splatter university

SPLATTER UNIVERSITY
(1984)

" Where the School colors are blood red!"

directed by: Richard W. Haines
starring: Francine Forbes, Cathy Lacommare,
Dick Biel, Denise Texeira

(back of video blurb):

"Earn a higher degree in terror! First you were appalled by 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". Then you were spooked by 'Halloween'. Now, prepare yourself for the most horrific experience imaginable. It begins the moment you enter SPLATTER UNIVERSITY- and you better believe you won't be around for graduation.

A deranged, psychopathic killer escapes from a nearby asylum and begins his devastating reign of terror at a nearby co-ed campus. One by one, the bodies of young men and women are found hideously mutilated, throwing the entire student body into chaos. The killer lurks everywhere, on and off campus, and no one knows when or where he will strike again. Julie, ayoung coed, senses that the powerful evil behind the gruesome killing is very near as she begins to peice together clues. What she discovers is far beyond the realm of sanity, and in the bone chilling climax she finds herself faced with the ultimate test of survival.

SPLATTER UNIVERSITY- Where the school colors are blood red!"

choice dialogue:

"The other tenants have been complaining about the front door being left open. I don't really blame them, with all the kooks running around killing people they don't even know. You know it seems to me if you are going to kill someone you at least know them real well."

Hardly! When I saw "Released by TROMA, INC.", I must admit my heart sank and by the time I had endured the whole thing till the credits rolled it was gone without a trace.

To start off with the film can't decide wether to be a comedy or an inept horror film. The 'humourous' inmates in the asylum are cringe making to say the least. Once we get to St. Trinians college (although there are no jolly hockey sticks here!) the makers decide to make a horror flick and they shovel the ineptness on...in spades. Even the hideous 80's fashions and the appearance of a sinister vicar in a wheelchair can't lift this into the it's-so-bad-it's-good territory. I even think they forgot to include a reel in the middle of the version I saw, either that or the editing was supernaturaly bad.

If there are any redeeming features (and I'm really scrapping the bottom of the barrel here!) it would have to be the scenes where the camera goes in for a wobbly zoom on the screaming faces of three victims and the scene where the sinister vicar asks the main character "What's troubling you lately?" just after her best friend has been found mutilated in the stationary cupboard! In fact the main character playing new teacher at the school 'Miss Parker' is the only capable actor in the whole thing, not that she is really any good but is like a pearl in shit when compared to the wooden and grating 'performances' of the rest of the cast. The film is certainly gory (even in the 'R'-rated version I saw), but this is one slasher film that has 'misogynistic' stamped all over it, and this being a genre that hasn't exactly been a favourite amongst Feminists. Women are almost exclusively the victims, but what makes this worse is the fact that their male companions seemingly couldn't give a toss about the deaths of their respective girl friends, their only reactions are to laugh it off even though one of them was pregnant!

It really is no wonder that the first wave of the slasher genre was well and truly exhausted by now when all there was to offer were tired peices of crapola like this.

BODYCOUNT 8 bodycount! female:7 / male:1

        1: Hospital orderly (male) stabbed in the crotch and throat cut
        2: Female teacher stabbed in chest
        3: Female teen has forehead slashed
        4: Female teen has throat cut
        5: Female teacher has throat cut
        6: Female teacher stabbed in stomach and then disemboweled on the toilet
        7: Female teen has knife stuck into her mouth
        8: Female teacher stabbed in back