Slaughter High (1986)

Don't tell me they didn't know what they were doing when they hired Simon Scuddamore as the nerd in the movie Slaughter High.

When you're going to make a movie in which an emotionally-scarred high school geek gets revenge on all the jerks that picked on him, you'd better make sure that

A) the jerks are all morally reprehensible and stupid as a box of rocks

B) the nerd is as nerdy, geeky and pitiful as humanly possible without having to pay the extra money for Stephen Hawking and

C) there's at least one scene with a scary mask involved.

Say what you will, at least Slaughter High follows the rules.

The problem is that those are the only rules this movie plays by, because it sure doesn't play by the rules of the ol' Common Sense Booklet.

The story is about as basic as it gets: back in high school, no one was as nerdy or as picked on or as hopelessly geeky as Marty Rantzen (Scuddamore). In fact, a certain group of "kids" delighted in finding new and varied ways in humiliating this poor, put-upon geek....

Notice the last paragraph, where I put "kids" in parentheses? Reasoning: the actors they have playing teenagers in this movie are more painfully in their late 20s-early 30s than Pee-Wee and Meat in the Porky's flicks of yore. 'Nuff said.

Anyway, in one scene, Marty is video-taped emerging naked from a shower stall (shouting "Where's The Beef" at him - only it doesn't come off as funny nor as mean-spirited as it reads...it just plays out kind of, well, special-needs-ish), hoping for a tryst with a scheming vixen (played by no less than Caroline Munro, who is far too old to be playing a teenage tramp, or have I harped on that already?) and is then given an en masse swirlie by the group of "teens", taping all the while.

(SIDE NOTE - movie, the last thing I needed you to show me was every conceivable angle of a scrawny naked nerd being held upside down and repeatedly dunked in a toilet. Yes, I said - naked. And yes, I said - Every. Conceivable. Angle. Good luck getting to sleep tonight, dear reader.)

But then, after the group gets in trouble and are appropriately punished for their transgressions, they swear to get even with Marty (for what? Who knows - nothing in this movie makes a lick of sense) by getting him stoned on marijuana and watching in horror as a Chemistry project he is working on goes haywire and Marty is burned and scalded horribly.

Cut ahead five or so years later.

And no, I didn't skip any scenes; that's how it goes in this movie.

The "teens" are now graduated and, now appropriately looking their age without any makeup needs (naturally), gather at the now-abandoned high school under mysterious invitations, where they break into the school and find food and drink waiting for them.

They have to break into the high school to attend their own reunion - a reunion only about six people show up for. And they happily roam through dirty, cobwebbed halls of their long-abandoned high school and eat and drink mysterious refreshments.

You guessed it: this movie is populated by complete and utter idiots.

So it is completely understandable that they would find themselves locked into the school, trapped by electric fences and other impassable barriers. They're stupid; why should they be expected to use logic to get themselves out of traps they basically fight their way into?

Of course, these "teens" (who are now allowed to act their age since their characters are actually supposed to be out of school) are offed by a mysterious jester-masked killer (hmmm...wonder who that could be?) in colorful ways:

One drinks poisoned beer and his intestines explode from his stomach.

A couple have sex on, and are subsequently electrocuted in, a wired bed-frame.

A girl takes a bath in a bathtub in the girls locker room and is dissolved by acid in the shower nozzle.

Another is chopped up by the blades of a riding mower he was fixing to ride out of the school.

...IDIOTS!

They all deserved to die for the simple fact that they were so unrepentantly stupid as to get themselves into this mess to begin with!!

This was directed with little flair by George Dugdale - and most certainly the only reason he was was able to snag Caroline Munro for this film was because he was married to her at the time. Wahoo for him; it certainly didn't make him any better a director for it - maybe this is what Guy Ritchie found out after a few years before he cut ties with Madonna.

But I digress....

The only one who stands out in this mess (besides Munro, who is radiant even in brain-hurting dreck like this) is Scuddamore, who played the hopeless geek so well and admittedly had the best scenes in this whole thing, from beginning to end. He certainly was the most expressive actor in this enterprise and Slaughter High comes so frustratingly close to being pulled up from the dreck and dredge of the typical Friday the 13th ripoff pool so many times when he is onscreen it isn't even funny.

But then it all comes down to the fact that idiocy is the reigning frame of mind for Slaughter High. Every single person in this film is an idiot, and not the funny kind like you'd find in a parody of such films, but the kind of idiot who continues to stand in the center of the tracks as the freight train bears slowly down on him, its whistle blowing loudly.

To watch someone stupid march merrily to their doom is not entertainment, even if they so clearly deserve to die. The idiots in Slaughter High do deserve their fates, but it's not dealt with in an entertaining way. And you certainly shouldn't make a whole movie about such idiots unless you're ready to make an ironic statement about their stupidity. Slaughter High certainly does the first part, but doesn't follow through on the second.

And in spite of the fact that there is an odd twist ending that will be shocking to most anyone who has never seen a twist ending before, nothing here is new, interesting, creative or even unique enough to make you watch Slaughter High...not that I would ever wish such a fate on my worst enemy. Maybe an irritating acquaintance, but still....

Back in the day when I watched movies like Pandemonium and Student Bodies, both of which horribly parodied mad slasher movies in differing levels of horrible unwatchableness, I never thought I would watch another movie that would make me doubt that they were the worst movies of their kind ever. Compared to Slaughter High, those films are Citizen Kane and Gone With The Wind, respectively.

If you must watch Slaughter High, in spite of my heartfelt pleas for you to run as fast as you can in the other direction, Think about this: just before its release, Simon Scuddamore committed suicide for reasons that remain unclear to this day. Who knows; it may just have been a case of a role striking too close to home.

In any event, such emotional subject matter has no reason to be associated with a movie like this. If anything, Slaughter High should stand as an example of what to avoid when making a movie.

One more piece o'trivia: this thing was originally called April Fools Day, but was changed to avoid confusion with a same-titled horror film that came out the same year. Not that this has much else to do with anything I've said before, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let a film this stupidly and harmfully bad have the last word.

April Fools Day was actually a pretty good film. So there.

And RIP, Simon.