Graduation Day (1981) IFI/Scope III/Horror RT: 96 minutes Rated R (strong violence, nudity, sexual references, language, drugs) Director: Herb Freed Screenplay: Herb Freed and Anne Marisse Music: Arthur Kempel Cinematography: Daniel Yarussi Release date: May 8, 1981 (US) Cast: Christopher George, Patch Mackenzie, E. Danny Murphy, E.J. Peaker, Michael Pataki, Richard Balin, Carmen Argenziano, Beverly Dixon, Virgil Frye, Hal Bokar, Linda Shayne (uncredited), Denise Cheshire, Billy Hufsey, Linnea Quigley, Karen Abbott, Vanna White, Ruth Ann Llorens, Tom Hintnaus, Carl Rey, Patrick Wright, Grant Loud, Felony. Box Office: $23.8M (US)
Rating: *
I don’t recall the slasher flick Graduation Day opening in Philadelphia at any point in ’81. I’d know if it had. I was always right on top of what movies were playing in theaters in my neck of the woods. I’d definitely remember one with a cool title like Graduation Day. I saw it in early ’83 at a video store with a female proprietor who ran R-rated movies for the local teens. I liked it at the time, but it was more for the forbidden fruit factor than the quality of the movie which is actually quite poor. I didn’t realize how bad a movie it is until I bought a used VHS copy from a West Coast Video going out of business in 2000. It’s easily one of the worst, if not the WORST, slasher movies I’ve ever seen.
As you may have already surmised, Graduation Day concerns a masked psychopath dispatching high school seniors right before…. you guessed it, graduation day. The teens in question all belong to the track team at Midvale High. They recently experienced tragedy when a star runner collapsed and died after crossing the finishing line at a meet. Everybody in town blames Coach Michaels (George, Enter the Ninja) for pushing her too hard. How was he to know she had a blood clot in her heart? ANYWAY, her older sister Anne (Mackenzie, It’s Alive III), a naval officer, returns home for the graduation ceremony to accept a trophy in her honor. She also wants to meet her sister’s boyfriend Kevin (Murphy, Tomboy) who kept in touch with her after the girl’s death.
Meanwhile, somebody has it out for the dead girl’s team members. The killer, clad in a gray sweat suit and black gloves, uses a stopwatch to time his/her kills, always stopping it at 30 seconds. The killer starts by cutting the throat of a girl (Shayne, Screwballs) jogging through the park. Next, the killer takes out gymnast Sally (Cheshire, the naked swimmer from 1941) by impaling her through the throat with a fencing sword. And so it goes until there’s hardly anybody left.
You might assume that Graduation Day will follow Anne’s attempts to unmask the killer, but you’d be dead wrong. In fact, NOBODY is even aware of the killings until late in the game. Here’s what I find hard to believe. The bodies are left in places where somebody could easily find them like the park or under the bleachers. How is it nobody stumbles across a single body in the 24-hour period the murders take place? I suppose you could ask the same question of any given Friday the 13th movie, but here it just seems too far-fetched. It’s the kind of thing you don’t really notice except in the case of a weak screenplay. That is definitely the case with Graduation Day.
Getting back to the movie’s main plotline, there really isn’t one. Graduation Day is all over the place with a long list of suspects and more red herrings than you can shake an imaginary fishing pole at. Although revealing the identity of the killer is probably a non-issue 40 years down the line, I’ll still try and talk around it for the benefit of younger generations of slasher movie fans who might want to give Graduation Day a look-see at some point. In short, it’s extremely predictable. The character you’re supposed to think is the killer is too obvious a suspect. Given what this person lost as a result of the girl’s death, it would be weird if this person didn’t want revenge. As such, this suspect can be eliminated. The actual killer is right there all along. You know there’s something off about this person from the moment he/she enters the scene. On that, I’ll only say that this person takes a page from Norman Bates’ book on how to be a psycho.
When it comes to teen slasher flicks, I NEVER expect a realistic depiction of high school and Graduation Day is no exception. The students all look old enough to be college grads. They never go to class. Most of the girls, like Dolores (sexy scream queen Quigley), act like sluts. The male teachers, especially the music teacher (Balin, Schizoid), are letches. The security guard (Frye, Revenge of the Ninja) is a dimwitted creep. The principal (Pataki, Halloween 4) spends most of his time ducking calls from parents while his secretary Blondie (Peaker from Hello, Dolly!) appears to live for pissing off the boss. An institution of higher learning such as this only exists in bad teen movies. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear Graduation Day is a spoof, but that honor belongs to Student Bodies.
To its credit, Graduation Day has some cool kill scenes. My personal favorites are the football player (Rey) getting it with a metal spike through a football and the pole vaulter (Hintnaus) landing on a mat containing sharpened steel spikes. SPLAT! There’s also the fellow (Hufsey, TV’s Fame) who gets decapitated right before he’s about to have sex with his girlfriend in the woods. The noise is drowned out by loud rock music from a nearby roller rink hosting the graduation party. I haven’t seen a roller skating scene this out of nowhere since Heaven’s Gate.
Kill scenes are about all Graduation Day has going for it. There is zero character development. The acting is mostly terrible, but the late George hams it up nicely in a few scenes. BTW, Wheel of Fortune letter turner Vanna White shows up in a small role. Given her contribution here, I urge her to never quit her night job. The screenplay is badly written. Plot elements, like Anne’s relationship with her bitter, drunken stepdad (Bokar, Leonard Part 6), are introduced with absolutely no follow-through. The home life of another character isn’t given any attention even though it seems like it should be important to the story. The direction by Herb Freed (Haunts) isn’t much better. He takes too long between kill scenes. He doesn’t even have the decency to fill the dead space with naked boobs. How rude!
What we basically have with Graduation Day is a slasher movie that doesn’t even work on the terms of its genre. It’s moronic. At the same time, I don’t actually hate it. Once again, we have a bad movie from the 80s that’s easier to take than the bad movies of today. Even though this one is especially bad, I’d still rather watch it than the watered-down swill we’ve been subjected to these past 20 years. Yes, Graduation Day is pure trash, but I have a measure of respect for it. It doesn’t make it a better movie, but it’s one I can watch a sense of nostalgia.
