Fatal Games

Boy, was Fatal Games tough sledding tonight. Not sure if it was the score that repeatedly rattles and tremors, the characters and their difficulties emotionally and physically with the demands of being athletes with a chance to not only attend Nationals but go to the Olympics, and the subplot with the teachers coping with their students lack of initiative and drive (because of all the rigors of training and the hours and hours expected of them to train) while the head of gymnastics school expects his nurse to illegally load the kids with steroids so they can compete with the Russians.
**

The plot really doesn’t do a hell of a lot for me and the pace slogs and turtles along. If the performances were good (even vet Sally Kirkland doesn’t summon the goods needed to give the film a much needed boost in the acting department), and the characters were interesting, it might help. I tried—dammit, I tried—to care about the lead female character’s struggles with her father’s expectations of her to not just focus on athletics but an education as well (and her ups and downs with the beau who wants to be a track runner while his dad wants him to try out for the Pittsburg Pirates baseball organization), the head coach’s weary, woebegone attitude because of how the students continue to let him down compared to how his class of athletes competed back in the day, how a broken leg leaves a promising athlete in emotional turmoil, how Sally Kirkland is unable to discontinue the agony of not following in her successful athlete mom’s footsteps, and the unease that exists between the athletes and their adult gymnastic faculty.

What you do have are the javelin murders which make up the most creative moments of the film. In a black jump suit mostly, the killer can hurl that javelin like a champ, with such a force that it not impales victims but goes almost through them. When bodies of the team start vanishing (those killed), the school adults begin to worry as parents start to wonder where their children are. A photograph of the team preparing for Nationals, an X in black magic marker through certain students, left on the desk in the head of the school’s office, it seems as though one of the faculty might be responsible, since only they have a key to the room. It will only be a matter of time before certain students start to look for answers…and this search could lead them right into the stab of a javelin.

I’ll be honest, I don’t think many slasher fans will give two shits about the plot. It is unusual to  have plots centered around student athletes, but I believe that clearly the interest of this genre’s fans will be how cool the javelin violence turns out. It looks like most of the money was spent on the effects. One naked girl gets impaled while screaming and fleeing in horror which is surprisingly impressive. There’s even one scene where a victim is swimming while the killer is underwater in a frogman suit, impaling the female swimmer with the javelin.

The best pursue-and-kill chase scene involves an athlete who suffered a broken leg, in a cast with crutches, trying to get away from the javelin killer after discovering the bodies of the victims in their lockers in the female shower room. One javelin kill has a victim actually darted to the wall, a little ridiculous because it would deduce that the killer has superhuman strength. Slasher movies often have stupid motives for why killers carry out such savage crimes, and Fatal Games falls into that category. The motivation—jealousy and envy because the killer didn’t have the privilege to compete in the Olympics because of a sex change (!)—is really rather out of left field and wasn’t mentioned at all (there’s no real clue to this, and it would have been nice if there were signs alluding to the twist) during the movie. The ending has the final girl (who had been injured with a pierce of the javelin in the side) trying to stay out of the trajectory and aim of the javelin throw. That’s it.

Oh, wait, there's lots of nudity. I mean, lots. A surprising amount. One scene offers a bit of titillation as Kirkland rubs down and massages the naked body of the final girl after an intense workout. I'm not sure that, and the javelin's fury, will be enough. There are some decent night scenes in the school, and the director has some neat shadowy silhouettes of the killer before he/she goes on the hunt. Just warning you that in order to enjoy bits and pieces, there's the remainder of the film to fight your way through.