Directed by Richard Haines
Starring Forbes Riley, Ric Randig, Dick Biel, Kathy LaCommare and Sal Lumetta
I've seen 40,000 horror movies in my life, and I like pretty much every sub-type. Well, except for zombie movies, but I'm not going to beat on that dead horse again. Early '80s slasher flicks, though, are my comfort food. Big kill count, lots of slow-burn stalking, gratuitous nudity and bad dialogue with even worse actors delivering it. When I'm in a bad mood, I pop one of these babies in and I'm instantly hooked.
Splatter University fits that bill. Filmed in 1981 on a Filet-o-Fish value meal budget but released three years later just as slasher cinema was exiting the peak of its popularity, all of the hallmarks you're looking for are here and then some. A vicious, mysterious killer. Annoying pack of early adult victims. Even a final girl...sort of. I know that a lot of people watched the "Randy's rules" scene in Scream and think that EVERY slasher movie follows that exact same formula, but this was a movie that turned expectation on its head in a few key ways, a move that's always appreciated. Now, it's not exactly a good movie. Far from it. But it is an ernest little movie that still has roughly 10 times the soul of anything produced by Michael Bay. The other interesting thing about this movie? It was distributed by Troma Entertainment. Kids, if you don't know Troma Entertianment, Google it. With all that out of the way, let's get to the show.
According to the official Slasher Rule Book, these movies must contain a Past Evil. The Past Evil comes in the brief and admittedly unintentionally hilarious prologue sequence as some nutcase escapes from a mental institution, brutally stabbing a couple of the orderlies in the process. It doesn't take long for the writer to have some fun with the official slasher formula as we launch forward with the amazing tagline of "Three years later - Last Semester." Get out your flowchart for that one. Welcome to the movie's titular college (not that it's actually CALLED Splatter University, but it might as well be), where we immediately get a new kill scene as a teacher is brutally murdered after working late.
The script launches forward once again to the ACTUAL present day. In another twist on what we're used to, most of the MAIN characters in this movie are teachers. Your star player is Julie Parker, recently hired teacher who was brought in to replace the aforementioned person who ate the knife exactly one semester ago. Seriously...if you're following the way I'm laying this out, you're a very clever reader. Julie is played by Forbes Riley, and she's easily the best thing about this movie. She does a great job playing an innocent, vulnerable rookie teacher. I never dreamed that I would be so into a "rookie teacher at a college" character in a horror film, but alas, here we are, so four gold stars for Forbes Riley. Amazingly enough, this cutie actually went on to do a bunch of infomercials in the '80s and early '90s. Insert your own "Forbes Riley with a Billy Mays goatee" joke here.
One thing about this movie that immediately becomes clear - all of the students are DOUCHES. This goes for pretty much every college kid contained within Splatter University, but the biggest douche of all is "Wolf," played by Sal Lumetta. As far as I know, he's never done anything else, and that's a shame, because this guy truly ranks up there in the Side Character Hall of Fame along with Shelly from Friday the 13th Part III and Bud from Halloween II. Constantly talking about banging women and making his trademark wolf call, you'll single out this guy immediately as future killer fodder...and, amazingly, he actually survives the movie. Oh yeah, spoiler alert.
Which reminds me, this is a horror movie. Most of the movie actually does focus on the character of Julie Parker, which works to its slight advantage since Forbes Riley gave this thing every ounce of her cute, bubbly energy. A bunch of the abrasive side characters (most of them being the annoying students) get killed off. We get some fantastic '80s female outfits in the process that, somehow, are still attractive. Regarding the death scenes here, they're not really anything to write home about. Basic stabbings, a few squirts of fake blood, and that's pretty much it. We didn't have Tom Savini doing the makeup stuff here, so that stuff was somewhat limited.
There is also one thing that I would like to comment on. The crux of this movie is that Julie and the other teachers don't know who is doing the killing. They're pretty much the only ones, because the SECOND that a certain character shows up on screen, you know who it is. Fans of the Friday the 13th franchise are very familiar with Part V and how it telegraphed its mystery killer seemingly a mile away to the point that every first-time viewer that this guy couldn't POSSIBLY be the guy under the Jason mask. This one isn't QUITE that stark, but...yeah. It's pretty obvious.
I give points to Splatter University for some of its originality. The idea to reverse the usual age of the protagonists was an interesting choice, and, again, Forbes Riley is all kinds of aces in the Julie Parker role. Those flaws, though, they add up. And that is what you call film criticism. There are a whole bunch of teacher and administrator characters that Julie deals with that aren't interesting in the least bit and long stretches of the movie that go nowhere in terms of plot development. And it's not scary. At all. Still, if you're even a casual fan of slasher movies, I would check this one out because why the hell not? It's a prime slice of early '80s goodness from a time when something like 25% of all movies released had some sort of tie to this particular subgenre. They don't make films like this anymore. When you find one that you haven't seen, jump on it bros.
** out of ****. If you like slashers, give this one a watch. If you don't, believe me, this one ain't gonna convert you. Stick with Friday the 13th.
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