Slaughter High

Eight American high school graduates return to their now-defunct school for a 5-year reunion celebration. Unfortunately for them the nerd they picked on and inadvertently ruined is also there with fatal revenge in mind.

The dilapidated school building that "Slaughter High" (1986) is mostly set recalls "Death Tunnel" (2005), but "Slaughter High" is subpar by comparison; it lacks the professionalism and aesthetics of that later film. Whether you like "Death Tunnel" or not is a different story, but it IS professionally made with awesome visuals, state-of-the-art editing, a superlative female cast and excellent score/soundtrack.

So "Slaughter High" is a decidedly Grade B 80's slasher in production values; and arguably Grade C. It's marred by a dated score and a little camp, particularly the nerd, but is otherwise decent for what it is. Everyone involved knew it wasn't a top-of-the-line production, but gave it their best to entertain the audience. The ending features an original twist that is done much better a year later in "Slumber Party Massacre II."

The beautiful Caroline Munro was a little long in the tooth at 36 (during shooting) to play a high school senior and early 20's B-movie actress by the second act, but her attractive vibrancy pulls it off. Nevertheless, her heyday was the 70s and her star was falling at this point, which didn't seem to bother her a bit. Kelly Baker is worth mentioning as Nancy while Carmine Iannaccone is charismatic as Skip.

Simon Scudamore, the actor who plays the nerd unfortunately committed suicide after the completion of the movie on November 21, 1984, an apparently intentional drug overdose.

The film runs 1 hour, 30 minutes; it was shot in England as follows: St. Marylebone Grammar School, London (interiors of school); Holloway Sanatorium, Surrey (exteriors of school); London (interior and exterior of apartment); and Wentworth Golf Club, Surrey (the road where the car breaks down).

GRADE: C

A group of people are invitied to there high school reunion, but after they arrive they discover it to be a scam by an old classmate they played an almost fatal prank on. Now, he seeks to get revenge on all those that hurt him by sealing all the exits and cutting off all telephone lines.

Dark salsher film with an unexceptional premise. Bringing it up a notch are a few good performances, some rather creative death scenes, plenty of excitement & scares, some humor and an original ending. Unrated; Extreme Violence, Graphic Nudity, Sexual Situations, Profanity, and Drug Use.

This one is just okay, the setting of the abandoned high school is cool and a lot of the death scenes are creative. But in the other hand, the acting sucks and the characters are two dimensional while also making the stupidest decisions known to man kind. After one of their friends dies they all decide to go to sleep! Who would do that!? I would actually give this a lower rating but the ending gives it some points. Overall it's an entertaining mess of a movie and I kinda like it.

Stephen Minasian and Dick Randall, who also helped to bring us the original "Friday the 13th" and the notorious "Pieces", strike again with more ridiculous 80s slasher cheese. Cruel high school students play a prank on pathetic Marty (Simon Scuddamore), after which he becomes permanently disfigured. 10 years later, these same jerks attend their high school reunion, despite the fact that they're the only ones who show up, and the school looks like it's been shut for years. It seems that Marty, who now wears a joker / jester costume, is out for some sweet revenge, and fortunately for him, his victims tend to be *idiots*!

Minasian and Randall sure know how to give the audience what they want. Randall (who also appears on screen, as Caroline Munros' agent) deliver to us nudity, gore, creative kills - a spiked beer, electrocution, an acid bath - and some genuine atmosphere in this fairly enjoyable flick. The good thing is that the three credited writers / directors (George Dugdale, Mark Ezra, and Peter Mackenzie Litten), know full well that their film is blatantly cheesy, that their script is not so hot, and that the majority of their actors are not overflowing with talent. Perhaps the oddest touch is seeing veteran British sex symbol Caroline Munro play one of the worlds' oldest high school students. As usual, she's a joy to look at, and she must do most of the running around (and screaming) while the demented Marty stays close on her tail.

Dugdale, Ezra, and Litten waste little time, getting to the humiliation of Marty quickly, and rarely offering a let-up until the end. Overall, this is an amiable slasher that is never taken really seriously, and it creates good vibes for its entire 91 minute run time.

Young Scuddamore is memorable as the antagonist, although he sadly committed suicide in real life after the picture was released, so he was never able to see this picture become a sort-of cult favourite over the last three decades.

Seven out of 10.

Producers Steve Minasian and Dick Randall certainly had an extreme flirtation with the slasher genre when it was finding its fortune in the peak years. Their credits include perhaps two of the most bizarre and blood-soaked movies of the early eighties, Pieces and Don't open ‘til Christmas. This was their last joint venture into the kingdom of stalk and slash and it was probably their finest hour. Carolin Munro (that name always makes me giggle, I'm not trying to be Marilyn Monroe sir, Honest!) returns to what she does best… well, gets most work from! Yes, she was the buxom beauty queen stalked by Joe Spinnell in both Maniac and Fanatic and she also made a somewhat brief appearance in the aforementioned Christmas-set hacker. Having discovered a themed-calendar date that had not yet been knifed/slashed/pickaxed, the movie was initially going to be called April Fools Day. But Frank Manucuso Jnr, the producer most famous for his work with the later Friday the 13ths, must've just beat them to the copyright for his flick of the same title. On the cover this claims that it too was from the makers of the Voorhees series, only I'm not quite sure how much truth can be found in that statement. If Minasian did have any involvement at all, it wasn't credited ANYWHERE, which hardly makes him worthy to call himself the ‘maker'.

The premise is even more archetypal than the category it so lovingly frequents. Marty Rantzen is the school nerd that suffers a constant barrage of bullying from a troupe of (middle-aged!) students, which includes the beautiful Carol (Munro) and the joker of the pack Skip (Carmine Lannacconne). He emphasis the fact by wearing a Jester's mask that we know from the off will reappear later for more sinister reasons! As if you hadn't already guessed, one April fools day they go too far and Marty ends up horrendously disfigured and transferred to a loony bin for lifelong imprisonment. You wanted by the book plotting? Well check this out: Five years later, the culprits are all invited to a reunion on their now abandoned campus, but no one knows who planned it (take a guess!). Almost as soon as they enter, the caretaker is nailed to the door by a nut-nut in the Jester's mask and soon they each find curious reasons to wander off and suffer gory deaths at the hands of the masked maniac…

Most of these ‘actors' are as English as the Tower of London, but try to convince us that they're American, which would explain their humorous accents switching between UK and US more times in 85 minutes than British airways do in a year. Cars are given foreign number plates, but there's no disguising the location's obvious English heritage. Ex-Bond babe Munro hasn't improved her characterization since the last time she was stalked by a maniac killer and by 1985, she was looking a little too ‘mature' to be a Hi-school teen. I'd love to know how she managed to wake up early in the morning with perfect hair and make-up too, but hey, I guess we're not supposed to ask questions like that and she did bring some much-needed beauty to the movie. Most of her support were outright first-timers, flat as a punctured tyre with no thread of speech pattern. But Simon Scuddamore and Carmine Lannaccone kept up the camp spirit - if little else. The really obscure thing about Slaughter High was undoubtedly Dick Randall's brief cameo appearance. Surrounded by posters from his previous ‘hits' (hey, there's Pieces!), he proves that his flair for dramatics was even worse than his taste for production.

There's fun to be had in the inventive murders that involve disembowelment by a tractor engine, exploding intestines and death by drowning in a bog of mud! (?) Perhaps the dumbest of the bunch was when one girl decides to take a bath after the blood from her friend's bursting guts sprays all over her face (Well, isn't that exactly what you'd do?) She climbs in the tub and turns on the taps and suddenly the water rushes in to boiling acid. Does she simply step out of the basin to save herself from scalding or does she stay seated until she completely melts into a bloodied skeleton? Yep, you guessed it… Perhaps on this occasion the killer actually did her a favour! Director George Dugdale shows very little potential in his directorial debut. His biggest mistake was relinquishing the usually redeeming stalking set pieces for rushed murders that lack any suspense or tension. His efforts at jump-scares were too slowly framed and he lacks the skill shown in the early additions to the series that he so desperately emulates. The ghost-like apparitions that pop-up as the runtime draws to a close were indeed silly and pointless, but if you keep watching they at least give us an explanation for their needless appearance. Harry Manfredini hasn't so much mimicked his score from Friday the 13th as simply cut and pasted it, which is no real mean feat, but at times it felt as if we were watching a (less competent) sequel instead of a completely different movie.

The most macabre thing about Slaughter High, is the fact that actor Simon Scuddamore tragically took his own life soon after it was released. It's a real shame, because he was probably the most talented guy in the picture. The reason(s) for his suicide are unknown, but watching him play the role with his tongue stuck firmly in cheek and clearly disguising the problems that he may/may not have been suffering at the time, makes his performance look far more credible. It also gives the film a somewhat morbid air of mystery as to why he chose to end his life at a time when he should've been celebrating. What is questionable, is why no tribute was added to the closing credits in memory of the deceased star? Perhaps the reason being that it had already been transferred to video when news of his suicide was announced.

Although it lacks the polish of the flicks it obviously wants to be classed alongside, this is still a great deal of fun. The unrated versions give some visually amusing splatter, even if it's nowhere near as gory as the producer's previous bloodstained offerings. The overall campiness spoils any chance of fear and it's a little too under-written even for a slasher flick, but it does manage to keep interests raised without ever becoming boring and it doesn't take itself too seriously. The net result is a movie that succeeds in doing exactly what it set out to. Have some fun and kill a few deserving victims along the way! It's as routine as brushing your teeth, but it gains credibility for accepting with warm embrace the knowledge that it's nothing more than that.