You Have to See This! Hell Night (1981)

Posted on January 10, 2017 by Felix Vasquez

It’s Hell Night, the night before classes officially start, and Marti and her friends have been challenged by Alpha Sigma Rho to stay overnight at the dreaded Garth Mansion. The Mansion has a long history involving a deformed family, murder, and suicide, and the classmates are intent on making their night terrifying. Taking the challenge, soon they begin to realize they’re being terrorized by the deformed owner of the manor, and are unknowingly locked in the mansion thanks to the steel gates. Now they have to escape and make their way back to town, or fight for survival and hope for a rescue.

It’s a damn shame that Linda Blair was nominated for a Razzie in 1981 for “Hell Night,” since her performance here isn’t bad. Hell, it’s quite good as she manages to once again hit that rare chord as a final girl who is also insanely hot. Too many times in the eighties did we have horror movies with whiny final girls who were in the avenue of a plain Jane, but Blair is very good as the simple college girl who runs around from a deformed freak in a dress that perfectly shows off her buxom body. Paired with her cherubic face, it’s a perfect formula for a character we can root for. Blair returns once again to the horror fold for “Hell Night,” a damn fun and very underrated Halloween horror movie. Chuck Russell’s film has taken on a life of its own as a cult gem, and feels a lot like an extended episode of “Tales from the Crypt” or an EC Comic.

I can easily picture the classic poster for the film rendered in to a Vault of Horror comic book cover. Though “Hell Night” is admittedly cheap looking, it also packs in a ton of dread and eeriness to it, taking the premise which is mostly a one setting premise, and places a group of hapless college students smack dab at the door step of a brutally creepy mansion in the middle of nowhere. Presenting a hint of self-awareness and some fun creeps here and there, “Hell Night” is set on Hell Night, the last night before classes begin, where a group of freshmen are hazed by their classmates.

After a raucous party in town square, they’re led to Garth Manor by the frat Alpha Sigma Rho, and are challenged to spend the night at the mansion. Garth Manor has a long history involving its wealthy owners, inbreeding, and a patriarch who murdered his wife and deformed children in front of his son Andrew, and then murdered himself. Andrew, as legend explains, is said to roam the grounds haunting it. Blair, as Marti, agree to stay overnight with her small group of friends and are unaware that classmates are running around in the dark playing pranks on them and are hell bent on terrifying them.

Of course, things go awry when we learn that the deformed mongoloid Andrew is actually living in the mansion and begins slowly mutilating any and all of the college students he comes across. What makes “Hell Night” such an eerie out of the box horror film is the way Chuck Russell films the mansion, making it feel like the scene of some really bad fever dream. It also doesn’t help that Andrew knows the house better than anyone, so he always threatens to pop out of a hidden doorway, small crevice or hole, dragging down the students and making their bodies in to decorations for the grounds.

One really unnerving scene finds Marti and friend Jeff having to take a very long and terrifying walk back in to the mansion in hopes of waiting out Andrew. Despite being barricaded in a room, Andrew emerges from the floor draped in a rug, silently stalking them as they linger oblivious to his impending attack. Director Russell transforms the mansion in to a character all its own, making it a series of really dangerous obstacles including a hedge maze and a long row fences with sharp spikes that can impale anyone reckless enough to try and climb it. Andrew himself is a merciless and relentless horror movie monster who rampages through his victims without a second thought.

There are a ton of vicious deaths, and the battle for survival between Marti and Andrew is amped up in tension the more the body count rises. Blair is very well fitted in the role, giving some great screams and shrieks. She brings a lot of vulnerability and innocence to the character, and we root for her as she is stuck within the walls of the mansion and has to figure out how to get back in to town before Andrew figures out a way to trap and kill her. “Hell Night” is a movie that doesn’t fall in to the trappings of the slasher craze of the eighties, pairing the gorgeous Linda Blair against a very creepy horror villain who mangles his victims more than gashes them with a machete or an axe.

I appreciate how director Tom DeSimone doesn’t really play too many games with his audience. While he is a fan of jump scares and frights here and there, he also holds true with a very straight forward narrative, and an actual resolution. The End is the end. Or is it? Yes. It is.

I hope a great movie company like Shout! or Arrow bring us a wonderful Special Edition soon, since “Hell Night” is overdue for a Deluxe Edition that can expose new audiences to what is a bonafide creepy and spooky horror survival tale. It’s short, simple, and remarkably eerie, with a Gothic horror tone that fits just right.

You Have to See This! Chopping Mall (1986)

Posted on October 17, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

The Park Plaza Mall just signed on to install a high tech trio of robotic guards that patrol the grounds until dawn and disable any potential thieves until the police arrive. When lightning strikes the technology, the robots malfunction and begin hunting down eight employees that have decided to party in the mall overnight. With the robots on the hunt, the eight employees do their best to outwit and outlast the murderous robots and perhaps survive until dawn when the sealed doors finally open. But with the robots capable of working together, while shooting deadly lasers and electric darts at the helpless friends, staying alive is going to be more difficult than either of them ever imagined.

Make no mistake this is a silly movie, but a damn fun one that clocks in at barely eighty minutes. So if you just want to see killer robots murdering people good, you’re going to get what you invest your time in. These robots look like something out of Dr. Who, and yet they pose a formidable threat against their perceived foes. Sure, this is a horror movie set in a mall, it has an iconic poster, and it has killer robots that eviscerate the intruders, but deep down it has a great sense of humor about itself.

There’s even a montage in the opening of the movie that sets the premise of the mall being the central setting where director Jim Wynorski does nothing but offer up goofy scenarios that you’d normally see in a mall during this decade. A young boy with an ice cream cone is trampled by shoppers in an elevator, a young man with boxes falls while riding the escalator when he sees a line of beauty pageant contestants, a young boy is riding through the mall on a skateboard, there’s a teen girl struggling to deliver food to her friends that she spills on them, and a dad and his son fight over an arcade game.

There’s also a noticeable amount of product placements for Coca Cola. In either case, the premise is simple. The mall is futuristic—despite looking like every other mall from the eighties–and it’s locked down at night and opens in the morning, no exceptions. During the after hours, despite the locked down structure, the robots are activated to patrol the grounds non-stop and disable any intruders or thieves until morning. Sadly thunder strikes the technology, causing the robots to malfunction. You figure with all the money spent they could afford a surge protector. The robots then become murderous and relentless, and begin stalking eight employees of the mall who have decided to stay after hours to party and indulge in teen sex and alcohol use.

This is after they murder Gerrit Graham, and Dick Miller, who plays a crusty janitor. I think Mr. Miller was contractually obligated to be in every horror movie in the eighties as some sort of oath to a demigod or something. Either way, Miller’s appearance cements the film as pure schlock that promises a short but fun sci-fi slasher romp. “Chopping Mall” is so deviously tongue in cheek that you can’t really accuse it being itself. At one point the characters are preparing cocktail bombs for the robots and Kelli Maroney’s character sees a convenient display for road flares reading “Why get caught in dangerous situations?” The opening even features a lot of witty banter when one of the presenters for futuristic guard robots protecting shopping malls is speaking to his audience. I’m not even sure why there is a need for a trio of technologically advanced robots to protect sneakers and sweaters, but lo and behold, this is “Chopping Mall” and its unabashed premise.

I think these robots should be guarding missile silos and power plants, but again, you’re better off considering this a science fiction tale where everything has deadly robotic guard drones that can murder you. I imagine there are four of these robots patrolling a swap meet in a back lot making sure no one fights over a plastic clown figurine or else they shoot then with face melting laser beams. “Chopping Mall” is another one of those low budget horror classics made out of convenience and a small budget, hence why it’s mostly just a one setting film. Thankfully the setting is large and filled with a variety of corners and open spaces, but like “Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl o Rama,” “Nightmare Sisters,” and “Dawn of the Dead,” you can tell the mall setting is primary because lack of funding made it impossible to film anywhere else.

Everything occurs in this mall, right down to obligatory sex scenes, and some really cheesy moments where our characters arm themselves with weapons to battle the robots. I was never in a mall of this kind, but did malls in the eighties really have stores where they sold semiautomatic rifles, and shot guns? You figure with a mall using guard robots capable of murder they’d lock up the store tightly or something. It does make for a good slow motion shot, nevertheless, and oddly enough no one on the outside ever hears the war ensuing. While the villains themselves are pretty straight forward, it’s never really made clear how to defeat the robots. Sometimes it takes a few gun shots to bring down one robotic drone, while another needs to literally be blown up within in a huge store in the finale to be taken down once and for all.

And how did the robots develop lasers when the inventor presenting them indicates that they’re only built to disable and stun intruders? Either way while after the movie I’m sure there were lawsuits aplenty, they were probably more forgiving once the zombie apocalypse presented itself, and people were able to hide out in the mall with the robots being embraced as heroes.

When I was a young boy my parents used to drop my brother and me off with my aunt who worked a nine-to-five job at our local video store. I must have crossed paths with the “Chopping Mall” poster a thousand times a week, and it stuck with me for a long time. Wynorski’s science fiction slasher is glorious schlocky B movie goodness with comedy, some excellent death scenes, and a creative concept, all around. It’s a camp classic as it deserves to be.

You Have to See This! Bikini Academy (1996)

Posted on August 1, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Odds are you probably saw “Bikini Academy” in the heyday of late night cable television. It was once a proud institution. Otherwise known as “Babe Watch: Forbidden Parody,” the adult comedy likens itself as a “Baywatch” spoof. In reality there isn’t anything that spoofs or satirizes “Baywatch” save for the fact that most of the movie is set in the beach. In fact almost every shot is filmed during the middle of a sunny day smack dab in the middle of a beach. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.

Lucki and her friend Ty-Dy work day to day in a bikini shop and aspire to compete for a job as their local beach’s lifeguards. Training with an uptight drill instructor and hunky trained lifeguard Brock, the two pursue the opportunity in hopes that it can open up their aspirations for modeling and acting. Meanwhile rival Bodacia seeks the job in hopes of improving her modeling career, and will do whatever she can to win, including rigging the contest. That doesn’t sit well with Lucki who has a genuine affection for him, despite his indifference toward her.

And there are boobs. Lots of boobs.

I can think of worse things than watching Kelli Hoffman or Tane McClure for ninety minutes. With small budgets and some pretty crummy actors, Rick Sloane has been able to pull of a pretty great film career with some entertaining schlock. Everything from the silly “Vice Academy” series to the craptastic “Hobgoblins” has managed to achieve some bit of cult fame down the road; especially the latter. Seriously, go watch the “Mystery Science Theater 3000” episode of “Hobgoblins.” It’s one of the funniest two hours of television ever made. That said, “Bikini Academy” is not a spoof or satire, it’s just a really silly C grade sex comedy set on a beach.

I think Rick Sloane probably assumed this kind of beach sex romp would fare well in 1996, which is too bad since movies of this ilk became painfully out of style by 1990. I think in 1986, this might have been just a slight cult classic, rather than simply a cheap sex comedy that you wouldn’t miss, either way. Mind you, “Bikini Academy” is a rare movie from Rick Sloane that is softcore schlock and embraces that fact, but it’s not an experience you have to have. There’s no real up and comer like Johnny Depp in “Private Resort.” It’s just a very raunchy comedy that pulls off some occasional giggles and splashes almost every scene with curvy women in small bikinis.

It doesn’t really try to be anything else but a cheapy schlock, putting gorgeous women in the film front and center, while they compete with one another for a position as a local lifeguard. Sloane’s movie is so thin in concept that he apparently runs out of story after the first forty five minutes and begins staging softcore sex scenes set to library music. You know the kind of scenes I talk about if you ever watched Cinemax After Dark. Yes, it was probably good fodder for late night cable syndication, but it becomes obvious writer-director Sloane is padding the run time as much as he can to fit a ninety minute running time.

“Bikini Academy” revels in its low budget to deliver some of the goofiest comedy and action ever put to film. The characters have to go through a series of “Revenge of the Nerds” like trials and performances that will make them eligible for a big position as a lifeguard and a highly coveted job that will grant them some opportunities. This is especially fortunate for villainous Bodacia, who is hell bent on winning the contest to improve her modeling career. She takes every measure to win, including bedding a judge or two. Along the way the potential lifeguards also have to help the occasional swimmer, including one woman who very nearly gets dragged in to the water by what is obviously a rubber giant squid.

And in case you doubt director Sloane, you can make out the fake wobbling squid under the water as our stunt actress tries to desperately break free from its tentacles. It’s such an inexplicable scene tacked on for absolutely no rationale that you’ll giggle for a bit and then scratch your head baffled. The laughs don’t stop there. As villain Bodacia looks for a cause to bring to the competition to compete for the job of lifeguard, she conveniently finds a single marlin on the beach covered in oil, and decides to use it as an issue to fight for. Forget how nothing else on the beach is covered in oil, but the fish is so obviously a prop that it’s stiff as a board.

Who knew fish get rigor mortis? Or maybe Tane McClure is just that hot. Rick Sloane must know what everyone watching this movie does, because Kelli Hoffman is not only the hottest woman in the movie, but she manages to steal every single scene she’s shares with the cast. Despite only having a small supporting role, and popping up every now and then, every time she does, it’s a treat for the eyes. The real attraction though is Steven Todd Lange as love interest Brock. His performance here is so stilted and rigged, it feels like director Sloane pulled him out of his office during lunch to read some lines and pretend to be invested in his role.

Rick Sloane relies on a steady formula of repeating the same beats again and again: there’s some kind of cat fight between Tane McClure and heroine Raelynn Saalman, someone makes a few sex jokes and double entendres, there’s a few peeks of women in tight bikinis and Kelli Hoffman looks for any excuse to stroll by on screen. In the end, it all feels like Rick Sloane was still stuck in the mid-eighties, and what comes up is a fairly solid diversion that drips gratuitous schlock at every turn. There’s big breasts, big squids, and a running gag centered on corn, for some reason. It’s a classic Rick Sloane oddity.

You Have to See This! Hardbodies (1984)

Posted on July 4, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Since the sixties were in vogue in the eighties, you could probably build an entire sub-genre of films based on and around beaches. There were so many films revolving around guys trying to get laid in and around beaches, or living in beach houses, that it’s surprising almost every studio thought they’d cash in on this concept. There was even the silly “Back to the Beach,” an all star eighties ode to the classic Frankie and Annette beach blanket bingo comedies. Talk about childhood favorites.

This time around, “Hardbodies” is set during the best beach in the world, where apparently almost every hot woman in America go to, to either roller skate, or scamper around with their friends. The beach is filled with gorgeous women otherwise known as “hardbodies” to the local men, and main character Scotty is apparently the head of the game which involves hunting for women and getting them in bed as often as he possibly can. Scotty, despite being sex hungry, is the hero of the film that transforms from sex comedy, to dramatic romance, to sex comedy again and again you’ll likely feel confused toward the finale.

Scotty is a slacker and ladies man who roams the beach with his best friend Rag looking to score with gorgeous women. They’re called “Hardbodies,” and he’s more than successful in bedding his fair share of beach bunnies. After being kicked out of his apartment by his ruthless landlord, Scotty luckily meets three middle aged men who hire him to get them in to hot parties and hook them up with as many gorgeous women as he can. All seems to be going well, but when Scotty begins falling for sexual conquest Kristi, he’s torn between endless one night stands, or being in his first real committed relationship.

Scotty is your typical smooth talking slacker from the eighties, who spends most of his time running around the beach and trying to talk women in to bed with him, along with his best friend. He is also a part of the beach’s patrol, so he’s in charge of throwing out riff raff and helping other people have a good time. He even craftily throws out a group of perverted losers by siccing a biker gang on hem.

Partying of course doesn’t do much for his lifestyle, as Scotty is about to be kicked out by a merciless landlord that is more than happy to kick him out on his butt. Just Scotty’s luck a trio of middle aged businessmen has moved in to a local beach house and wants to have a good time and are willing to hire Scotty for the chance at tail. Scotty begrudgingly agrees and spends a good portion of the movie trying his best to hook the trio of men up with gorgeous women, all of whom have some sort of motive for the swingers.

This involves a ton of montages of the men hitting on beach bunnies and often bungling in their attempts, and throwing a wild party that involves a large amount of topless shots and sexual innuendo that is quite entertaining. At one point Scotty invites a tall gorgeous aspiring model to meet an agent at the party, and despite her anger at his lie, he convinces her to go to his room and take pictures anyway. Soon enough a crowd of women are in Scotty’s room competing for photo ops, apparently for the chance to be featured in the dictionary next to the word “Gullible.”

You could sum up the movie in one simple sentence, but “Hardbodies” has a lot of plot to it, and a ton of sub-plots that the writers work hard to resolve with enough believability. Along with Scotty working with the trio of men to get them laid, he’s also committing to Kristi, an intended one night stand he begins falling in love with. He also tricks a female rock band in to playing his party and falls in to success when the band garners interest from a professional promoter.

There’s also a large amount of focus on one of the older men Ashby, who begins a raunchy affair with kinky Michelle (as played by the obscenely sexy Kristi Somers), that transforms in to a romance. Their sub-plot contributes to a lot of the better moments of “Hardbodies,” including her bouncing on him while he’s half asleep, and a very heavily implied oral sex scene.

One of the banner scenes involves Michelle challenging Ashby to keep playing his guitar while she commits to her “act,” resulting in a rather hilarious reaction from him as he struggles to finish his guitar melody. If that’s not enough there’s another fun sub-plot with Courtney Gains, who plays Scotty’s loyal best friend Rag. Rag is your typical eighties goofball best friend who spends most of the movie also trying to get laid, and eventually manages to win the heart of a woman.

“Hardbodies” goes off the rails mid-way in favor of Scotty’s fight to keep his relationship with new girlfriend Kristi. After constantly striking out and harassing a girl to the point of sexual assault, the leader of the middle aged trio Hunter, gets in to a fight with Scotty and makes a play for Kristi. Soon enough, Hunter and Scotty are at war with one another for Kristi’s heart, and Scotty begins striking back at the player with a series of carefully orchestrated pranks that do him in.

While the endless sub-plots set up do make “Hardbodies” needlessly crowded with story, it revels in its simple premise based around getting women naked as often as possible, and featuring a lot of “hardbodies” walking around for the camera. We also get some past storylines showing up in the goofy climax, involving the skuzz bag beach crashers from the first half of the movie. We even get an obligatory old woman fainting at the sight of her naked middle aged son posing for the women in the party.

As an added bonus there’s the liberal use of the original “Partytime” by 45 Grave.

There was apparently a “Hardbodies” sequel set in Greece, but since it was IMDB Bottom 100 fodder at one time, I doubt I’ll get to it any time soon. For pure 1980’s raunchy beach blanket nonsense, though, there’s at least 1984’s “Hardbodies.” You’d be a fool not to respect the film’s trademark hot rod water bed.

You Have to See This! Contamination .7 (1993)

Posted on June 1, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

What if “The China Syndrome” was remade but featuring the budget of the Craft Services, three writers amounting to a horrible script, and a cast with zero skill to deliver even the most fundamental dialogue? You ultimately get the utterly awful “Contamination .7” where in a small town named Smallsville, is being terrorized by a deadly outbreak of man killing tree roots that murder anyone and everyone for reasons unexplained. They reside in a contaminated forest covered in radioactive waste. Not a single troll rears its head at any point in the movie.

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You Have to See This! Roller Boogie (1979)

Posted on May 3, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

It’s really charming how much confidence UA Pictures seems to place on the fad of roller disco. I’m assuming what with the implentation of the disco scene for John Badham’s “Saturday Night Fever,” I guess someone naturally assumed UA Pictures could market on that success by featuring a coming of age drama in the same vein but with roller disco. The problem with “Roller Boogie,” though is that while it aspires for bigger things, the film falls squarely in the middle of mediocrity. “Roller Boogie” is not a bad film, nor is it a terribly cheesy one like “Breakin’.” It’s merely a depiction of a dance fad that didn’t have a real staying power, and the gimmick isn’t used to tell a very compeling tale when all is said and done.

Not even Mark Lester could breathe a sense of life or energy behind his film, as it suffers from too much plot and a narrative that’s much too formulaic for a film with the pretense of originality. That’s a shame since Linda Blair is a very solid actress who can pull off the girl next door protagonist whenever she really wants to. Considering the film is more for teens, Blair never really sheds her clothing, but that doesn’t stop her from running around in tight tank tops, hot pants, and short skirts. Blair’s own sex appeal drowns out anything else the movie tries to push in terms of character or sub-plot, and she only comes out ahead slightly above everyone else. Blair is Terry, a young privileged teenager who is on her way to college.

She is a gifted classical musician whose posh parents have gotten her in to an upscale college but, woe is her, she wants to be a roller disco dancer. Apparently there’s a massive population of roller disco dancers in California and on the boardwalk. They travel in packs and perform tricks for tourists while riding to their every day jobs, and Terry wants anxiously to be a part of it all. Bobby James is a fast talking hustler who is also the best roller disco dancer of them all and Terry hires him to teach her all of the best dance moves and skills.

Meanwhile, Terry wants to garner her affection and become her boyfriend while teaching her how to master dance moves on roller skates. The writers also feature a sub-plot involving Bobby’s group of friends which never has a major impact on the overall resolution of the film.

The main crux of the movie is that the roller disco club Jammers is being strong armed out of business by local thugs, and the owner of the club has decided to retire. The roller disco crew want to keep it opened, though, and decide to band together to help the owner. Because disco is forever, baby! Most of the film is centered around the relationship between Terry and Bobby, and how Terry is so not your normal rich girl. She loves him, then hates him, then loves him, and then loves him more because he wants her for her body and not her money.

“Roller Boogie” wouldn’t be so bad if it managed to dig up an interesting storyline and wasn’t so concerned with being more of a safe drama comedy, with dancers suddenly banding together to save their favorite hang out and battling evil land owners. It’s such a dull premise considering there could have been so much more developed around a fascinating form of dance. Look at “Roll Bounce,” a movie about roller disco that happens to be pretty fun since it draws an interesting conflict and channels the vibe of the seventies so much better.

Here it’s less about the dancing and more about Terry rebelling against her upper crest wealth family. Which contradicts the tone as a whole since Lester spends a lot of time with montages of the roller disco dancers doing what they do best. For a film a little under two hours, if director Lester didn’t spend so much time filming various dancers flipping and rolling around the film would be much more compact and easier to endure. Lester has a clear idea of how to spotlight the unique dance form, but the writers have absolutely nothing to do with it. Terry wants to rebel, then she falls for her trainer, then she teams up with the other dancers to save her favorite club and there’s a very rushed climactic dance competition. Of course Terry and Bobby win the contest easily, since the lack of minorities in this movie is more frightenin than “Hell Night,” but that’s a whole other topic altogether. If anything, at least “Roller Boogie” sports a neat disco soundtrack, including a prominent playing of “Boogie Wonderland.”

Plus there’s Lester’s nigh endless footage of dancers rolling around and flipping begins to feel like a documentary, screeching any attempt at momentum with the narrative to a grinding halt. With director Mark L. Lester directing, and Blair starring, you assume we’d have an instant classic on our hands, but “Roller Boogie” isn’t anything remotely special. It’s so plainly bland and forgettable, I’d just about forgotten everything I’d seen when the credits rolled. The movie is barely at the level of “Xanadu” concerning cheese and kitsch value, which doesn’t bode well for star Blair who likely hoped this would skyrocket her as a bonafide leading lady for more youth oriented films.

It’s too bad, too, considering Blair is a solid actress with a girl next door appeal that makes her worth watching in other kinds of films that aren’t horror oriented. And let’s face it, the only reason to watch “Roller Boogie” is because of Blair who looks insanely sexy during her performance and is pretty much off the charts in hotness.

Mark L. Lester’s goofy attempt to market on the Roller Disco craze is a very non-threatening and silly movie whose main crime is being so utterly forgettable. It’s not one of the worst movies ever made, but it also never achieves heights of cult infamy like “Xanadu” and “Staying Alive.” It’s just a brutally mediocre and middling sport drama comedy that you’ll forget about, even in spite of the incredibly vivacious Lindar Blair starring.

You Have to See This! April Fool’s Day (1986)

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

It’s a horror comedy! It’s a drama! It’s a murder mystery! It’s definitely not a slasher movie. Sure, the movie poster for it is legendary, but “April Fool’s Day” despite always being plugged in to the slasher sub-genre is not at all a slasher movie. What it is, is a murder mystery with a great sense of humor. If you go in to “April Fool’s Day” with a good nature, you just might enjoy how it twists horror conventions and tells a ripping good mystery. It’s “April Fool’s Day,” one of the many holiday oriented horror movies that dared to stray from the trend of slasher films when everyone else was featuring a masked maniac walking around hacking teenagers to pieces. Thanks to it doing poorly at the box office, it’s often blamed for the death of the slasher movie in the eighties. I think the blame falls squarely on the laps of Paramount who probably didn’t know how to advertise this movie, and wanted badly to create another holiday themed slasher film.

The wealthy Muffy St. John is hosing a party at her island mansion with a group of her close college friends on the weekend leading in to the ever infamous April Fool’s Day. Muffy is a lover of pranks and gags, implementing them on her guests, and encouraging them to have a good time. Suddenly party guests begin to disappear and guest Nan realizes the games aren’t so funny anymore, discovering the bodies and limbs of her friends. The guests soon realize they’re incapable of leaving the island until the end of the weekend and must figure out a way to survive until then. Especially now that they’ve learned their friend Muffy has been replaced by her criminally insane and psychotic twin sister Buffy.

I’ll repeat: This has all the set up of a slasher film, but it’s not at all a slasher film. It sure is clever and quite funny, though. I must have gazed at the poster for “April Fool’s Day” a thousand times when I was a small kid, mainly because it was prominently hanged in the video store my aunt worked in, and whenever she babysat for us I’d pass it every minute when playing with my cousin. Horror movies of the eighties were known for creating some of the most interesting and memorable movie posters in cinema history, mainly because the poster had to encapsulate everything about the film in one poster. It also had to slightly mislead you, which movie fans often forgave.

“April Fool’s Day” has a bang up movie poster with a young woman standing in front a party cheering a glass of champagne, her pony tail tied in a noose, while she brandishes a butcher knife behind her back. While there is no slashing to be had, the presence of nooses and ropes are quite prominent in “April Fool’s Day” and it serves as a consistent gag. The poster is a prime example on how to market a horror movie that is essentially a whodunit mystery film with slight tinges of murder here and there. The movie holds true to its title, offering so many plot twists and fake outs in the first twenty minutes, you’re left watching the rest of the film never really sure if you’re being tricked in to something, if a maniac is on the loose murdering guests at young Muffy’s party, or if Muffy’s intention for a nice party has ended in blood soaked terror.

Director Fred Walton is very good about pacing his movie, offering a nice build up to the horror by featuring a lot of exposition and neat gags here and there. With Muffy inviting her friends over a weekend getaway, the party quickly spirals in to a series of hilarious April fool’s pranks. There’s the old dribble cup gag, the break away chair that character Arch (Thomas F. Wilson fresh off of “Back to the Future”) falls for twice. The funniest physical prat fall involves him in his room preparing to look at a skin mag and tumbling backward. There’s also a hilarious gag involving trick lamps that prompts character Nikki to respond with uncontrollable laughter. What becomes the general premise of “Apri Fool’s Day” is how much are we seeing it made up, and how much is complete truth?

Some audiences may find the ultimate resolution completely ridiculous and a big waste of time, while others might enjoy that the movie not only completely avoids being a typical horror movie, but also side steps a typical finale involving the murderer and a fight for survival. Director Walton likened “April Fool’s Day” to an Agatha Christie mystery, and for the most part, the movie unfolds exactly as such. What begins as a nice light hearted romp of friends involving pranks turns in to terror as each party guest are systematically knocked off. They’re also knocked off off-screen by an unseen assailant leaving us to try to figure out who among these people are knocking off the guests. Walton directs the sequences well, including one moment involving a snake, and another centered on floating severed heads.

“April Fool’s Day” garnered a significant cult following later in its shelf life, thanks to the fact its low blood and boob count allowed it to be aired on late night television numerous times. It’s sad that “April Fool’s Day” earned an audience with that kind of circumstance since the movie is so clever and witty most times. It even garners a nice cast of eighties character actors like Amy Steel, and the lovely Deborah Foreman who is absolutely gorgeous as central antagonist Muffy. “April Fool’s Day” ends up being one big labyrinth of back story and exposition intended to keep the audience on a hook and waiting for the big delivery much like Muffy’s party guests, and it works if you can appreciate what director Walton was going for.

Like most murder mysteries, there’s the big explanation to resolve all of the lingering plot points, and for the most part it works, and works very well. You might have to suspend some disbelief in the reasoning for what occurs, but it goes down well thanks to the above average performances, and light hearted sense of lunacy that ensues. Director Walton’s film is one big parlor trick with a great twist ending, and he embraces it with a fun final frame set to the hilariously weird “Too Bad You’re Crazy” by Jerry Whitman.

When I first saw “April Fool’s Day,” I was a preteen who loved everything involving slasher movies and was utterly sore after finishing it realizing it’s not a slasher movie at all. Years later, I appreciate it so much more as a sly twist on the murder mystery, brandishing a slick sense of humor, a stern tongue in cheek, and a ton of great moments of misdirection that make it a nice horror gem worth experimenting with. In a decade filled with slasher movies, “April Fool’s Day” dares to be different, and passes the test.