Seven college girls spend the weekend at an elegant estate which begins as a fun filled adventure but ends in a nightmare of gut-wrenching terror.Seven college girls spend the weekend at an elegant estate which begins as a fun filled adventure but ends in a nightmare of gut-wrenching terror.Seven college girls spend the weekend at an elegant estate which begins as a fun filled adventure but ends in a nightmare of gut-wrenching terror.
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Peter Cosimano
- Paul
- (as Peter C. Cosimano)
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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.
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.
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!
I decided to go to the video shop and hire out a few horror movies i havnt seen,i couldnt see many good ones so i picked this and thought it would suck,but i watched it last night and i was impressed,it started off funny with the ghost,some of the acting was so bad you just had to laugh,alot of the killings are good,didnt like the meat cleaver part but,i recommend this if you want a cheap B-grade movie,i give it 7/10.
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!
Did you know
- TriviaAll of the gore inserts were shot in 1986 by Troma with doubles. Only actress Monica Antonucci was brought back for a shot which was also inserted under the title card.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Slice and Dice: The Slasher Film Forever (2012)
- How long is Girls School Screamers?Powered by Alexa
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By what name was Girls School Screamers (1986) officially released in Canada in English?
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