It was another sports day a couple of weeks before graduation at high school, but nobody could have forseen the tragedy which was to occur during the two hundred metre race. Laura Ramstead was way ahead, pushing her endurance as far as it would go to win, with the school and her coach, Mr Michaels (Christopher George), cheering her on, but suddenly as she crossed the finishing line Laura collapsed. People rushed over, but it was too late: she had died, and now her sister Anne (Patch Mackenzie) returns from the military to attend the funeral - but someone is murderously unhappy.
Halloween may have kicked off the craze in the early eighties for slasher movies, seeing as how they were cheap, quick, didn't have to make much sense and nobody cared if there were any stars in them or not, but it was Friday the 13th in 1980 which set out the template which efforts such as Graduation Day followed so slavishly. You know the drill, collect a bunch of young actors together and think up ways of bumping them off, preferably with some kind of novelty angle (like a drill), until the big reveal as to who was behind it, unless the audience already knew it was some random masked maniac and therefore the Agatha Christie twist for the ending was unnecessary.
For this, the twist was put into play so we were intended to be guessing throughout who was applying the theme of track and field events to the messy business of murder. That's right: every death here had a sporting theme, so where the more obvious fencing was employed for one death, also in the running for stupidest horror movie demise were a bloke killed by a football, one with the pole vault (it was landing on the spikes which actually did for him), and one girl done away with by getting her head chopped off. Not sure what sport that was supposed to be from, but just you try and think up that many sporting fatalities.
As we scratch our heads pondering who the culprit could possibly be - one of those psychos who likes to spy on their victims while we hear their heavy breathing on the soundtrack - a number of possibilities arise. Actually, ostensible heroine Anne is a suspect, which results in her disappearing for great swathes of the story as we concentrate on minor characters such as the Principal (Michael Pataki) who has a love-hate relationship with his secretary (E.J. Peaker) for presumably comedic aims; really the tone here was all over the place as it meandered from setpiece to setpiece. The plot wasn't much better, but if you happened to be a fan of a band called Felony, you were in luck.
That was because at the prom sequence, they were the band providing the music, or rather one piece of music, one very long piece of music called Gangster Rock which after five minutes of hearing it and no end in sight may have the less hardy viewer ready to give up on Graduation Day as a bad choice. Maybe it was the 12" version? Anyway, this is building up to the revelation of who the killer was, but their motive is to punish the school's track stars for something that was in no way their fault, and had no possible way of stopping even as it happened, which is one of the weakest revenge plots in slasher movie history. Add to that the fact that director Herb Freed did not know how to end the movie as it dragged out even further and more ludicrously, and the points of interest rested on an early appearance by Scream Queen Linnea Quigley, and that the special gore effects were created by a young woman, Jill Rockow, rather than a Tom Savini type who would usually be doing them. Music by Arthur Kempel.
I love how silly the kills are in this. Halloween was at least more series for a slasher film, same with The Burning. This has to be one of the most amusing of the genre of school slashers.
Also, I wish people would stop praising Friday teh 13th as a decent slasher tyhat set the standards. Black Christmas, Halloween and to an extent (for me at least) The Haunted House of Horror, were more influencial. Friday was merely another rip-pff of Halloween, alongside the classic Prom Night and so many others.
Posted by:
Graeme Clark
Date:
6 Apr 2012
People say Friday the 13th set the standards because it made masses of money on a tiny budget. Look at the profits: that's why it was influential on so many movies that came after, they all wanted to make the same amount of cash in the same way. Although granted, without Halloween's huge success it likely wouldn't have been made.
Posted by:
Stephanie Anderson
Date:
7 Apr 2012
Yeah. There were do many other movies that did that though. Jaws had a small budget and yet made around 20 million. Psycho was low budget, the wolfman. I think the main reason people think so highly of what was actually a fairly weak movie with so much wasted potensial is the fact they kept giving it sequels.
Posted by:
Graeme Clark
Date:
7 Apr 2012
Turning Jason into a cult figure in the Friday sequels certainly didn't hurt the attraction to slasher fans, never mind the huge profits, but all the low budget movies you mention went on to have many imitations themselves.
Moviemaking is a business as much as it is art, maybe more so, therefore when something is a hit for relatively low cost it's no surprise people would copy it (we're still getting Blair Witch copies!), and Friday the 13th was a trendsetter, no matter how totally average in quality it was. It made it look easy.
Posted by:
Stephanie Anderson
Date:
8 Apr 2012
Its sad to think people have no creativity because of all the imitations and remakes. I don't care much for the Friday series, but i must admit Jason is one of the best pop-culture icons at times. Maybe I should respect the series for what it did for slasher films and without it, we'd have no Sleepaway camp, one of my all time favorite movies.
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