Slaughter High

‘Where the student body is going to pieces.’

Slaughter High is a 1986 American/British independent slasher film written and directed by George Dugdale, Mark Ezra and Peter Litten. It closely follows the tropes of many other slasher films of the period and is mostly notable for the casting of Caroline Munro in the lead female role and the distinctive jester’s mask worn by the killer.

In an American high school populated by the usual jocks, hot girls and outcasts, Marty Rantzen (Simon Scudamore, misspelled on the credits with an extra ‘d’ – sloppy!) is most firmly the latter, the atypical, bespectacled nerd, good at complicated sums, not so good on basic human interaction. Come April Fool’s Day, Marty can’t believe his luck as he is lured by school sex siren, Carol (Munro) into the girls’ locker room for a baptism of shower-based sex. Alas, this is not the case and whilst disrobed and expectant in the shower, the curtain is pulled to reveal the school jokers armed with video recording equipment and a fire extinguisher to put a dampener on Marty’s dreams and his dignity down the toilet (which is literally where he’s heading, face down, thanks to his tormentors dangling him in).

He is ‘rescued’ by the arrival of the military instructor-like sports coach (played by Marc Smith, best known for his voice acting, of note his redubbing on Dario Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet, and Deep Red) who does little to sympathise with Marty but does insist all the boys responsible report for detention that afternoon. Cleaned up, Marty is given a joint by arch bully Skip (Carmine Iannaccone) as an apology, though it is in fact laced with something less desirable. Sometime later, when Marty is diligently conducting solo chemistry experiments, he tries the joint and immediately rushes to the nearest public convenience to vomit. In his absence, Skip (even shirking detention, the rotter) enters the lab and rigs the experiment to blow up in Marty’s face. This does indeed have the desired effect but in the mayhem of the detonation, Marty knocks a jar of acid over himself, the net result being a half destroyed school and a hideously disfigured and broken nerd.

Some years later (anywhere between five and ten), Marty has disappeared from public life, doomed to a lonely existence as a scarred, damaged and apparently insane man. Meanwhile, his school ‘friends’ are enjoying their reunion, which happens to be on April Fool’s Day. Deciding to revisit their now closed school, though the corridors are still roamed by the old janitor, whose portrayal sets the racial equality movement back several decades. As the kids get down to drinking, smoking, snorting high jinks, the janitor is lifted off the ground by a jester-masked figure (actually played by co-director Ezra) and impaled on a coat hook. So begins a one-by-one slaying of the gang in occasionally inventive ways (intestinal explosion by tampered-with beer is a highlight) in a school which for reasons which are unclear, houses both a bath and a bed. The jester figure is, of course, Marty, eager to exact his revenge, though he leaves his beloved Carol until the end…

Slaughter High is a prime example of the problems which can arise from trans-Atlantic co-productions. Supposedly set in an American school, all the locations are obviousluy leafy Britain, the population of students and staff also British but tasked with adopting US accents, lest the idea of a film not set in America be an insult to the masses. The accents aren’t awful but are all underpinned by the hopelessly forced insistence that in no way is the wool being pulled over everyone’s eyes. Despite the fact that an actual school was used for the filming (remarkably, it did indeed have a bath in situ), the film feels very cramped and is largely shot in only a smattering of locations, again giving the impression that something is being kept from us.

The April Fool’s Day setting does leave the audience with that ‘one last gag’ feeling always looming on the horizon, though this could have been even more lumbering, the title having to be changed from April Fool’s Day to Slaughter High due to a genuinely unfortunate timing issue with the better-known film of that title just pipping it to the release post. Some prints retain this original title and have the replacement hastily tagged on as an apparent afterthought – Vestron’s Japanese release not even bothering with the afterthought. There is a certain irony of the film revolving around a date that so fuels the plot, time and continuity being haphazard throughout, from the eye-narrowing anniversary reunion timing to the incredulity-testing age of the students – Caroline Munro clocking in at 36 years-old at the time of filming and many of her co-stars well into their 20’s at least.

Dugdale and Ezra combined again on the curious if ultimately beige Living Doll (1990) with only the latter evidently staying in the industry, though with little in the way of breakout hits. Co-director Litten had slightly more lasting influence, his special effects creature work seen in Rawhead Rex and more significantly culturally as the co-creator of the non-more-80’s Max Headroom. Caroline Munro is sadly miscast, still radiant but a sore thumb as a school girl and barely more believable as an airhead actress who is just about savvy enough to avoid the casting couch of leering movie producer, Manny (played by actual film producer Dick Randall of Don’t Open Till Christmas and Pieces frame; never one to miss a trick, a poster for Pieces hangs behind him in his office). Munro appeared in the film off the back of The Last Horror Show, before 1987’s Faceless and Howl of the Devil signalled her all but withdrawal from the genre for some time.

Scudamore is far more serviceable in his role, a believable nerd whose character is let down by innate dumbness, belying his academic genius. Given a large school as his lair, it is weakly and unrealistically dressed, leaving him to bookend the film as Ezra, rather meanly, does the jester-masked stomping around. Sadly, aged only 28, Scudamore took his own life shortly after filming through a drugs overdose.

With a masked killer, illegal substances, lithe teens and variable morals, it is fitting that the score is composed and performed by Harry Manfredini, a huge nod to the film’s primary influence, Friday 13th. Manfredini is one of the luckiest of composers for horror films, his career largely pivoting on his work on the 1980 slasher classic, a score which, in truth, consists of piled-high stingers, pilfered exaggerated strings and the oft-repeated killer’s theme and little else of interest. Here he is rumbled somewhat, a clearly more meagre budget revealing his work to be perfunctory at best, at worst cringe-worthy tripe.

Somehow, despite all this, Slaughter High is strangely rewarding viewing. Perhaps it’s the carefree, glitch-ridden production values; perhaps it’s the contact threat of Munro relieving herself of her flouncy, voluminous dress suit (she doesn’t, instead the main nudity is, surprisingly, male and full-frontal). It’s possibly the fact that it sticks to the slasher rulebook so rigidly, the viewer can put in the least effort imaginable to watch… although the ending will jolt even the most heavy-lidded audience out of its slumber with its ridiculousness.