"Hey, Marty! Where's the beef?"

(This review is for Final Girl's Film Club. Hey, if it gets more visitors to this place...)

To be frank, I'm not much for horror movies. I'm one of those, whatchacallit, wimps. I mean, I've seen the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, but the harder-edged, blood-and-guts stuff skeeves me out. Like I said before, I jumped at Sorority Row. Still, there are times I get curious enough to check something out from the rental place (can't really call them video stores anymore, can I?) or on YouTube. Back when there was a Blockbuster within walking distance (and back when they had video tapes), I ran across a box jacket of a smiling skeleton in a graduation cap holding up an apple with a sparkling fuse. I never checked it out, but it was silly/seductive enough to linger in the memory. That film was Slaughter High.

Marty Rantzen (Simon Scuddamore) can't catch a break. The kids that pick on him aren't content with spitballs and name-calling and taking his books and hiding them in some other part of the school (the way they were with me). They have to zap his scrawny ass with a cattle prod. Shit, were they loose with the rules back in '86.

Of course, the perpetrators get caught and...are forced to do push-ups. Okay, isn't this akin to having Bernie Madoff perform a hundred hours of community service or something? Really, what the hell? Despite this hardly-a-slap-to-the-wrist, the kids want revenge. One joint and a science lab explosion later, Marty is sent to the hospital.

Five years go by and the people responsible end up invited to a reunion...at the deserted school...with a rather scant party set up. Of course, a couple of them start joking about poor old Marty, who went insane and was institutionalized. Some even say that he still haunts the halls. MUWHAHAHAHAHAHA! If you can't guess what happens next, it's possible you've never seen a movie before. Not that this one is any reasonable place to start.

If I knew nothing about Slaughter High before watching it and someone told me that it took three people to write and direct it, I'd have likely laughed myself into a coma. None of the three guys (I hesitate to call them writer-directors; I could've done a better job, the craft displayed here is so slipshod) bothered to think the project through? I mean, look at the dumbshit actions the characters perform: some girl takes a bath which turns out to be acidic even after seeing a former classmate's guts spill out because of a spiked brew. A couple has sex in a bed (See what I said about thinking shit through? Bathtubs and beds in a school, even an abandoned one?) and they end up electrocuted. (For some reason, this bit reminds me of a paraphrased bit from the late, great George Carlin: "The kids that have sex on a bed in an abandoned school don't grow up to have kids of their own. Nature knows best.")

And what of continuity and consistency? Casualties. Marty's in his underwear in the opening scene, then he's clad only in God's own armor (Where's the beef, indeed.) before his underwear magically re-appears. And later on, a character gets a knife plunged through them...but not a drop of blood appears on the blade.

I keep mentioning the 'kids', which is subjective. This film is from back in the days where films about high schoolers who actually looked like kids were in the minority. Even more, the actors exercise the bare minimum in disguising their British accents. Dear Lord, it's a mess.

In this film's defense, there is a catchy flute melody derived from the opening title song. I often find myself humming it unconsciously. Sadly, the rest of Harry Manfredini's score isn't quite so memorable.

Overall, I get the feeling that this was slapped together with little regard to anything, least of all quality, and that the makers hoped that the people checking this out would a) rent just about anything on the shelf and b) mistake this for something good. In the latter regard, I think this'd be made by the Asylum if it came out in 2009.

Yet another thing that impresses in your youth, but, once past the threshold of adulthood, is just crap. Maybe if you're in an MST3K kind of mood...