Slaughter High (1986) 2022 Revisit

 This was an Up All Night and VHS favorite of mine, but it wasn't until I got to see it uncut with my Lost Collection Lionsgate DVD that I felt I had truly seen it.

The kills are wicked: that acid bath melting that victim into a skeleton, the "poisoned" beer that causes the victim's stomach to explode blood and guts literally, the very "electric sex" between two former lovers, a mechanic's worst nightmare while trying to get a tractor's motor running while on a jack, among others really kick ass to me. I know one of the cast members, who played Nancy, from "Don't Open Till Christmas", the strip booth worker running for her life from the Santa killer.

I have always been torn on the "it was all a dream" twist, because I felt Marty's horrible bullying and nasty pranks at the beginning were beyond the pale. Caroline Munro is a Hammer icon and horror icon, but asking us to accept her as a teenager was always ridiculous to me, even as a youth.

What I LOVED about this was how the three directors shot Marty in the jester disguise, silhouetted him, and used his presence in creatively visual ways. But the real value you can get from an abandoned building set to be demolished can't be overstated. This gem being available, all that rundown space, the walls peeling and colored/covered in dirty, grimy filth, with the trash-scattered floors; imagine taking a camera following Munroe through all that atmospheric territory.

Definitely my personal favorite of the three April Fool's slasher (or slasher-adjacent) flicks tonight.

Scuddimore's fate after production is just a bummer. He's very sympathetic, and fits that tragic Marty so well.

Two horror related tropes I always enjoy:

✓A toilet overflowing blood

✓The hero/ine burying a weapon into the body of the wrong person accidentally, believing that victim to be the killer.

Manfredini's score had some "House" and "Friday the 13th" mixed in it that, and I was all for it. Despite my mixed feelings about the twist, Marty's victims calling to him as a room is lit red with fog with him waking up in hysterics is rather rad.

The song, too, is memorable. This is great late night fun!