Das Horror-Lyzeum

Of course I knew to keep expectations extremely low for "Girl School Murders". Obviously I spotted the bad rating and harshly negative reviews here on IMDb, and I'm naturally also well aware of Troma's questionable reputation as a production/distributor company. And yet, in spit of all this, the incurable horror geek in me still found the rather pricy purchase was justified even if only to own that utterly cool DVD-cover in my collection! You know, the one with the girl's rotten face that has worms crawling out of it. I just wish the film itself was half as awesome as the poster image! But, on the contrary, "Girl School Screamers" is easily one of the weakest and most forgettable slasher efforts of the entire eighties. It certainly has potential, though. The opening sequences, features a young boy trespassing into an old dark house and running into an eerie ghost on the staircase, is surprisingly grim and atmospheric but, unfortunately, it's the only real highlight. The spooky house is donated, via a last will and testament, to a Catholic college for girls, and seven fresh-faced students are promptly recruited to go and clean it over the weekend. It turns out that a beautiful young girl tragically died in the house nearly forty years ago and, moreover, she looks exactly like one of the students. They subsequently get killed off one by one, but this is where the film truly fails to live up to its potential, as the murders are mundane, uninspired, bloodless and often even occurring off-screen. The acting performances are lamentable, and so is everything else; - period. But hey, the DVD has a prominent spot on the eighties-shelf of my collection!

This Troma release is bad --- but not in the good way the Toxic Avenger, Tromeo & Juliet, and The Killer Condom were. Instead it is a just mediocre ‘80s slasher meets the co-eds' film. This time 7 students of an all-girl college go to the mansion of a recently deceased millionaire. This fellow has left his valuable art collection to the school and it is up to these brave girls to catalogue it. But these students are not the all-work and no-play type; they fill their evenings with dope-smoking, Bud drinking, boyfriend smuggling, and seances. Unfortunately the benefactors' sorted past eventually makes their stay in the house miserable Scooby-Doo style. The major problem with this movie is over and over again characters make extremely far fetched decisions (even for campy 80s slasher films). My favorite was when the boyfriend decided to check out the local newspaper's back issues because he was curious about the owner. What?? Who does that?? For those who care: the gore and nudity quotient is very low. The one saving aspect of this film is the performance of the Old Nun that accompanies the girls. She achieves a kind of excellence in this film that nearly matches the likes of horror legend Don Barret's work in Slaughterhouse. Skeeter does love his schlocky horror and gives Girls' School Screamers 6 for 10!

My review was written in May 1986 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.

"Girls School Screamers", originally titled (more appropriately) "The Portrait", is an utterly routine supernatural horror picture. Bearing a 1984 copyright, the just-released Troma pic has little to offer genre fans.

Plot has been done 100 times before: seven girls from Trinity School in Philadelphia are assigned to spend the weekend at the Tyler Estate mansion (which has been willed to the school) to catalog the artworks there anent an impending sale of the joint. They are killed off one by one, with very fake and pointless makeup effects applied.

Familiar gimmick has Jackie (Mollie O'Mara) apparently the reincarnation (per a matching wall portrait) of Jennifer Welles (no, not the 1970s porno star, just a fictional character), a young woman killed in 1939 in the Tyler mansion by her uncle when she resisted his lecheros advances. The girls' chaperone Sister Urban (Vera Gallagher) was a mother superior back in Jennifer's tiem, as shown in junky flashbacks.

A hurried, incomprehensible finale fails to tie up the dangling plot threads, indicating holemer John P. Finegan and his collaborators were anxious to merely wrap this one up. Screening audience was even more anxious to head for the exits.

Mollie O'Mara in the lead role projects a pleasant personality, but the supporting cast, particularly male performers, is weak. Technical credits are perfunctory, film delivers none of the genre's expected nudity and scares are absent.

This movie looked like something that I wouldn't ever want to see but after being faced with a tough choice, I chose this one. I'm glad I did. The acting wasn't the best and the plot (though original) could've been honed but there were some surprises which left me with my jaw hanging open. It was pretty good so I gave it a 5 out of 10.

7 girls from the local Catholic school are chosen to go inventory the Wells estate, which has been left to their school by one Tyler Welles. It sounds like a fun weekend (I guess) until the girls hold a séance to try and contact Jennifer Wells, a 20-year-old who died mysteriously on the grounds in 1939. Their weekend gets even stranger when it is revealed one of the girls, Jackie (Mollie O'Mara), is a dead ringer for the deceased. This Troma pick up (originally called PORTRAIT) is something you could see Roberta Findlay making, except for the lack of any blood or nudity. Debuting director-producer-writer John P. Finnegan seems to forget he is making a cheap exploitation movie, so there is very little appeal here. There is a tacked on opening that looks as if it was added later to push up the monster factor. Finnegan scored better as writer-producer with the JAWS-inspired comedy BLADES (1989), which is also released by Troma.