Girls School Screamers

Is there any other film company that has released quite as many stinkers as Troma? Girls School Screamers is yet another woeful offering sent to test the mettle of hardened movie masochists, the movie delivering very little worthy of mention.

The uninspired plot sees seven Catholic School girls sent to a creepy mansion where they are to catalogue the art collection of the late Tyler Welles. Whilst there, the girls hold a seance to contact the spirit of Tyler's niece Jennifer, who died in mysterious circumstances. A not particularly interesting mystery unravels and one-by-one the girls are bumped off by an unseen killer.

Diabolical acting, pedestrian directing, virtually no gore and zero nudity from the girls (T&A is usually a given for a Troma movie) all go to make this an absolute clunker. Oh, and only one of the girls actually screams, to the best of my recollection.

The wealthy owner of a large country estate leaves his house and its contents to a nearby all-girls Catholic college. Seven of the senior girls accompany one of the Sisters to the house to spend four days there cataloguing all the items. However, the house has a dark, tragic past and is rumoured to be haunted by the ghost of a woman who died there forty years ago in mysterious circumstances. Before long one-by-one the girls start to disappear.

This was a Troma release, but apparently one they picked-up rather than produced. Originally made as a straightforward ghost story called The Portrait, Troma decided to do some reshoots once they acquired it and make it a supernatural slasher. The result is pretty underwhelming; the kills are lacklustre, there's no tension, the performances from everyone are poor, there's zero nudity (c'mon, it's an 80s slasher), and the finale is confusing. An opening scene with a kid who's entered the mansion on a dare encountering the ghost is pretty effective, but it's downhill all the way after that. No surprise that this is the only film John P. Finnegan ever directed. 4/10.

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.

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!

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.