Student Bodies

I remember this as one of the first films that I saw on HBO. I also remember being sorely disappointed in it. Of course I had stayed up to 3 AM when the folks were asleep to catch this so no doubt being a tad cranky helped form a negative view.

The film starts off with a brilliant truth which is the core of any film like "Student Bodies:"

• This film is based on a true incident.
• Last year there was over 26 horror films released.
• None of them lost money.

The film then jumps right into it. Students are having sex. Students that have sex are then stalked and killed by "The Breather" someone in squeegy galoshes and rubber gloves who like an obscene phone caller about to have a cardiac arrest. His choice of weapons is....eccentric. Erasers, paper clips are other weapons of doom. Only perky, yet sex adverse, Miss Toby Badger stands in the way of an emptied year book. Her list of suspects is the entire staff of the school which includes a rather crazed psychiatrist, a shop teacher who is obsessed by horse head bookends, and other crazies.

The gags are stupid and obvious, but I found them fairly funny this time around. There is a good sense of timing and the actors are fairly up to the task. I enjoyed the body count meter, and the occassional plot points highlighted like "UNLOCKED DOOR." The film does live up to my memory in that the ending sucks. It's like the writer got stiffed for the last day of work so said "Screw it." On the other hand this film is worth watching if for no other reason than to look at the person they got to play the janitor. It says on the IMDB that this fellow was a stand up comic, but I would have guessed circus performer from Mars. I don't think humans should be able to scratch their ankles while standing at attention.

Anyhoo, this for once a suprising nice walk back down memory lane. I usually come out of these things rather depressed after realizing that as a child I had the sense of taste of a carrot. Enjoy.