Graduation Day [1981]

Laura was a promising track athlete who dies during a race, stunning the little town, all of it happening near graduation day. After this, it seems the tragedy has inspired a series of elaborate murders, while Laura's sister, Anne, returns home for a few days from the Navy to visit. Her homecoming will be met with animosity and danger.
**

I think the reasoning  behind the motive for the killings in Graduation Day is hilarious.  Tragedy motivates the murder of a group who had nothing to do with the person's death. A star track runner crashes to the pavement after suffering a blood clot!  The crowd and her coach demand so much physically from her. Oh, she does win the race, but it comes with a price being her life. What, she was like 17? Why would she be running track in the first place? She fooled everyone…including herself, I guess. She’s cradled by her boyfriend (also an athlete) with a crowd of athletes surrounding them (including the coach played by Christopher George), and this sets up the tragedy punctuating the eventual murder spree that would result.

The opening of Graduation Day has a fruit truck driver copping a nice feel of the legs of US Navy’s own Anne Ramstead (Patch Mackenzie), hitching a ride to her home town. This, I think, is one of the reasons Graduation Day (1981) seems perfect for a Troma release. While not a Troma film, it feels like a scene right at home for a Troma-released film. The truck driver thinks he’s entitled to a little loving since he’s a tax payer (!), and so this sleazebag (with a tied scarf around his neck…what was up with that?!?!) gets a bit of a wakeup call because Anne grabs his sack and tells him to stop his antics or suffer the consequences. She’s a toughie and he drives her right into town, knowing his advances were short-lived due to her aggressive, take-no-shit approach to quelling any further suggestive sexual liaison. 

Anne is obviously important in the film because her character immediately identifies with the first victim to fall to the "stop watch psycho". Why is Anne transfixed with the jogger? It is almost like she senses danger ahead. Whatever reason, Anne fixes her eyes on the girl and the next scene follows the jogger as she moves her way into a park path that loses sight of public streets and activity. Anne's established here as an obvious character of overall importance. Will she find herself in the same sights of the stop watch killer?

You pretty much know the kind of budget those behind the making of Graduation Day had to work with from the opening kill scene. Often those will nickels and dimes did what they could to mask such minuscule budgets through tricks. Throw a streak of blood on the lens of the camera. A camera technique has an arm fly up with a knife swooping down from the sky (gloved hand holding the weapon) to hit a target just off screen. Spatter a little blood on the girl’s throat, have her strike the “death pose”, and then watch as the killer discards her like yesterday’s garbage. Director Herb Freed shoots her massive ear phones on the ground alone, now absent the original owner.

Anne returns to a home shaken up from the loss of her track star sister. Laura’s death was a terrible shock that her mom and pop haven’t been able to get over. Anne had returned for the graduation that Laura will not be a part of. Pop is really at odds with Anne, and vice versa. Animosity between them is immediately noticeable. Pop is the stepfather for both girls. Laura he adored and treasured while Anne is the older Navy sister he despised. He calls Anne a pigheaded bitch and approaches her as if he’ll give her a smack to the kisser. Laura warns him she learned a few things in the Navy (defending herself), and Pop backs away. In this scene, it is really somber and quiet (no score), with Anne holding a picture in Laura’s room of her track team with Coach in a celebratory pose. She drops it to the floor in an outburst that leaves the glass shattered. It is enough to say that track is responsible for the girl’s death. She’d be in her vacant room if it hadn’t been for the competitive demands of athletics. The scene does legitimately (I thought) evoke a sense of loss many parents must feel when the spirit and essence of a daughter is no longer present in her room. Anne must endure the tension her presence represents. For a slasher like Graduation Day, such a potently effective scene seems out of place; it is the square peg in round hole kind of scene that seems to resonate despite the content of the overall film it is placed within.

The movie does try to at least question if Anne might be capable of being the killer. Her sister was the one who died because of athletics. She stops Sally who was on her way to school; Anne seems a bit creepy, talking about Sally’s beautiful eyes, as well as, her sister’s death and the varsity necklace around Sally’s neck. Anne was eyeing the first victim from afar, arriving into town just as the murders are about to start. While I imagine this is too much for most viewers to accept, Anne the killer, the film tries to cast suspicion her way, at least. There's a belief, though, that Anne is a lesbian, and if that is the intention, then the entire point about Anne having a creepy vibe might be looked at differently. She isn't acting suspicious as much as lusting with her eyes a couple of high school girls.

The movie goes out of its way to make the graduation class into a rowdy, loud, rambunctious, obnoxious sort of teenagers while they jeer and boo and talk over Principal as he attempts to tell them how to behave and act during the graduation ceremony. That anti-authority sentiment is alive and well with this class, and we get a sense that a bad lot might entering the world. Of course, they’re just excited kids, still too immature for the most part to know what tough times lie in wait for many of them. Principal and the graduation ceremony organizer (his secretary, called Blondie) both look exhausted and can only lament how “each graduation class gets worse every year”. At least, these kids aren’t the unruly students from Class of ’84.

  

Laura’s death is the obvious catalyst in the murders of her fellow varsity squad, and the one responsible shouldn’t be too difficult to realize. There’s an early tell when a visit to a house has Anne seeing a grandmother, sitting in a crazed state, babbling to herself, the television on but with only white noise, and it might indicate a family history of mental illness.

When Sally is in her gymnast suit, the cameraman wondering if she would perform for him, we get a good looksee at how Coach pushes his athletes. This was just a photo session and Sally was not particularly interested in working on the bars, but Coach’s persistence/insistence, the harsh tone his demands carried, alerts us that he’s a tough man who doesn’t accept no for an answer. Sally, at his nagging urgings, does what he wants. Coach looks like he’s about to salivate, lusting away, licking his lips, and all of this grabs the attention of the cameraman who looks more than a bit disturbed. When Sally remains unable to keep the recent events of Laura’s death out of her mind, two falls leave Coach just disgusted. Coach, here, proves how difficult he can be. He expects maybe too much out of his athletes and they must on their A-game always when he’s present.

Sally is next on the list to be X’d out. After Coach puts her through the ringer, Sally flees to shave her legs in the girls’ bathroom. So a fencing sword taken from a locker by the killer does the trick with one thrust. Through the neck, blood squirting, and game over.

I’m pretty sure the scene where teenager Linnea Quigley, looking to score a passing grade in music, approached Teach while unbuttoning her shirt, with him unable to resist her nubile young flesh, might creep quite a few out. It isn’t like, though, this hasn’t ever happened before. Not excusing the behavior, but Dolores (Quigley) offered and Teach couldn’t help himself.

Ah, yes, Quigley. She, no surprise, has the promiscuous slut role. She is smoking a joint with her beau (she was just messing around with the instructor for a passing grade to graduate) and wants to get it on because “she’s horny”, but the school security guard breaks them up before they could shag on the park bench. She’s very good at this. She’s comfortable as the sex-hungry babe. Always has been. But, also no surprise, because she likes to shag, her character is doomed. In Graduation Day, she seems to be having an absolute ball. She’s young. Hot. And the 80s was all ahead for her to star in the basic same sex kitten role, cracking wise, swearing like a sailor, and stripping naked as expected.

There’s a false tease of a kill scene where the music instructor (fooling around with Quigley) thinks he hears tapping sounds, goes into the boiler room and hears a cassette player with a tape recording of his funny business with Dolores. Two teens run away giggling. It reminded me of the false kill scene where a couple find their way into the basement of a dance hall in The Prowler (1981) to make out and there’s a POV from what is presumed to be the killer, but he’s just one of the teachers behind the organization of the dance. Sometimes slasher movies have a tendency to toy with viewers, having them believe there’s a kill about to happen but it is all a ruse. While I always felt The Prowler script had holes (and the couple were perhaps supposed to be killed but wasn’t), Graduation Day seems to just jerk our chain for some kicks and giggles. Teach is made a fool of with his “snake” comment to a chuckling Dolores, but at least he didn’t get a sword through his throat.

  

Michael Pataki has one of those authoritarian parts that cries out secret quirks, the principal who sweet talks his secretary (and organizer for the graduation ceremony) into writing out his cassette-recorded speech for the graduation. What really gets weird is when we are shown him unlocking a switchblade knife, cutting an apple slowly. It just seemed like to me desperation in perhaps offering him up as a potential killer. He opens his desk drawer to reveal plenty of confiscated knives, probably from his students. He's hated by his students, that's for sure, but his secretary can't resist him. We get a scene where it is obvious the two are sleeping with each other. It comments on how the adults can stand at a podium and declare the students to get worse every year yet they have little room to judge.

It is inevitable that anytime you read a review or document on Graduation Day, Vanna White’s casting is certain to mentioned. I might as well follow suit, and mention that she has a really gratingly annoying character who has a friend, the both of them chatty, rattling on nonstop when in a scene with other characters (like Sally; they scare poor Sally really good). She doesn’t have a character that we become invested in or give a shit about, though.

Addressing Laura’s death is obviously important to the plot as it pertains to Anne and Coach. Coach is to lose his job because of her death. Anne just wants to get her animosity towards him off her chest and right at him. He’s the enemy. He is the root cause behind why a high school senior will not be graduating with her class. Coach is Public Enemy #1. Good scene for Chris George because he can lay out his reasons for pushing Laura, in molding and shaping a winner. A machine is what Anne believes Coach’s motivations were. To win at all costs, including Laura’s life. A mediocre slasher that addresses issues that still exist today…this at least Graduation Day has going for it. There’s something here besides Quigley’s little teen tits, a football with a sword on the end fit for stabbing, and a stop watch killer chasing behind victims.

I think when you watch Graduation Day (1981) (and Prom Night (1980), another film centered around that special night prior to graduation), you kind of sense that those involved were not just making a film about a killer picking off members of the track team, it is about the graduation experience. I mean, if it was all about the killings then the film would be centered on them.

“The world’s my toilet.”

This said by the dude associated with Dolores after she comments on how nice it must be to pee wherever you want (he stops during their making out to urinate). This is just prior to when the killer in the fencing outfit (swinging a sword this time) decapitates both of them, the dude while he’s pissing and Dolores after she flees through the darkened park as a band plays under bright-colored lights on a stage during a graduation party while many of the students roller skate (this is certainly the band’s 15 minutes) not far from where they’re murdered. It isn’t the flashiest chase scene, and doesn’t last too long, but Dolores does try her best to get away. At least when she falls on her derrière this time, the chased character has an excuse, in the dark of night, running around in the woods, it makes sense Dolores might trip.

“You’re only as good as your last mistake”

This is how the principal justifies firing Coach to the police inspector in charge of finding the missing kids (killed by the stop watch psycho). Principal just cannot figure out why the parents of the kids are so up in arms about their being missing. The inspector still must adhere to the demands of his position.

I have seen a lot of slashers optimize the “wrong suspect” aspect to allow the true psychopaths to get by a little longer before facing the music. A suspect—red herring—is put out there with plenty of moments in the plot to justify his/her position as a viable character who might just be the killer. Then they are later exonerated when another character emerges as the real killer. Yet the wrong man suffers because of how guilty he/she looks. This is the case with Coach who just happened to be near the women’s locker room when Sally’s body was found, soon engaged in fisticuffs with Laura’s boyfriend, Kevin. Screaming girls who found Sally (including the aforementioned Vanna White) only encourage Coach’s screwjob.

Of course, the ending is warped as all hell as typical of slasher movies. Kevin blames not only Coach but all of the track team for Laura’s death which is ridiculous. His grandma is bonkers and the parents are just gone (where is anybody’s guess). He was to marry Laura, but she’s dead obviously…that doesn’t deter him from removing her body from her grave, dressing Laura up in her graduation clothes, still planning to marry the girl as they planned (!), with Anne discovering all of this in horror. Kevin feels Anne is just like the others, trying to take away from his happiness with Laura so she must be put down as the victims before her. There’s a great scene of sheer absurdity that’s a thing of macabre hilarity: Kevin accidentally gets “pushed” by Laura’s body (when it falls out of the rocking chair when Kevin tries to stab Anne) through his bedroom window (!) with the two plummeting to the ground below. It’s just a minor scratch, though, as he almost immediately picks up her body and brings it back in the house as Anne flees. Anne finds herself on the field at school (appropriate, isn’t it? This intended for its irony in the killings), soon discovering a decapitated head and the dude who fell on those spikes while pole vaulting. Like Coach did not long before this, Kevin gets his ass handed to him by the heavily trained in hand-to-hand combat Anne. It is funny to see Kevin so manhandled both times he tries to attack those who actually defend themselves without the cheap behind-the-back business most psychopaths rely on to murder their victims. The actor that portrays Kevin looks too old for the part of a high school senior. When he’s tearing up the harmonica while a buddy guitars a tune with some of their fellow students about graduation, Kevin seems totally different from the nutjob that emerges later. Of course, Kevin is such a non-factor for so long that when he does eventually get introduced with more dialogue and development, it is almost too little too late. But because of how he reveals his mania (E Danny Murphy has this scowl that is ideal for an off-his-rocker wacko), and the trip through the window with Laura’s body falling with him, the ending left me all smiles. The fight is a laugher, the way Anne just makes mincemeat out of Kevin, and the bodies that turn up is quite Friday the 13^th, convenient to get a brief rise out of the heroine before returning to kick the killer’s ass. Drunk and cantankerous, Pop shows up at the end when the filmmakers feel the need to pull their Carrie scare by having Kevin return to Anne when she’s sleeping in Laura’s bed before leaving for the Navy (Kevin is just a figment, with mother turning the light on to reveal Pop with an empty liquor bottle instead of a knife). 

What you are left with, to me, is a fun return to the early 80s, spending a little time with graduates enjoying their last bit of teenage high school life before a few of them are taken out by Kevin. There’s a band of Pop-Punk rockers jamming to roller skaters, their tune going for an entire murder scene. There’s the juxtaposition of Laura’s death with those Kevin murders while timing their last thirty seconds with his stop watch mimicking how long it took for his fiancé to perish. There’s Quigley seducing a pot-bellied music instructor who makes the girls swoon and might just give her the passing grade she needs to graduate. You get a rather uninspired investigation into disappearances with a detective that half-asses on the job, a principal who couldn’t care less about his students (so desperate in the crafting of the ideal speech) and vice versa, and a coach gets canned just because his track star died through terrible circumstances beyond his control. 

I would say it can be fun in the right frame of mind. I had seen this before and feel it isn’t any great shakes, but does work as a nostalgia piece if you were 18 at that time and can identify with the era for which is was made. As far as its value within the genre, Quigley and White’s involvement helps matters and there are comical moments here and there that might endear the movie to many, but its current imdb rating seems about accurate. I think it is slightly below average, but Graduation Day seems to have a small cult following. Christopher George’s status in the film as the lead name doesn’t surprise considering how well connected he was with the horror genre by this time (and slightly afterward); it’s too bad he wouldn’t live longer to make even more horror movies, but before he passed away this actor sure made his fair share. I thought the stop watch was a nice touch and the parallels to another school slasher dealing with the pressures of athletics (Fatal Games) are interesting.