Secondary Slaughter
It's April 1st and geeky Marty's (Simon Scuddamore) birthday which is why when sexy senior Carol (Caroline Munro) wants to take him into the girl's locker room he thinks all his birthdays have come at once. Unfortunately for Marty it is a prank to humiliate him as he ends up getting a blue goldfish and his bad day doesn't end there as later on an accident with some nitric acid in a science lab leaves him horribly disfigured for life. Some years later it is school reunion time and all those who had a hand in Marty's bad day show up to learn that the school is now closed and boarded up but that doesn't stop them from sneaking in when it gets dark. But it seems someone else has returned and he is looking for revenge.
The only thing I knew about "Slaughter High" before watching was that it was a comedy horror from the 80s and in truth was under the impression that it was American. So I was bemused when it started and we entered the Doddsville County High School and this could have been filmed at my secondary school in England as the corridors with the old radiators, notice boards and so on were typically British. It was then that I discovered that "Slaughter High" was filmed in an English school with a young English cast pretending to be American's which is as bad as when young American's try to sound British. At this point I gave up hope of anything close to decent and watched to see how bemused I could become by it all.
So there is a storyline as we have these High School pranksters returning for a reunion, doing some catch up and then having to deal with Marty looking for revenge. But trust me when I say that as a horror movie even a comedy horror "Slaughter High" sucks big time. I can guess it was done tongue in cheek but it is so excruciatingly bad it isn't funny for the intentional humour and not frightening either.
But then "Slaughter High" entertains in a very different way with young English actors sounding terrible as Americans, it almost feels like they had watched "Grease" and tried to imitate the voices from that. But then there is the attractive Caroline Munro who as Carol the sexy senior was in fact 36 years old. Add to that the whole amateurish feel which makes me wonder whether this was made by a school film club using the school drama club to act the parts. In a way it makes me think back to my days in secondary school and having to watch one the plays which the drama club put on especially when it comes to those bad fake American accents.
What this all boils down to is "Slaughter High" is bad on so many levels and not in truth that entertaining in a bad movie sort of way. But for those who went to a British secondary school during the 80s it might be a bit of a weird nostalgic trip.
