No Budget Theater: Slaughter High

I remember watching this slasher clone created by our friends across the pond back in the mid 80s.  It was one of many movies that we rented during the VHS rental boom back then and I remember watching it with my step-mom at the time. 

This movie rips from everywhere it can and it doesn't care if we notice.  We get the typical slasher formula of something bad happened in the past and now it's time for revenge; we get a masked killer; after disfigurement or maybe because of the mask, killer gets super strength and teleportation powers. 

We also get our standard set of fodder - a bunch of 30 somethings in both the past and the present.  We get your stereotypical joker who's not funny ever.  We get our sluts, our gear head, our virginal girl, and our lugheads.  Did I miss anyone?  Well these fine folks have a reunion in a standard scary location -a run down school.  This school was quite a bit different than the one I atteneded.  The school in this movie made sure to get a different locker from various places so that no two lockers would match.  They also installed a bathtub for those students to use at their leisure.  And just in case a few students got really excited, someone has installed a bed on the school grounds.

Slaughter High rips off scenes and concepts from many other places: revenge of the nerds, alien chest burst scene, reference to Jason Voorhees (never reference a better slasher...did I just refer to a Friday flick as being better than something else?!), and a few others.  And to top it all off, we get a bat shit ending where all the dead preppies turn into zombies and chase the killer, but then we find out it was all just a hallucination ...now it's a plan as Marty rips off the bandages.

Good

  • Effective and creepy setting in an old run-down school

  • The goofy and funny soundtrack

Bad

  • Terrible stereotypical black janitor

  • 30-something High School students

  • Characters slip in and out of their British accents

  • We're told Skip's the joker but he never proves it in the least

  • Cheesy mask with bells that never gives away the killer's location

Fugly

  • Rather gruesome (and ridiculous) deaths

  • Referencing a slightly better shitty movie (Friday the 13th Part 3)

  • Using the same clichés from other crappy horror movies

  • Stella

Things I've Learned from this movie:

  • Psycho killers play by the rules

  • Disfigurement leads to super strength and teleportation powers

  • April Fool's Day ends at 12 Noon

  • Torturing nerds to death only creates super strength psycho killers

Other Names this Movie Could Have Used:

  • April Tomfoolery

  • How to Create a Psycho Killer

Deaths:

  • Marty kills janitor by placing his head on a coat rack

  • Beer guzzler dies from poisonous, gut-exploding beer

  • Prom slut dies from acid in the school bathtub

  • Stoner gets stabbed through the backseat a la "Halloween" and then impaled on the school fence

  • Late chick dies via Marty's hands (I guess)

  • Handy-man Jock dies from lawn mower blades in the school "shop"

  • Frank and Stella get electrocuted in the school bed

  • British accented woman dies in school sewage

  • Skip the Joker gets hung in the Gym

  • Carol gets stabbed in the girl's shower

  • Nurse dies off screen

  • Doctor takes a hypodermic needle in the eye

Last Modified: 12/2008

Authors: Clockworkcanary, Scarboroughchic, & Zombies_Ate_My_Neighbor
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

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