Slaughter High
On the surface, this 1986 release would appear to be one of the worst slasher flicks of the decade: The script and story are terrible, with awfully unfunny comic bits and dialogue that fails to capture the camaraderie among these supposed longtime friends; The acting is atrocious throughout, with most of the performers looking to be in their mid-30s instead of being right out of high school as the filmmakers would want you to believe; and the situations that occur in the story are laughable as this group that KNOWS a psycho killer is on the premises (and have witnessed a number of their friends being killed) nonetheless split up on a regular basis to do things such as have sex or work on a tractor engine. What does give the film its ultra-creepy veneer is the villain himself and the circumstances surrounding the actor who plays him: As Marty, a mega-nerd who is tormented and harassed by the others until a lab accident leaves him deformed, insane, and planning his psycho killer revenge, Simon Scuddamore is as twisted and awkward as one would imagine, but when the viewer knows going in the truth about the actor, the uneasiness increases tenfold, as Scuddamore committed suicide within a week or two after shooting wrapped on the film, so the impression the viewer gets is that of watching a mentally unstable person playing a character that is pushed to the breaking point and snaps. Indeed, the first five minutes involve a prank that was probably so humiliating just to film that it may have drove Scuddamore himself to the brink: Marty is stripped naked (complete with his junk exposed), then filmed and mocked by the jocks who poke him in his bare ass with a javelin and then promptly pick him up and flush his head down the toilet. Itās an unsettling thing to watch, and the fact that the film remains the sole credit for this obviously tortured young man has given the whole thing a cult status that remains with it to this day. The revenge murders, for the most part, are pretty twisted, including a guy who drinks a poisoned beer and has his stomach burst open, to a girl who takes a bath only for the water to turn into acid and melt her, to another guy being disembowled by a lawn mower blade whilst working on the aforementioned tractor, to the fornicating couple being electrocuted as they reach climax, and even one girl pushed down and drowned in a septic tank. The de facto heroine of the piece is British horror legend Caroline Munro (badly hiding her accent), playing a high school girl at age 36 and nonchalantly snorting cocaine as her way to āchill outā. Overall, a pretty mediocre effort (with THREE credited directors) only elevated by the tragic real-life fate of its psycho killer starā¦
5/10