Deadly Lessons

In the early 1980s, making a teen slasher movie solely intended for distribution via cable television was either a very courageous undertaking or a very ignorant one. If you ask me, it was a very ignorant one because 80s slashers could only distinguish themselves from the massive competition in two areas, namely the depiction of nasty gore (various & ingenious methods for killing dumb teenagers) and explicit sleaze (beauties showering or having premarital sex moments before getting killed). Being a TV-movie, "Deadly Lessons" couldn't feature any of these two sub-genre trademarks and the consequences are irreversible now. Today, practically all contemporary slasher movies have received fancy DVD-releases and often enjoy massive cult reputations even though many of them downright suck, whereas "Deadly Lessons" is entirely forgotten and obscure. Numerous TV thrillers and horror movies from the 70s decade are still around and popular, however, but that's because they often benefited from an exceptionally great screenplay or a uniquely suspenseful atmosphere. Apart from being blood-free and sleaze-free, "Deadly Lessons" also has the bad luck of being very mundane, dullish and unremarkable from all possible viewpoints. The setting, pacing, story and denouement are standard slasher material. It's not worse, but certainly not any better than the rest of the 80s slashers, but at least all the others showcased gruesome murders and gratuitous nudity. In an exclusive all-girls boarding school, one of the students is found drowned in a lake. It looks like an unfortunate accident, but police detective Kemper immediately suspects that she was murdered. He's quickly proven right, as more girls are turning up dead while fear and hysteria are taking over the daily life at school. Prime suspects include the handsome but bizarre stable boy, the obligatory old & creepy janitor, the eccentric French teacher and maybe even the sophisticated but uptight school principal Mrs. Wade. The climax is implausible and far-fetched, but I'm not deducting any points for that since it was also a typical slasher trademark in the eighties. If you have too much free time on your hands, "Deadly Lessons" might still be worth seeking out in case you like horror curiosities, or to see a few stars in their earliest roles, like Bill Paxton, Ally Sheedy and Nancy Cartwright (yes, she who does Bart Simpson's voice)

Starkwater Hall , an exclusive school for girls, is in its summer session when the unimaginable happens - a pupil is found murdered. The headmistress, Miss Wade, is determined to hide the fact and preserve the school's reputation but, when a second killing occurs, the secret is out. Terrified, the remaining girls decide to protect each other from the unseen horror.

This made for TV film has some elements of a slasher or killer on the loose genre, but where it differs is in its lack of gratuitous violence, gore and nudity. Consequently, Deadly Lessons isn't so tacky or cheap and is essentially a whodunnit- Hardy Drew style. The focus is on the detecting than on murders. There's no heavy menace, but it's got a light touch while maintaining a serious tone. Donna Reed adds a touch of class. Larry Wilcox' detective character looks out of his depth and is an annoying character. It might lack some punch, but overall it's an entertaining mystery. Plus the ending is quite suspenseful with that twist. Diane Franklin is cute.

Pretty boring TV movie that plays around with some slasher tropes, but feels more like a padded episode of Murder, She Wrote. There's never a great sense of danger, but I do like the cast a lot with familiar faces like Diane Franklin, Ally Sheedy, Donna Reed, and Bill Paxton showing up and adding some class to everything. I only wish it were a more exciting movie.

I thought this movie was pretty good. It's like a 'Scream' movie without the gore and a large variety of suspects. Donna Reed adds a classy touch to the proceedings and Ally Sheedy is shown just before she hit stardom with 'WarGames'. Hopefully this film will be shown on TV soon.

This kind of a holy grail among both slasher films and TV movies because it is BOTH a slasher film and a TV movie, which means that as a slasher film it is much harder to find than the cinematic ones which are all getting the deluxe DVD treatment these days no matter how godawful they are, and as a TV movie it is one the few that is NOT totally worthless. Needless to say there is very little blood and no nudity here, but its gratifying to read that Donna Reed still considered it "sleazy" (that's as good as "thumbs up" from Ebert and Roeper for me).

The very familiar plot involves mysterious murders at a prestigious girl's school run by Donna Reed. The most familiar actor is probably Bill Paxton, who also appeared in the cinematic slasher "Mortuary" before making it big with "Weird Science" and "Aliens". The lead is the chronically cute Dianne Franklin, who is not great here but sure is easy to look at and highly stalk-able. She was not in nearly enough movies. The same can not be said, unfortunately, for her main co-star Ally Sheedy, but you'll be glad to know she ends up bound and gagged at one point here (two more thumbs up!). Then, even more obscure than Franklin, there's Krista Erickson who played the original "mean girl" in the summer camp classic "Little Darlings" and also enjoyed a brief career as a really nice piece of acting talent in the kind of movies that play late at night on cable television.

Unfortunately, the only way to see this movie right now is to also catch it late at night on one of the Turner Stations (which is how I saw, but unfortunately didn't record, it). But, hey, if anyone reading this is a mover and shaker at Turner, this would be a great choice for a DVD release.