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Graduation Day
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| Year: |
1981
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Director: |
Herb Freed
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| Stars: |
Christopher George, Patch Mackenzie, E. Danny Murphy, E.J. Peaker, Michael Pataki, Richard Balin, Carmen Argenziano, Beverly Dixon, Virgil Frye, Hal Bokar, Denise Cheshire, Bill Hufset, Linnea Quigley, Karen Abbott, Vanna White, Ruth Ann Llorens
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| Genre: |
Horror |
| Rating: |
  4 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
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.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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