Classic Horrors Club

It’s April Fool’s day at Slaughter High (1986) and Carol (the 35-year-old, but still lovely, student, Caroline Munro) leads poor Marty (Simon Scuddamore) into the locker room for a cruel prank that turns bad. Later that day in the science lab, Chekov’s beaker full of nitric acid wobbles on a shelf and Marty uses a Bunsen burner to light a joint. Long story short… and it’s a loooong story to set up Marty’s revenge (nearly one-third of the entire 90-minute film)… there’s a fire in the lab, Marty grabs a hot pipe and burns his hands, then there’s an explosion. As paramedics wheel Marty out on a stretcher, Carol bends over him and says she’s sorry.

Here’s the first jump scare that doesn’t work (there are more) as Marty suddenly reaches up and grabs her. Ten years later, Carol (the 35-year-old, but closer to age-appropriate, Caroline Munro) meets her cohorts in crime at Doddsville County High School, which is abandoned, for their reunion. When they arrive, the eight of them seem to be the only ones invited. Of course, it’s a stormy night and they find themselves locked inside and picked off one by one for Marty’s revenge. The end gets a little twisty, but by then, it’s too little too late. For a slasher made more than halfway through the craze, it borrows liberally from the films that came before instead of having even one original idea.

Did you know that April Fools’ Day ends at noon and if someone plays a prank after that, they’re given the title of “April fool?” I didn’t. It’s because it’s a tradition in the United Kingdom, where the movie was made. The story takes place in the United States, though. The location doesn’t really matter, but another location does: the high school. The exterior was shot at an abandoned mental asylum and is the scariest part of the movie. The interior was shot inside a condemned grammar school. Although the filmmakers had to add lockers, it feels authentic. And since it was scheduled to be demolished, they were able to light it on fire and use explosives.

When it was made, Munro was secretly dating one of the three writer/directors, George Dugdale. (They later married and stayed married until his death in early 2020.) His only other credit was a 1990 film called Living Doll, which he wrote with one of the other writer/directors of Slaughter High, Peter Mackenzie Litten. He directed it with the final writer/director of Slaughter High, Mark Ezra. They did a good enough job that they sold the film at Cannes. It had a brief theatrical run, but made its money, I’m guessing, on VHS. The cover art for the box is memorable, if not representative of what happens in the movie.

Marty wears a jester costume as he stalks the former classmates. I suppose that’s the movie’s one unique feature. However, it reminds me of an obscure 1994 horror/comedy called, Funny Man, with Christopher Lee. Slaughter High came first, though, so deserves the credit for whatever that’s worth. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s certainly not better than average. It’s too drawn out, as if the filmmakers were trying to get a full 90 minutes out of it. It does have Munro, though, whom I credit for bringing the film up to average. At any age, appropriate for the movie or not, she’s well above average.