Graduation Day (1981) Directed by Herd Freed
Graduation Day is a fairly well known slasher movie from the golden era. It tells the story of a girl that dies during her high school track meet and now someone is killing off her teammates one by one, and crossing their faces off on a team photo with lipstick. The girl’s sister comes back to town from Guam. Please make notice of that, its very important, or at least they act like it is, since they mention it at least 5 times. The school is full of asshole teachers and perv teachers. The acting is really over the top and corny, but hey this was produced by Troma, so what do you expect?
Coach George Michaels is the biggest asshole in the movie, he seriously rides the shit out of his athletes to the point where its totally uncomfortable. Anne is the sister to the girl that died from a blood clot. Basically the movie centers around her talking to different people at the school, not quite sure why. She tells George that she is looking for answers, but idk what she really expects to get from people. There are a bunch of minor side characters, basically there to be killed. The kills are rather funny. One guy gets stabbed from a football with a sword through it being thrown at him. I literally laughed out loud on that scene. I have to note that Vana White from Wheel of Fortune fame is in this movie. Her role is so small that you really need to pay close attention to even see her. The quality of the camera work is alright for the time and budget. One thing that really makes you laugh in the movie is the constant change of night and day. The aforementioned football stabbing starts out during the day, then boom its night when he gets stabbed, this happens a lot in these kinds of movies.
The music is also worth noting. Some of it is possible, some of it is awful, all of it is hilarious. One guy singing at the roller rink, dance or whatever sounds like Dr. Rockzo the rock n roll clown. If you don’t know what I’m talking about…just think of an off key David Lee Roth. If you don’t know who that is, then we can’t be friends, I’m sorry. The guitarist looks like a bad Boy George impersonator. The music is also cranked up to 11 compared to the rest of the movie, it is really out of place. THE GANGSTER ROCK!!!! Along with the odd music, the lighting is kind of jacked up, this is another common problem with 80s slasher movies, see The Final Terror and Humongous for good examples. Sometimes people are running around and the camera is chasing them, you really can’t see what is going on. This movie might also be the only one with a spring loaded dog instead of a spring loaded cat, so that’s nice, I guess.
The killer in the movie, whenever shown has a stop watch and black leather gloves. A couple times you see them in a fencing mask with a sword. Most of the kills are made with said sword. It is one of those slasher movies where you don’t know who the killer is until the end, sometimes that’s fun other times the end doesn’t pay off. The end of the movie is rather crazy, I won’t ruin it for you, just watch it if you’re a fan of the genre. I would give Graduation Day a C. The first time I watched it I really thought it sucked, but since then I’ve seen much worse garbage than this, so another C in the 2016 marathon! If you feel the need to see this, it is on Amazon Prime streaming, check it out.
