By Richard Winters
My Rating: 7 out of 10
4-Word Review: High School reunion horror.
Marty (Simon Scuddamore) is a social outcast at his high school. On April Fools Day the other students decide to play a prank on him by inviting him into the girl’s shower were they mock his naked body. This gets the students into trouble with the coach (Marc Smith) so they decide to play another joke on him by adding a chemical to his science project that causes it to explode, which topples a bottle of nitric acid off the shelf and it splashes onto his face which disfigures him. 5 years later the students reconvene for a reunion, but find the school has been closed and in disrepair yet they still go in and have a party anyways, but soon they begin getting killed off one-by-one in violent ways. Is Marty lurking in the shadows and doing it for revenge, or is it somebody else?
I enjoyed the way the film works against the formula by having a linear narrative where the horrible accident happens right away instead of using flashbacks, or having it discussed through dialogue like in other slashers. The killings are expertly handled including one where the victim has his intestines blow directly out of his stomach, which is graphic and caught me completely off guard. The tension is good too and had me riveted at the end as Caroline Munro gets chased around the darkened building almost endlessly, which was intentionally prolonged by the filmmakers to give it a longer runtime, but in the process helps make the scenario even scarier by making it seem like the victim is stuck in a nightmarish maze that she can’t get out of.
Some viewers had issues with the cast looking too old for high schoolers, which included star Munro who was already 35 at the time. However, what really impressed me was that it was filmed in England with a mostly British cast, except for Donna Yaeger who plays Stella and a couple of others, and yet all of them with the exception of Munro were able to successfully disguise their accents to make it sound like they were genuinely American.
My only two complaints were the music score, which sounded too playful like it was intended for a comedy instead of a horror and didn’t help add to the tension and in many ways worked against it. The scene were two of the characters (Donna Yeager, Billy Hartman) have sex is ridiculous as this occurs after they had just witnessed two graphic murders and the ongoing threat of a killer lurking about, so for most people sex would be the last thing on their minds nor would they be able to perform even if they tried due to the psychological stress, so having the guy become baffled when he can’t get an erection under those circumstances was laughable as I would’ve more surprised if he had.
The twist ending is cool and even if it had been a letdown I would’ve still given it 7 points as the rest of it is highly entertaining either way. The original working title was going to be April Fool’s Day, but this got changed when the filmmakers became aware that another movie with that same title was set to be released in the US, but this movie is far better than that one.
My Rating: 7 out of 10
Released: November 14, 1986
Runtime: 1 Hour 31 Minutes
Rated R
Directors: George Dugdale, Mark Ezra, Peter Mackenzie Litten
Studio: Vestron Pictures
Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Tubi, YouTube
Scopophilia 