April Fool's on Marty - Friday Night and Slaughter High (1986)

I guess this is part of the "Slasher Stop Off" series that I've been doing for the blog. I own a copy of "Slaughter High" and I always forget this was set at "April Fool's Day". That this was supposed to use that holiday moniker, defeated by Paramount. The rest is history. I am glad it worked out this way. I rented this film when I was a young teen based on the poster art and title. And that jester mask and letterman jacket with jeans look really sells the killer as Marty plans the perfect class reunion massacre...well, in his own mind, I guess.

I personally just don’t see why those involved in the making of “Slaughter High” (1986) didn’t set the film in England. Fans of slasher films would have embraced this nasty little revenge flick. Not sure I personally liked the twist in the end: it would have been quite unique for the killer to actually successfully get his revenge on all the students who harassed and tormented him, responsible for degrading levels of humiliation, and the nitric acid burn scarring to boot. Had it ended with Marty sticking Carol with the javelin, and as she collapsed in the shower—irony at its most “revenge is a dish best served cold” considering the humiliation started in a shower—with him giggling from her eventual slow death, that would have been something I think many viewers would have been left chewing on.

I think Manfredini’s score is just lazy. Some of it is slightly different but even it just loops. But the Friday the 13^th score he’s known for is all over this film. Just lazy. Didn’t hardly even try to mix things up. And even worse is the blatant Jason hockey mask “homage” when the former classmates arrive inside the darkened school eventually to be demolished. Some Friday fans might actually enjoy the connection, sort of the nerd getting even with those who wronged him in the jester mask set to some familiar music. 

The school itself really is what makes “Slaughter High” really stand out, doesn’t it? Sure there is some really heavy kill scenes by Marty. Bed rails set to electric shock (that turns the victim’s face, arms, and upper torso jet black), acid causing a gulper to lose his guts (splitting out of his stomach), a literal acid bath (that turns the nude victim into skull and bones, crying out in agony as her flesh burns), a spinning vehicle dropped on a victim trying to get it to start, underneath it, cut by Marty while trying to keep it hoisted up, and even a hatchet to the face of a victim who narrowly escapes a hanging (the rope slipping off the anchor) by Carol believing he was Marty. 

I didn’t realize it until tonight’s viewing but Kelly Baker is in this film. She was the stripper in the peep show theater in London in the Christmas slasher sleazefest, “Don’t Open Till Christmas” (1984) kidnapped by that film’s Santa Claus killer. She has the weakest demise except that poor sap who hops in Carol’s car and gets impaled with a blade from behind. Basically Baker can’t escape a sewage pit. Marty just kicks her back into it and walks away…could she just not have waited until he was gone for a bit and leave? Perhaps she did but it didn’t matter because the twist sort of erases the purpose of what we see most of the running time. Producer Dick Randall produced “Slaughter High” and “Don’t Open Till Christmas” and the infamous “Pieces” (1982) so Baker’s casting might have been due to her appearance in a previous Randall film.

This was one of the films I remember watching on Joe Bob’s Monstervision on TNT, although it was obviously cut. This unrated version is definitely the definitive one. I watched a favorite YouTube reviewer discuss the new Vestron release on Blu Ray. I’m glad the film got this kind of release but I’m happy with the Cheesy Flicks DVD in my collection. The history of the film is quite interesting, from the use of buildings for the school, Munro’s odd casting (she had an even odder stage performance number in “Don’t Open Till Christmas”), and suicide of troubled Scuddamore as the tormented chemistry nerd, Marty. Scuddamore, to his credit, goes full frontal during his complete humiliation at the hands of all his bullies, including a head commode dunking, being dragged across the dirty floor, and laughed at by them all while trying to conceal his flailing package. I think many slasher fans ended up disappointed that he truly didn’t get his real revenge. According to the twist, Munroe’s nightmare being choked by Scuddamore was essentially a dream within a dream…wild.

You know the film, in terms of the annals of slasher film ultra-violence, doesn’t always enter the discussion but the acid bath victim’s face actually melts off to a skull. And Marty’s own acid burns as the lab goes up in flames is jarringly hostile. And that bed frame lighting up the victim uncomfortably holds for quite a bit. This isn’t always just Friday the 13^th seconds kills that are fast and furious.

I realized I own two copies of Slaughter High, The Lost Collection Lion's Gate in my library