{"id":7686,"date":"2024-10-30T23:12:39","date_gmt":"2024-10-31T03:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=7686"},"modified":"2024-10-30T23:12:39","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T03:12:39","slug":"slaughter-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/30\/slaughter-high\/","title":{"rendered":"Slaughter High"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Slaughter High <\/strong>(1986)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Vestron\/Horror-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (graphic violence, language, sexual content, nudity including male full frontal, drugs)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Mark Ezra, Peter Litten and George Dugdale\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Mark Ezra, Peter Litten and George Dugdale\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Harry Manfredini\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Alan Pudney\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 14, 1986 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Caroline Munro, Simon Scuddamore, Carmine Iannaccone, Kelly Baker, Sally Cross, Billy Hartman, Gary Martin, Michael Saffran, Josephine Scandi, John Segal, Donna Yeagar, Jon Clark, Marc Smith, Dick Randall.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Body Count: 13<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

FUN FACT: The original title of the slasher comedy Slaughter High<\/strong> was April Fool\u2019s Day. It was changed when the producers learned that Paramount would be releasing a slasher movie of the same name that same year.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s no way Slaughter High<\/strong> is a straight-up horror movie. It\u2019s too goofy to be anything other than a spoof of the slasher genre. How else are we expected to take a film that tries to pass off 35YO Caroline Munro (Maniac) as a high school student? Can we say \u201cStockard Channing in Grease\u201d?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Although I saw the box often in my local video stores, I didn\u2019t rent Slaughter High<\/strong> back in the day for the same reason I avoided other titles that bypassed theaters. At least it did in my area. According to Wikipedia, it opened on 38 screens in the US in April \u201987 after a limited run the previous November. I have no idea where any of those theaters are or were. It doesn\u2019t matter though; the point is it didn\u2019t open in Philly. In any event, it took me over 30 years to reach a point where I was finally interested in watching it. I\u2019m glad I did, it\u2019s actually pretty good.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It all begins with a humiliating prank on school nerd Marty Rantzen (the late Scuddamore who committed suicide shortly after filming completed in \u201984) by the popular crowd led by class sexpot Carol (Munro). Naturally, it involves luring him into the girl\u2019s locker room with the promise of sex only to be embarrassed in front of the student body instead. Things escalate and one chem lab explosion later, Marty is disfigured and insane.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Ten years later, the gang gathers for a class reunion at their now-closed alma mater, a locked building slated for demolition. Class clown Skip (Iannaccone) and the others- Carol, Nancy (Baker), Susan (Cross), Frank (Hartman), Joe (Martin), Ted (Saffran), Shirley (Scandi), Carl (Segal) and Stella (Yeager)- show up only to find they\u2019re the only ones invited to this reunion. They break into the school to explore. In one of their old classrooms, they discover a party- food drink and decorations- waiting for them. Their old lockers have also been moved to the room.\u00a0 So has Marty\u2019s. They talk about what they did to him in high school. They eat, drink and do drugs. Then one of them chugs a beer that turns out to be nitric acid. His stomach explodes. SPLAT! Guts everywhere! Everybody tries to run, but somebody has locked all the doors. Could it be the creepy guy running around in a jester\u2019s mask? And who is that masked man? Three guesses and the first two don\u2019t count.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For me, the most important part of any slasher flick is lots of blood and gore. Slaughter High<\/strong> totally delivers on this front. It has some really cool kill scenes. A woman is dissolved in an acid bath. Why there\u2019s a bathtub in a high school is anybody\u2019s guess. One guy is disemboweled by a lawnmower. A couple having sex is electrocuted with a car battery attached to the bed frame. Somebody is stabbed in the eye with a syringe. Another guy gets it in the head with an axe. A woman gets a javelin to the gut. It gets pretty gruesome. HOWEVER, it goes down easier because of the tongue-in-cheek approach to the material by writer-directors Mark Ezra, Peter Litten and George Dugdale.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m not sure if I was supposed to, but I laughed a lot during Slaughter High<\/strong>. I couldn\u2019t help it. The characters are all such damn fools. What kind of a dipstick goes outside in the dark alone and gets into a car without checking the back seat first for…. oh, I don\u2019t know, MAYBE A DERANGED KILLER? You know there\u2019s one running around, use your head! What\u2019s interesting is that Slaughter High<\/strong> never comes off as a parody. It\u2019s not self-aware like Wes Craven\u2019s Scream. The characters don\u2019t comment on the clich\u00e9s of the genre. There\u2019s no irony. It\u2019s simply silly.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Caroline Munro is FREAKING HOT! How else can I put it? Look at her as Stella Starr in the 1979 Star Wars knock-off Starcrash. WOW! She looks pretty great here too. Scuddamore, in his one and only film role, makes you feel for Marty. The rest of the acting is fairly clownish. I wouldn\u2019t even call them characters. They\u2019re lambs lined up for the slaughter. It\u2019s pretty much the same in most slasher flicks. BTW, did anybody notice that the score contains echoes of Friday the 13th<\/sup>? That\u2019s because Harry Manfredini composed both scores. He\u2019s good. It also has decent effects especially the Evil Dead-like effects in the acid bath scene.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As far as silly slasher movies go, Slaughter High<\/strong> is one of the better ones. It also works as a teenage revenge fantasy. What nerd doesn\u2019t fantasize about getting even with everybody that made high school a living hell for him? It\u2019s the kind of movie that makes you side with the killer. I know I did. These people deserve what they get. They were (and are) horrible. If I was in a crowded theater, I\u2019d be cheering Marty on. For a slasher movie to do that is pretty cool. Now I really wish I had watched it way back when.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slaughter High (1986)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Vestron\/Horror-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (graphic violence, language, sexual content, nudity including male full frontal, drugs)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Mark Ezra, Peter Litten and George Dugdale\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Mark Ezra, Peter Litten and George Dugdale\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Harry Manfredini\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Alan Pudney\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 14, 1986 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Caroline Munro, Simon Scuddamore, Carmine Iannaccone, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7866,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Slaughter-High-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7686"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7868,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7686\/revisions\/7868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}