SLAUGHTER HIGH (1986) DVD REVIEW

Here's a film that i thought might be an good old school slash fest, with lashings of blood, boobs and babes, well one babe, two boobs and some blood doesn't exactly fit my criteria, Slaughter High unfortunately missed the mark for me, find out why i was not a fan of this film after the jump...

During the 80s, we had the slasher boom, everything from Slumber Parties, summer camps and even dreams fell victim to a new 'breed of evil'. One of these films also fell victim to bad advertising and production, that film was 1986's SLAUGHTER HIGH. Much like Troma's 1984 hit The Toxic Avenger, SH took the same sort of theme of the geek getting revenge on the bullies, but SH was minus the monsters. This one however took place at a high school reunion where each of the bullies was picked off by a genuinely creepy, jester masked killer by the name of Marty, forever scarred after a practical joke went to far. But apart from these creepy villain and some pretty ingenius kills the film never hits the spot when it comes to it's production.

The fact that the film had three directors also didn't do the film justice but one of the directors Mark Ezra, who also scripted, stated that they thought it worked well, you have one doing all the normal talking scenes, one doing all the kills and one who made sure that everything was going smoothly, I think they call them producer's these days. Ezra had a great idea, if done correctly SH would have been or should have been a brilliant piece of slasher cinema instead it's more LAUGHTER HIGH than SLAUGHTER HIGH.

The plot goes like this, a group of school bullies constantly pick on poor Marty. After an incident in a school lab that goes to far, poor Marty is hospitalised. Five years later and it's reunion time and also time for revenge. The whole gang is there and one by one Marty kills them off.

That is pretty much the plot, it's a generic slasher formula, but what makes this different than say Wes Craven's films or Friday 13^th? Well I'll tell you, this film is incredibly badly made, the direction is poor, the dialogue and acting is awful, it has bad lighting and it's very obvious that this was shot in the U.K doubling for the U.S. None of it works well and it's a shame because it could have been great. The film does have two redeeming features; the gore is great, some really interesting kills such as the electrocution bed and the acid beer and the other is Caroline Munro, star of Hammer films, Maniac, Luigi Cozzi's Star Crash (with the Hoff) and bond girl in The Spy Who Loved Me, who brings much need professionalism it an other wise amateur production.

The film was produced by Z-grade film producer Dick Randall, the man responsible for films such as Don't Open Till Christmas, a gazillion films that tried to capitalize on the fame of Bruce Lee staring people like Bruce Le, Bruce Li, or Jackey Chang and a cornucopia of soft-core erotica which is probably why this looks so amateurish, Roger Corman made more professional films than this when he started in the 50s. It's just bad, but strangely entertaining in a so bad it's unintentionally good.

So To end my review of SLAUGHTER HIGH, the main question is, did I enjoy it?

Well I kind of did, it had this strange likeable quality to it, a sort of cheesy charm that although being extremely flawed such as the scene where Munro throws a javelin down to the body of Marty, but instead of aiming it at him she essentially gives him a weapon, and the complete what the fuck ending which didn't make any sense until you go 'oh, wow they copped out there'. The strange thing about the ending is that it's more professional than the previous 90 minutes, some great camera work and lighting that doesn't compensate for the rest of the film. It's considered a lost slasher classic, but to be perfectly honest it could have stayed lost as it achieves absolutely nothing new and offers little more than the same old same old. I am glad i've seen it because it's what keeps this site going, but would I recommend it? Probably not, it's worth a rent or if it's on the Horror Channel, but would I spend hard earned cash on it, well no unless like me you can find it cheap as chips.

So it's probably better to watch films such as Nighmare On Elm Street or the awesome Slumber Party Massacre instead.

THE DISC.

Arrow have released a brilliant disc, not only does it come with a restored print of the film, you get two commentaries, one with Caroline Munro and one with Mark Ezra, 2 very interesting inteviews with Caroline Munro and Mark Ezra, the former talks about the film and basically says it's shit and the Munro interview is a sort of overview on her career as she talks about the films she made for Hammer and how she became very close friends with Joe Spinell (Maniac) and it's an interesting watch. You also get some great commissioned art work from artist Rick Melton which is part of a double-sided sleeve with an Italian poster, a great booklet on the film from Calum Waddle along with a great poster feature the new artwork. So all in all a great package, it's just a shame the package is 100 times better than the film.