Tuesday, April 26, 2011

"Splatter University"(1984)d/Richard W. Haines

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We've covered some of the best examples of the slasher sub-genre over the past five years here at Wopsploitation.This ain't one of 'em.I clearly remember the first time I endured tonight's feculent lump of cinematic guano, as a rental at D's Video on Main Street of a burned out shell of a once-prosperous mining town some folks liked to call Pittston.We all had made our movie choice for the evening, and Splatter U, unfortunately, was mine.Faces of Death 2 must have been rented out already.I'm guessing some of my boys back then that I haven't talked to in over twenty years still hold having to endure Splatter U against me.I don't blame them.I don't liken the production of a slasher flick to be as difficult as something like, say, auto-neuropathology, or some shit.It's a simple formula that's been xeroxed by hundreds of movies over the years, and you'd have to be pretty worthless to fuck it up.Take a cold-blooded psychopath, throw a couple of hot naked chicks in front of the camera who can scream worth a shit(dub them in afterwards if they can't), and dump gallons of blood all over them.If you don't have any competent actors, don't write a dense screenplay worth of Shakespearean dialogue for them to flub on-camera.Really.Or, simply just do the exact opposite of what the makers of Splatter U did.Thanks to the folks at Elite, whole new generations of genre fans can eagerly take home this brainless waste of seventy-eight minutes and hate themselves for doing so afterwards.There's a quote from Rick Sullivan, of Gore Gazette fame, on the back of the dvd case that says,"THE MOST TERRIFYING MOVIE OF THE YEAR!".I think they must have edited that down from,"This inept dogshit is the farthest thing from the most terrifying movie of the year..." or something.
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"Arggghh!I've been stabbed in my latex tittie appliance!"
At the outset, we see a pair of feet(one is bare, so he's obviously a lunatic) as the man they belong to picks up a knife.Titles."Two Forty Three P.M. William Grayhan, paranoid schizophrenic, is discovered missing."Two guys in scrubs(orderlies or doctors, it doesn't really matter) search for the nutbag in what's supposed to be a psychiatric facility, when he pops out and shanks one in the junk, heisting his uniform in the process.Titles."St. Trinian's College, three years later".A female professor gets shivved in the milkwagon.More titles."Next semester, yesterday."Good one, guys.New instructor Julie Parker(Francine Forbes) arrives at the single room full of thirty-something non-SAG extras we're supposed to believe is an Ivy League catholic community college.I'll give you a minute to catch your breath.Enter a whole lot of badly dressed, moronic characters with laughingly bad hairstyles exchanging lifeless dialogue and bad jokes.One's a pre-Tiffany flameheaded broad with a halfrullet(1/2 afro, 1/2 mullet)and one's a drunk meathead priest with the libido of a bunny with a bloodbomber that theorizes that his failure with women runs concurrent with their menstrual cycles.Some others walk into and out of the story in the same scene.It'd almost be confusing if the whole rotten affair wasn't tranquilizing me already.Julie's not entirely uneasy on the eyes, but she's got this annoying habit of keeping her clothes on at all times.More banal dialogue and stale jokes.“A weird thing happened, a girl said she was skipping class today. Has that ever happened to you?” Skipping class is weird? I skipped whole fucking semesters.
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Don't blame him, he's just a clueless collegiate ginger.
When the fuck is something going to happen here?Not yet.There's a crappy party sequence(the kind of gathering that you're ashamed for everyone attending)full of off-beat eighties caucasian-style dancing to a band that never made it past the town picnic level, in their designer Sassoon and Jordache jeans, leading to more forced conversation.Julie's landlady sucks, one of her students is knocked up(must be a 'change of life' baby), and a fellow prof fancies taking their relationship past the professional(you know, in the exact same way he was dating the previous instructor who got iced).Zzzzzzz... When random students finally start turning up shanked or scalped, Julie's suspected by the paraplegic principal, Father Janson(Dick Biel), who seemed to be pretty cool with her taking the vacant teaching position before he told her about the previous prof with the perforated pillow.This leads Julie to do her own investigation into the murders.Not a bad idea, since she seems to be the only character remotely concerned that there's a killer loose.The wheelchair-bound padre/prinicipal turns out to be the escaped lunatic on the bloody spree.Anyone who hasn't fallen asleep a few times since the opening title sequence could figure that one out.He kills Julie.He gets caught and put back where he belongs.It's finally over.
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"I think we're alone now, and the beating of our hearts is the only sou-ound."
Just as a pile of shit will eventually decompose, director Haines, who has a cameo here as pipsqueak priest, Father Perkins, went on to further hone his craft with Class of Nuke 'Em High(1986) for Troma.Lloyd Kaufman was a creative consultant on tonight's review.It's all starting to make sense now.The likeable Francine Forbes who doesn't deserve to have this movie on her résumé, later became Forbes Riley and enjoys a career in television to this very day.One wop on the ratings scale, and not a good-bad score, to clarify for you woprophiles out there.This one's bad-bad.
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Sitting in an empty corner of a white room = Insane asylum.
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