Fatal Games



AKA: Killing Touch
AKA: Olympic Nightmare

The Falcon Academy in Massachusetts has just finished their regional sports competitions, and is quite proud to be sending 7 Olympic hopefuls off to Nationals in a couple of weeks. All seven athletes are extremely excited and commit themselves even further to their training so they can do the best they possibly can. But it seems that somebody at the school isn’t as thrilled as they are, as a shadowy figure wielding a javelin seems intent on picking off the seven winners one by one. The bigger problem though, is that the killer does such a really good clean up job that no one seems to know that something has happened to these kids. The coaches just seem to think they’re not showing up to class. So it isn’t until over half of them are gone that the other half realizes that something is very wrong and that their lives are in danger.



Ah, another day, another low-budget slasher from the 80s that I get to cross off my ever growing list of cheap slasher fare. Fatal Games is another American slasher film released in 1984, and from what I can see online, it often gets compared to the earlier film, Graduation Day, which also involves a lot of high school athletes finding themselves on the wrong end of the proverbial chopping block. But I haven’t seen that film yet (although I suppose I should now…), so I can’t really comment on that. All I can say is that this is another very middle-of-the-road slasher that most likely will NOT impress your average weekend horror fan, but will probably be entertaining enough for those that enjoy the genre. Especially the ones who appreciate the cheesy factor, because this one’s got it BAD.



I gotta be honest, I was kinda expecting… I don’t know, a bit more focus on sports in this sports-themed horror movie. Not that it wasn’t there, because it was. They even wedged in the familiar, distinctly 80s sports montage at the beginning there, with lots of jumping and running and swimming, to really drive the point home. So it’s there. It pops up and exists. But the movie also added so much miscellaneous nonsense in there, like awkward relationship garbage between characters you don’t care about and one girl’s conflict with her father, that the whole “sports” angle really felt like it took a backseat to everything else, or it was just a lame excuse to have a lot of people wandering around in tights and spandex. Or, better yet for the skin fans, nothing at all. Because there is A LOT of nudity in this film, whether from shower scenes (involving women AND men, the film did not completely forget the ladies), sauna scenes (okay, now who’s high school legitimately had a damn sauna?) or a naked massage scene, which should please all the skin fans. But if they went with the sports angle just as an excuse to show more skin, then that seems silly. Because when has a slasher ever needed an excuse to show boobies? Nah, they could have replaced the whole sports thing with a science competition and still gotten a similar effect. So I’m not sure what the real point of that particular choice was, other than they didn’t think a killer stalking around with a javelin fit in anywhere else.



In fact, there’s so much miscellaneous junk in here that it almost brings down the fun part of the movie, which is supposed to involve a killer stabbing people with a long pointy stick. Which they do, thankfully, and frequently enough so that the film doesn’t get completely bogged down. But most of the fun stuff all happens at the end, where you finally get a couple of fun chase scenes and a very cheesy, slightly bonkers ending that would only have worked in the 80s and would never fly today due to political issues and because of how very, VERY dumb it is. But hey, part of that involves getting to watch a guy on crutches run from a psycho trying to throw a sharp stick at him, so it all kind of evens out in the end.


Foot, don’t fail me now!

The rest of the kills in the movie though, are pretty meh. The first few deaths are all pretty standard “stabby-stabby” stuff and not all that exciting. Though they do include a completely illogical death, wherein the killer slowly wades into the pool while one of the victims is swimming some laps and then just sort of… chills out down there decked out in their scuba gear, right under her, until they finally decide to stab her at their leisure. Like, how the fuck did she not notice them come into the room? Or get in the pool? Or SEE THEM STANDING THERE UNDER HER FOR THE 3-4 LAPS SHE SWAM?! I just consider silly things like this further proof that the first true victim of every horror movie is peripheral vision.


Huh, I wonder what that sudden big, black thing is under me? Eh, probably not important…

So, suffice it to say, that people in this movie can be very, very dumb. But that death is also an example of the thing that helps to keep the film from getting too boring (beyond the random bouts of nudity for the skin fans). And that thing is all the weirdness going on in the film’s periphery that will almost assuredly make most viewers wonder: WTF is wrong/going on at this school? There’s a whole (short) subplot involving one of the female coaches having a fling with one of the female athletes. These scenes go nowhere and tie into nothing. They just seem to be there to make you ponder several concerning questions.



Then there’s the school’s doctor. Why does he seem to have so much power? Why does he seem so interested in giving the kids steroids to make them perform better, and acts like this is a normal – NAY! – a necessary thing that they must do, in order to keep up with the rest of the world, even though the International Olympic Committee introduced anti-doping rules all the way back in 1967? Like, yeah, great idea, my dude. I’m sure forcing drugs on the kids will make you and the school look REAL GOOD when all the athletes you sent off are involved in doping scandals.



But wait! There’s more! Exactly what age range are these kids supposed to be in? Because they look like they’re in their mid-20s, but I think they’re actually supposed to be in high school. At least the dialogue suggests as much. And if they are, who the fuck thought it was appropriate to give naked massages to high school girls? When was that ever appropriate? The longer the movie went on, the more I thought the whole film may have been a forewarning to the various athletic scandals from a couple years ago.



But the most important question the film raises is: why isn’t this school locked up so that the kids can’t get into it in the middle of the night? Because ALL but one of the deaths happen at the school, after hours. So if ONE PERSON had just made sure to double check that all doors and windows were locked, then not only would it have saved a lot of lives, but the town could have also probably helped save itself from a lot of wrongful death suits.


Also, what the hell is wrong with you guys? Don’t you ever sleep? No wonder some of you are failing your classes.

Overall though, Fatal Games is an (unintentionally) entertaining, though rather middling slasher effort. Most of the plot, including the film’s lame attempts to get you to connect to the characters, is painfully boring, until you get to the last 20 minutes or so. And most of the kills are pretty standard slasher fare, so there isn’t much excitement there either. I will give the film a couple of extra points for the visuals though, because it’s actually fairly well shot, and even includes a few creative angles and arty moments, making it look much better than average for a low-budget slasher. And most of the dialogue doesn’t sound too cringy either, so that’s another small blessing. But other than that, and the weird reveal of the killer at the end, this is another middle-of-the-road example of an 80s slasher. Certainly good enough for at least one viewing for fans of the genre, but likely unimpressive to everyone else.

Fatal Games is available on a variety of streaming services.

Fatal Games is also available on Bluray.

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