Terreur au collège

Man, this was a rough one to watch. I'm all for low budget movies, but this one looks like about the cheapest movie I've ever seen. Had the story been more interesting, this wouldn't have been an issue, but every time it starts to get interesting, it cuts away to silly subplots involving the students and ruins any tension. If the students were better developed, it wouldn't be an issue, but they feel like they're shoehorned in from another film.

Francine Forbes plays the leading lady and she's actually pretty great and likable. Whenever the film follows her, it's on a roll and we care about what happens to her. I'm not sure if it's because the writing for her is a little bit better or because Forbes is such a pleasant actress, but she seems to have been pasted in from a far better film.

There's about zero tension or scares, but some of the effects work isn't too bad and there are a few fairly gruesome murders. The killer reveal and finale finally ratchet up a little tension, but by that point, it's too little too late. The ending itself is shockingly downbeat and unexpected, so one must give them kudos for that.

Splatter University is a minor effort in the early 80's slasher cannon and probably for completists only.

Just another traditional slasher. Well that's what you say about the Troma released "Splatter University". It's textbook and low-budget as you can get with a eye-catching film title. But it's reputation of being one of worst its sub-genre had to offer seems to scream loudly. It had me thinking of the 1981 slasher "Final Exam", but that film is exemplary compared to this outing. Sure "Splatter University" is rancid, uninspired with lazy direction, tacky writing and wooden acting, but I have a soft spot for campus horror and I kind of enjoyed that it didn't take itself all that seriously, as it felt like they're playing up to the camera. You could say the stalk and slash elements at times took a back-step to college hi-jinks, which I found a little more amusing than the slasher side of the story. There it would get slow and sluggish with confused editing. I didn't find it all that effective in presenting the red herrings and the revelation isn't anything surprising, but the finale had one surprise up its sleeve I didn't see coming and quite a daring one too. The story is fairly messy, as what begins as a psychopathic killer escaping from an asylum then moves on a couple years later when a university teacher is brutally murdered to only move on even further where a couple months later a newly appointed teacher arrives on the campus where suddenly the lady students are being targeted by a killer. So many random occurrences seem to make its way into the unfocused story; some don't even have any relevance than to add trivial exchanges for humour. Sometimes the darkest of humour. Although there's no hiding how spiteful and deranged the violence can be, however they're rather unimaginative in the usual slashing and stabbing. Quite bit of red paint gets chucked about and the electronic soundtrack gets a good workout. Characters come and go with no one really standing out (most of them are obnoxious or slackers), other than Forbes Riley as the leading lady and Dick Biel. Senseless, hackneyed and cheesy, but what do you expect? Nudity, if so... look elsewhere.

"Gross! There's a fingernail in my pie".

Splatter University doesn't have an awful lot going for it. It looks the cheap, the sound is lacking, most of the performances are awful, and the gore effects rarely convince, but there's a certain low budget 80's charm that keeps you tuned in for its fairly short run time.

Francine Forbes makes for an incredibly appealing lead and she's easily the best actor in the film. Thankfully, we spend most of our time with her (although, maybe not enough time). She plays a young teacher who's replacing a teacher at a local college who's just been brutally murdered. Needless to say, the murderer isn't done yet and seems to have an issue with both the teachers and the entire student body of this university.

There's not a lick of suspense or terror in this movie and, as I said earlier, even the death scenes feel a bit uninspired, but Forbes keeps us invested and along for the ride. The finale does manage to surprise due the sheer mean spiritedness of it all, so I've got to give the fimmakers props for that. I certainly didn't see it ending that way and it was a genuine shock.

Splatter University is more of a movie to play in the background than one you really need to pay much attention to. It's saved by charm, Forbes, and a shocking finale.

Really, really bad slasher movie. A psychotic person escapes from an asylum. Three years later he kills a sociology professor, end of scene. One semester yesterday later (hey, that's what the title card said) a new sociology professor is at the school. She makes friends with another female sociology professor who works there, and starts dating another professor. The students are all bored, as are we.

There are a number of title cards indicating how much time has passed. Scenes are pretty short, and cut to different characters somewhere else, making for little progression of any kind. A lot of scenes involve characters walking and talking, or sitting and talking, and serve little purpose. Despite the passage of time, many of the characters are always wearing the same clothing. Sometimes the unclear passage of time means when we see a body for the second time, we ask ourselves: how long has that body been there? And also, at least one of the dead people don't seem to have been missed by others.

The killer manages to kill one person by stabbing her in the breast, another by stabbing him in the crotch, and another by slicing her forehead. Is his knife poisoned or something?

The video box cover has a cheerleader: there aren't any in the movie. The rear cover has a photo of someone in a graduation cap and gown menacing a group of women in a dorm room. The central redhead in the photo is in the movie, but nobody ever wears such an outfit, and there is no such scene. The killer is strictly one-on-one.

This film begins at a mental hospital with the staff looking for a patient named "William Graham" (Dick Biel) is apparently wandering around somewhere in the building. He then kills one of the staff members and disappears into the night. The scene then shifts to three years later with a female professor at St Trinian's College named "Janet Phillips" (Donna Hartman) working late one night and, upon hearing a noise, goes to open the classroom door. Suddenly, without any warning, a man with a knife appears and stabs her to death. The scene then shifts once again to approximately 3 months later with a young college professor by the name of "Julie Parker" (Forbes Riley) accepting a teaching position at that very same college. To that effect, although she has a few problems in relation to the college rules and traditions, she quickly adapts and everything seems to be going quite well--at least, until the body count begins to rise. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that I didn't initially know what to expect from this film other than the fact that it was an 80's slasher movie. Some of them are good--and some of them are bad. So, when I saw that it was a Troma movie, I knew not to get my hopes up too high. Sure enough, what followed was a film consisting of cheap sets and weak scripts. Likewise, the acting in general could have used some improvement as well. In other words, it was a typical Troma production. Even so, both Forbes Riley and Kathy LaCommare (as "Cathy Hunter) performed reasonably well and that helped to a certain degree. Having said that, however, neither of them were quite able to overcome the obvious low-production values mentioned earlier, and I have rated this movie accordingly. Below average.