Slaughter High



AKA: April Fools Day

Marty Rantzen is one of the foremost geeks at school and is about to be cruelly pranked by eight of his fellow classmates on April Fools Day. But in a rare turn of events, their cruelty is witnessed by an outsider and the school’s coach intervenes, sentencing the perpetrators to ruthless bout of physical detention. Annoyed at being held accountable for their actions, their leader, Skip, decides to sneak away and punish Marty further. Only this time his “harmless” prank causes a large chemical fire, irrevocably scaring and traumatizing his intended target.


Holy jeebus, you lunatics!

Ten years later, Skip and the “gang” all show back up at the school, intent on attending their high school reunion. Only they get there to discover that the school seems abandoned and locked up tight, with nobody else in sight. No matter though. This group came to party and, by god, they’re not going to let a little thing like locked doors put a kink in their good time. So they break into the building and wander around, and eventually find a room set up for a reunion…but only for them, as the room also contains their old lockers with several of their missing items in it. Oh, and Marty’s locker is there too. Huh, strange. One would think this would ring some alarm bells with at least ONE of them, but since someone left snacks and liquor on the table they decide it’s fine. Only… It’s clearly not. Because as the night wears on they quickly realize that not only are they locked inside the school, but they’re also being picked off one-by-one by a masked assailant wearing a jester hat.



Slaughter High is a revenge slasher from 1986 and is something I’d been putting off watching for quite a while. Because I assumed from the horror/comedy designation, and the cheesy Crypt Keeper looking dude on some of the posters, that this was yet another Troma production. But to my surprise it isn’t. In fact, unlike the last two films I watched, it isn’t even released by Troma. Instead it’s just a low-budget US/UK co-production that was originally intended to be called April Fools Day, but decided to change its name because Paramount had its own film titled April Fools Day set to release that same year. Now, in case you’re curious, the Paramount version easily ends up being the superior holiday-related film. No question. It’s just better put together and more fun. And it feels like it’s more in the spirit of the holiday. But considering those cheesy posters I was worried about, this one ended up being better than I expected. Still average, unfortunately, but it does at least have its moments.



I’m not gonna lie though, this one takes quite a bit to get going. You have to wait a good 40 minutes for the first person to die, and the movie is only 90 minutes long. That’s almost half the film! By normal slasher standards, that is a TREK in terms of wait time. Usually in these things there’s at least one early death, and then a lull, before the killin’ recommences and then ramps up. Not so here. Instead you get 18+ minutes of high school life while you watch a group of ass-hats torment this kid, and the early death is replaced by Marty’s accident. And then you get another 20+ minutes where you get reintroduced (cause we’ve already met these fools once before) to all of Marty’s high school bullies in their adult life. Which really feels unnecessary, because they act exactly like the same ass-hats they were a decade prior. No better, no worse. Considering the lack of growth they really didn’t need to do it twice. After watching them humiliate, electrocute, poison (!) and then flambé this poor kid, there really wasn’t any more they needed to do. The audience already wanted them all dead, Movie. You didn’t need to try to drive their suckiness home.



Another thing that’s not so great, is that the tone feels really inconsistent. You can tell that the film is really trying to earn that comedy designation. But the humor they’re attempting is really hit or miss. The humor at the beginning can probably best be described as the juvenile nonsense type. Just a bunch of kids who think they’re funny trying to be funny and failing pretty miserably. Awkward stuff like that. The closest they come to actual humor is a few decent moments of banter, but even most of that falls flat. Unless the film was also trying to include Marty and what the bullies did to him as “funny”, in which case they totally missed the mark. But once people actually start dying, all the (attempts at) jokes stop and the movie transitions more into “ironic” kills. The highlight of which is probably the couple that dies by getting electrocuted mid-coitus. THAT was very amusing. But also not like anything that was happening towards the beginning of the film. So you go from “stupid, awkward haha” at the start of the movie to “dark haha” towards the end, with no attempts at any point to intermingle the two. Which I’m not saying was ABSOLUTELY necessary, but it would have gone a long way in making the movie feel…I don’t know, a bit more balanced.



But other than the wait time and the tonal imbalance, this one’s not so bad…. At least once it really gets going. The bullies seem to go out of their way to be absolutely DREADFUL to this kid by humiliating him while filming him with professional film equipment (they brought a boom mic!), nearly drowning him in the toilet, electrocuting him with a car battery (WTF, who thought that was a “prank”?), and then when that doesn’t work they make him sick with a tampered joint, and then mix explosive chemicals in his lab when he’s not looking. So by the time our little flashback is over and we’ve seen these assholes try to kill this guy no fewer than four times, we as the audience are fully on board and ready for each one of them to meet an untimely demise. And by the halfway point the movie really tries to deliver. Sadly, a couple people die off-screen, but remember there’s 8 of these chuckleheads on the chopping block, so there’s still a nice variety of deaths for those discerning slasher fans, including death by lawnmower, electrocuted headboard, and a bath full of acid. Oh, and you also get to watch him chase one of his victims around with a javelin, which was a neat connection to Fatal Games that I wasn’t expecting to see so soon. It’s never really clear how the killer is pulling off some of these stunts, or even how he’s getting around undetected, but that’s really not too much of an issue. Though not gory, most of the deaths are fun and creative, which is the main slasher selling point. And the rundown school, with its chipped paint, cobwebs and questionable stains on the wall, helps add to the creepy, tense atmosphere. It’s not perfect, as it could have used some better framing, and the print I watched was WAY too dark in some places, but overall the slasher parts were fun once it got going.


This was a neat death, though!

However, that isn’t to say that there isn’t any weirdness going on here. Because heaven forbid I watch a film that wasn’t chock full of oddities. The film’s poor attempts at humor partially contribute to that, of course. Marty is portrayed as the geekiest of geek kids, which doesn’t do his character (or the audience, really) any favors. And the bullies? Damn. Even for a bunch of airheaded dumbasses, this group just seems painfully stupid. I mean, they are making decisions in this movie that make you wonder how they managed to survive the last 10 years without, I don’t know, choking on their own spit or something.

First you have these fools showing up to a clearly abandoned building, locked doors and all. Which they kinda think is weird, but not weird enough to get back into their cars and leave. No, they’d rather sit around and drink and see if anyone else shows up to the building that looks like it’s falling apart. But of course nobody does, and they sit around so long that it starts to storm. Again, they came in their own cars. They could just leave. But they’re drunk now, so breaking and entering into a building where they’re supposed to be having a reunion sounds like a good idea. So they do. And the place looks like shit. “Haha, Skip, is this your doing, you trickster, you?” they say, even though Skip looks increasingly befuddled. Again, they could STILL LEAVE , but instead they wander around this rotting hell hole until they find a small room with a table and banner and snacks, and the whole thing looks like something hastily put together for an impromptu AA meeting and suddenly it’s “Hey, hey, hey, Booze! This must be the place!” Never-mind that it’s all tucked away in an office somewhere… or that they had to go find it…or that their lockers with some of their stuff is in there, cause none of that is weird at all. And then people start dying and they begin to act EXTRA dumb. Like, ‘hey, I know we’re all being killed, but lets leave this guy alone in a dark room and go take a nap while he tries to fix this thing and get us out’ levels of dumb. And for some reason , despite the school being HUGE, they keep finding themselves back in the same spot half a dozen times. Like, why do you keep going back to the smelly girl’s locker room? Isn’t one of your friend’s bodies still in there? FIND ANOTHER PLACE TO HIDE, DAMN IT!


STOP. COMING. BACK. HERE.

But one of the weirder things is one of the character’s insistence that “Hey, don’t worry. Marty is just getting back at us for that prank we pulled. We just have to stick together and make it to noon on April 1st, and then he’ll stop.” Which makes NO goddamn sense, until you realize that while this movie is set in the US, it was written and filmed in the UK. And, FUN FACT in case you didn’t know (cause I sure as hell didn’t): UK tradition states that on April 1st, pranks are all well and good over there…until noon. At which point they’re expected to stop. Which, that’s a cool factoid, and I’m glad I got to shove a new random trivia question into my brain. But it’s still a stupid as shit thing to say. Seriously, do you really expect that someone who is clearly hunting your asses down is suddenly going to stop just because the clock went “BONG BONG! It’s Lunchtime!” I know this was written in England and they’re all about ‘sporting chances’ and all that jazz over there, but seriously? Get real, you twat.


Oh, you sweet, stupid, summer child.

The one thing I really didn’t like about the movie was the ending. Because you get to the end and it’s all “haha, my revenge is complete!” and then the movie goes “Syke! No it’s not!” and suddenly the film turns into a cheap rip-off of Carnival of Souls. And if you don’t know what that means, go watch that movie and you’ll understand. But it’s not good and it feels really dumb and unsatisfying. And then, just to top it off, the movie goes “Syke!” again and you’re left sighing deeply in disappointment.



So, I was very surprised to discover that Slaughter High was quite a bit better than I expected. Though still far from great. The pacing is abysmal, the characters are annoying and dumb, and the ending sucks-A, but hey, at least they got the slasher parts right. Which may be me being too nice, considering all its flaws, but that’s really half the battle in these films, so I’m feeling mildly generous today. The flaws still keep it squarely on the mid-tier slasher level though, so again, this is really only recommended for ardent fans of the genre. Everyone else will probably get bored with it and turn it off long before the first guy ever gets nailed to a wall (and not in a fun way.)

Slaughter High is available on a variety of streaming services.

Slaughter High is also available on DVD and Bluray, both under Slaughter High and it’s original title, April Fools Day.

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