A scary thing happened on the way to the Movie Forums - Horrorcrammers

GRADUATION DAY (1981)


Vanna White (r) would like to buy an EEEEEEEEEEE!

The "Captain Terror Tries to Like Slasher Films" project continues.
Can't remember who recommended this one, it's only been logged by one Letterboxd friend.

So the plot of this one is that the members of a high school track team are being murdered one by one.
While I wouldn't call this a "good" film, I did enjoy it quite a bit. There's a couple of great montages here. The opening credits is a slo-mo montage of high school athletic events that ends in tragedy. And towards the end of the film there's a great bit where scenes of a murder are interspersed with footage of a cheesy rock band (FELONY!) playing at a packed roller rink. Kudos to the editor for both of these segments.



There's a couple of murders that are original enough to be noteworthy, especially the one that involves pole-vaulting. The physics of the football-related murder are a little shaky, and it's almost as silly as the Trombone murder from Town That Dreaded Sundown, but if you don't think too hard about these things it's fine.

The unavoidable perv factor is here, of course. I wouldn't say this film is an especially egregious offender, but it's definitely not above the standard perviness of the subgenre. I was a little bit confused early on, when a murder victim is shown lying face down in a field and the camera decides to linger on a closeup of her butt (?). Like, what am I looking at, camera guy? Is this a clue to the killer's identity that I'm missing? Also Linnea Quigley earns a passing grade from her teacher by engaging in some extracurriculars if you know what I'm sayin'. So...yeah.

It must be said that this falls squarely into the early-80s vibe that is much more my comfort zone than the later stuff, so I'm probably being more generous as a result. (An easy way to make me like your film is to have a teen girl with Frazzetta posters on her wall.) I can't predict what those of us who are concerned with "plot" and "characters" will think of it, but I thought it was fun. I'd say it's on a Final Exam-level of enjoyability.

I'm going with 3-1/2 out of 5. (It's streaming on many free-with-ads apps.)
Anybody else seen it?