Graduation Day



Senior track star Laura Ramstead is absolutely joyful as she races across the finish line into first place during her last track meet in high school. But the excitement is short lived, because after taking only scant steps across the finish line she tragically collapses due to a blood clot and dies in the arms of her boyfriend.


Aren’t there supposed to be some sort of medics at these events?

A couple weeks later, Laura’s sister, Anne, returns home on temporary leave from her Navy deployment, to attend the school’s graduation ceremony, where she will be given an award in honor of her sister. But mere moments after she arrives home, and only days before graduation, the other members of Laura’s track team are slowly being picked off one-by-one, by a hooded assailant who seems hellbent on making a point.


Whatever that point may be.

Okay, so when I watched Fatal Games a couple days ago I noticed a lot of people comparing it to the 1981 film Graduation Day (even both film’s Wiki entries link back to the other film), as if Games was merely a cheap rip-off and this film was, by far, the superior product. Naturally, those implications meant that I had to judge those claims for myself. And I am here to tell you, gentle reader, that if you too, read such things, then know that those people are fibbers. That, or they’re watching these movies with rose-tinted glasses. Because, I am sorry to say, Graduation Day is not some kind of gold-tier slasher. It’s just another American made, mid-tier slasher with a similar plot to the later film. HOWEVER, I will agree that Graduation Day does win out in being the better film. But only by the slimmest of slim margins.



Really, Graduation Day only does two things slightly better than Fatal Games. The first, is that it has a slightly better, more entertaining cast. The only familiar face Fatal Games had to its name was Sally Kirkland, and even then, I question if a lot of horror folks would know who she was. But Graduation Day has the more recognizable faces of Christopher George as the schools head coach, being overly intense and melodramatic as hell, and TV and B-Movie regular Michael Pataki as the clueless and sleazy principal. So at least there’s that. And it’s also the only horror movie where you’ll find horror scream queen darling Linnea Quigley AND Wheel of Fortune letter turner Vanna White in supporting roles. So at least the movie has a fun cast.



The ACTING ITSELF, however, still leaves much to be desired. A couple people are okay, but the vast majority of the cast comes across as awkward, or stilted, or just plain over-the-top. Think, manic grinning levels of cheesiness and you’ll have an idea of what I mean. And of course the acting isn’t helped along at all by ANY of the film’s dialogue, which I think is actually much worse than Fatal Games. At least in Games a lot of the lines sounded believable. Or at least closer to what snarky high schoolers would say. Here, people just say weird, awkward shit at every other turn. It’s bizarre. So perhaps the actors never had much of a chance to begin with. Point is, the acting is still cheesy as hell in both films, it’s just that in this one a couple of the actors are actually decent, so they bumped up the film’s score if we’re grading on a curve.



And the second thing in the film’s favor, is that the plot in this movie does move quite a bit faster. Games’ story gets horribly bogged down by boring subplots that no one cares about, partially because the characters are boring and no one cares about them either. Which really isn’t as much of an issue here, because over half the cast is either a goofy caricature, or just plain looney tunes. But also because that story is largely plagued by equally boring deaths, a cardinal sin for slasher films. Thankfully in this movie though, that’s not the case. Yes, sadly, there are still a couple of boring deaths, or deaths that happen just off screen. But this movie also had an effects budget, so you also SEE people getting killed and the after effects, including a full-blown decapitation. Plus, you get to watch the ridiculous death of a football player, who dies after a football with a sword shoved inside it gets thrown directly through his torso. How did the sword get shoved inside the football like that when it was only out of the victim’s hands for 20 seconds? Who knows. Are there highly  questionable physics at work in the whole scene? Absolutely. But what kind of slasher fan wouldn’t want to watch that at least once?


I really do question how aerodynamic this would actually be…

Other than those two points though, this is still a pretty ridiculous movie. There’s close to about half a dozen subplots that get introduced and go absolutely nowhere. Laura and Anne’s step father appears to be an abusive ass-hat that you fully expect to croak by the end of the film, but obnoxiously manages to survive without incident. There’s one about a lecherous music teacher who wears light blue leisure suits and likes to sing show tunes and several girls seem positively ga-ga over him (I’m not buying that nonsense for a second…). There’s a security guard whose job seems to be to just go around and threaten people, but never actually does anything productive other than pulling a joint out of his six shooter and toking up behind the school. There’s the pair of dimwitted idiots (hi, Vanna!) whose sole purpose seems to be to awkwardly interact with all the victims before their deaths. The school’s pre-graduation party appears to consist of the band, Felony, singing one song while people roller skate around them in a circle. And then of course there’s the lazy principal who’s having a tryst with his secretary and constantly trying to pawn all of his work off on her. I think they’re supposed to be the film’s version of comic relief, but most of their interactions come across as more sad than funny. And then Anne is clearly set up as the “final girl”, but then drops off of the face of the fucking earth for a good third of the runtime while the movie sets up red herrings for possible killers and introduces all of the nonsense up above. It’s just strange, man.


Oh, and did I mention there’s another musical number? Cause there is!

One of the weirder aspects though, is that after all these kids go missing, neither the principal or the police really seem to care. Oh, they fully know the kids are missing. The movie makes a point of showing them getting called by the parents and asked “hey, where TF is my kid?”. It’s just that both the principal and detective seem baffled as to why the parents care. As if it’s weird that mom and dad might be worried that their kid has disappeared without a trace right before a huge milestone. I mean, I know that was the “latch-key” era and a lot of parents were like “meh, whateves, just try not to die before I get home”, but I still think it’s amusing that it seems inconceivable to the two of them that some parents might actually love, and thus have concern, for the well-being of their offspring.


I don’t get it, man. You just pop ‘em out and hope for the best. I don’t know why they’re whining.

The one thing that irked me the most in this movie though, was the ending. In fact, I think that might be the one thing that Fatal Games wins out on. Because the ending of this film just pissed me off SO MUCH. It kinda plays out like your average slasher ending, with the “final girl” running away from the killer, and then the killer catching up, and then there’s a big showdown between them at the end, yadda yadda yadda. But the thing is, Anne didn’t really need to do ANY of that. Because that ending usually only applies to situations where our heroine is on her own, usually at night, likely in an isolated location. None of that applies here. Here, we’re in a completely suburban setting. Meaning when Anne runs away from the killer – with a VERY GOOD head start, I might add – we literally get to watch her run through a well kept, fully occupied neighborhood…. during the day…. passing at least a dozen or more cars along the way…. So that means that there were likely several people home during her little jog and WHY THE HELL DID YOU NOT ASK FOR HELP FROM ANY OF THEM!? WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?! Like, holy jeebus, at least bang on one of the doors and ask someone to call the cops!


Or maybe just yell for help? That’s an option!

But does she do that? NO! She runs to the school and collapses on the steps of the stadium in broad daylight, allowing the killer plenty of time to catch up to her, all so that we, the viewer, could be witness to their final confrontation. Which isn’t even all that exciting, to be honest. The movie kind of sets it up so that Anne can kick this guy’s ass with her big bad military training (they established she learned to fight at the beginning of the film). But what we actually end up with is her getting in a couple good hits intermingled with a lot of moments of the two of them pushing each other or tripping over themselves. Which is probably what a lot of us normal people would ultimately end up doing if pushed into a fight, but it still looks lame as hell for a climax. And then the killer basically takes themselves out because they’re a klutz (and they might have some head trauma due to falling out a window, I can’t lie), adding the final unimpressive cherry on top of the already underwhelming sundae. Whomp Whomp.


Look at her, even she can’t believe the movie ended like this.

After the comparison to Fatal Games I had, I don’t know, slightly higher expectations for Graduation Day. But alas, it’s just another average, low-budget 80s slasher. Which isn’t a bad thing, necessarily. It does have its moments, after all. But it’s also not scary, very cheesy, and it’s pretty predictable, as I pegged the killer almost immediately, despite the film going to herculean efforts to try to make you think it was everybody else. But hey, it still ends up being kinda fun in parts though, so it’s worth at least one watch if you enjoy cheesy 80s slashers. But if you’re looking for better or more serious examples of the genre, then you can probably scratch this one from your list. But hey, what else do you expect? This is from the same guy who directed Beyond Evil after all.

Graduation Day is available on a variety of streaming services.

Graduation Day is also available on DVD and Bluray.

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