Final Girl Film Club: Slaughter High
I am taking part in the Final Girl Film Club today. The movie chosen by the esteemed Miss Ponder is 1986’s Slaughter High.
Slaughter High is the story of Marty Rantzen (Simon Scuddamore). Poor, pathetic Marty Rantzen. He’s a nerd who is invited by Carol (Caroline Monroe), the hottest girl in school, for a private make out session. She leads him the girls locker room. This would send warning bells to any real nerd. But not Marty, he thinks Carol is hot for his bod. She gets him to strip and get in the shower. Now, we the audience know this is a horrible and cruel joke, the popular kids have set up. It’s elaborate, and involved swirlies and electrocution. But while they are torturing poor Marty, the coach catches them and all the kids get in trouble. They of course know exactly whose fault this is. Marty’s.
So in revenge they give Marty some bad weed to smoke, making him sick, then they sabotage his high school science experiment. This always leads to trouble. Marty gets set on fire AND burned with acid and then the lab explodes. Marty survives, otherwise we would have no film.
This film has the tried and true “adults as teens”. Caroline Monroe was 34 at the time. Simon Scuddamore was 30(This was his only film, he actually worked at a school for deprived kids. He killed himself two years later, when the film was released). This is okay in the long run for the film, as it jumps ahead to the high school reunion ten years later.
When the cool kids arrive, they find the school in decay, and no one else shows up. This might spell out trap, but to these folks? It says, “Let’s go inside”. Then a storm comes and they have to find a way in. Because they literally waited hours until it was dark before they started to wonder where everyone else is. Once inside they start to explore. They discover their old lockers grouped together and even find Marty’s locker there, with his year book. This allows someone to tell us what has become of Marty. The rumor is that he works at IBM.
The caretaker runs into the kids and catches them up to speed, the school has been closed for five years and it going to be torn down in a week. Then he walks away to let the kids play. I find this not too surprising…he is out of a job in a week…why should he care?
Whilst playing some drinking games, one of the guys gets sick from bad beer, and his guts explode. This sends everyone scurrying for the doors…everyone but Shirley, she got some guts on her and is looking for a place to clean up before making a run for it. In a first that I noticed, the school has a bathtub in the girs shower, so Shirley undresses and gets in the tub to give us some gratuitous nudity. Shirley decides she needs a bit more water. But as the water pours out of the faucet turns to acid and slowly melts her skin off-well, except for her face which melts off in a rapid time lapse sequence.
While this is happening the others are trying to find their way out but finding themselves locked inside the school. Everyone finds Shirley’s skeleton and the realize that Marty is back. We audience members might have suspected this already, what with multiple “Killer POV Shots”. A few people die of old fashioned stabbings. But along with acid and bad alcohol, we get electrocution during sex (it’s okay, one of the victims was a cheating whore) and drowning, . The keen viewer notes that Marty is using the various ways he was abused as his modus operandi. He does break the mold and kill someone with a riding lawnmower. Marty is running around in a jester mask making his kills.
Some of the remaining victims decide that as this is April Fools day, they only have to last until Noon. Why? Because April Fools Day begins at midnight and ends at…noon? This is according to Skip. And Carol believes him. I think Skip and Carol never graduated. The rest of the world tends to believe that a day is 24 hours long. That is sure what I was taught in school.
Marty successful in his plans to get back at all his tormentors, and as tremendous jerks as all the leads are, it’s hard not to… well, not care about them. This film is pretty sympathetic to Marty-the killer. And while Marty is not the most sympathetic of losers, he is still more sympathetic compared to everyone else.
There are also a lot of inexplicable incidents…exploding light bulbs, water faucets releasing acid, toilets that fill up with blood. Carol’s awful white jumpsuit thing she wears.
Then, of course, there is the twist. Depending on just how involved you were by the story, it just might piss you off. Highlight the text if you do not want this spoiled:
After killing everyone off, He starts declaring he really showed them… APRIL FOOLS!!!! But suddenly, scary voices start calling his name, as he gets closer, he finds his victims are now revenge hungry ghouls! They start chasing him through the school…suddenly, Marty awakens in a hospital bed, kills a nurse and a doctor. He then tears off his face-now insane and ready to kill his tormentors for realz, baby!!!! The entire film was a fever dream after the original prank at the beginning.
Roll credits. The music is bad eighties synth rock and more dated than Nightmare on Elm Street’s synth soundtrack. But in a way, it helps make this bad film enjoyable. This not a good film, but it really veers close enough (if not into) the so bad it is fun territory. It not really a film that makes any sense, but it was 1984-1986. That wasn’t important back then.
Posted in: Horror Films, Movies
In One Ear... 
“Inexplicability” is definitely a good word to describe almost everything that happens in this movie…maybe that’s why I love it. Thanks for joining the Club!!