The Movie:

This 1986 production is one of those uniquely eighties era comedy horror hybrids that has managed to develop quite a cult following over the years thanks to its omnipresence as a popular VHS rental. But is it a good movie? No. Not at all. It's terrible, but it's also a lot of fun.

When the movie begins, we meet Marty Rantzen (Simon Scuddamore who apparently committed suicide shortly after the movie was released), the local high school science nerd who is perpetually picked on by the typically dumb jocks who seem to rule the school. Foxy Carol Manning (Caroline Munroe) pretends to have the hots for poor Marty and leads him to the girls' locker room where he gets naked in the shower stall. Of course, Carol's friends all come in with a camcorder and videotape the poor naked nerd as a few of the jocks dunk the poor sonuvabitch into the toilet. The coach comes in and puts a stop to it, though nothing is really done about it. Later that day, two of the jocks give Marty a joint, which he puffs from while working in the lab only to find out it's got something in it. He gets sick from it and runs to the bathroom to puke, while one of the jocks, Skip Pollack (Carmine Iannaconne), puts some powder into Marty's experiment which winds up blowing up in his face. As he reels from the jolt, a bottle of acid falls off of a shelf and lands on poor Marty's face, sending him to the hospital where he was the recipient of some skin grafts.

Five years later, there's a class reunion. Or so it seems. All of the jocks that picked on poor Marty are invited back to the school on the night before April Fool's day. Nobody else is there, except for the old caretaker who tells the kids to look around all the want but not to start any fires. He also tells them the old school is going to be torn down soon. The invitees all indulge in some drink, drugs and sex, all the while a man in a jester's mask is hunting them down and killing them off in some fairly grisly ways...

Borrowing heavily from Brian De Palma's Carrie only played with tongue placed firmly in cheek, Slaughter High is pretty goofy stuff. Shot in England doubling for the U.S.A., some of the actors let their accents sneak in a couple of times. The low budget effects work is surprisingly effective but the acting is pretty terrible across the board and the dialogue is even worse. The doesn't have much in the way of logic going for it, and for some reason the stalkees decide that they'll be okay if they can only make it to noon, because Marty's killing them for April Fool's Day and April Fool's Day ends at noon (???). It's fun to see Caroline Munroe running around in a loose fitting top and a nifty cameo from producer Dick Miller (with a Pieces poster displayed proudly on the wall behind him) is fun, but there's nothing here that's in the least bit frightening and the film is pretty much completely devoid of tension or suspense.

A couple of kill scenes are creative - a poisoned can of Pabst Blue Ribbon results in an intestinal explosion and the scene in which a woman's skin is melted off in the bathtub is rather keen. A couple of completely unnecessary nude scenes add some exploitative seediness to the picture. The movie, as presented on this DVD, is in its unrated form meaning that the gore scenes and nudity are all intact, as they should be. None of that helps the bad acting, horrible dialogue, cliché ridden script or ridiculous logic gaps, but why would you want it to? This isn't high art, this is a cheap horror movie called Slaughter High and as bad as it is, it delivers just what you want from it.

The Video:

Slaughter High is presented in a fullframe transfer that periodically looks a little tight on the sides (see the scene where the coach is talking to the kids all lined up in the gym) but otherwise seems okay, framing wise, even if the boom mic does pop up in at least one scene. That's where the good news ends, if you can call that good news. The transfer is obviously taken from an old tape source, you'll even notice the 'Vestron Video' logo pop up after the end credits finish. The interlaced image is dark, murky, and devoid of a lot of detail. Colors are flat and washed out, black levels are weak, and there are compression artifacts evident in some of the darker scenes. With so much of the film taking place with little to no light, the murkiness of the image becomes a problem and there are spots where the picture becomes incomprehensible and you won't actually be able to tell what's going on. This may not be a film that warrants an expensive restoration, but it certainly deserves better than this piss-poor effort. The screen caps below tell the story...

The Audio:

The English language audio is supplied in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, though this doesn't really sound like a surround track to be honest. There's very little activity in the rear channels, the subwoofer isn't given much to do and almost all of the activity comes from the front of the mix. Levels periodically fluctuate, and the menu and trailer are noticeably louder than the feature itself for some reason. That said, dialogue, though periodically muffled, is usually easy enough to understand and the opening theme song and closing track sound decent enough. Optional subtitles are provided in English and Spanish.

The Extras:

The packaging advertises a 'trivia track' which, in this case, is a third subtitle option that can be turned on or off through the menu screen or through the remote control's subtitle button. When enabled, this track will point out the obvious for you and explain that 'the hockey mask in this scene is a reference to Friday The 13th' and other fascinating facts like that. It also asks you a bunch of true or false questions. These facts and questions appear pretty sporadically and it isn't uncommon to go a good five minutes or so without any activity at all. In short, it's pretty useless and it doesn't really offer up much information of interest at all.

Aside from that, look for the film's original trailer (a fun piece of promotional nonsense that makes the film look far scarier than it is), trailers for a few other Lionsgate horror releases, menus, and chapter selection.

Overall:

While it's nice to have Slaughter High uncut on DVD after some many years of the title languishing in the land of VHS obscurity, Lionsgate really dropped the ball here - the transfer is awful, the extras are lame, and the audio quality is mediocre at best. If you've got the old Vestron tape, this offers no real improvement. The movie itself is a lot of good corny fun, but the presentation is so weak that it's hard to recommend this movie to even hardcore slasher completists. Rent it and see for yourself.

Ian lives in NYC with his wife where he writes for DVD Talk, runs Rock! Shock! Pop!. He likes NYC a lot, even if it is expensive and loud.