the most generic, by-the-numbers slasher movie you can find, you probably have a dozen better choices. But if this is what's on hand, you'll get exactly what you expect. I just hope you're not too afraid of spoilers to figure out the movie is all a DREAM SEQUENCE before you have to see it happen.
But honestly? I probably would have given this movie an extra 2-3 points if the ending wasn't so terrible.