The
Slasher marathon keeps chugging along with Graduation Day. A masked killer
picking off high school seniors the day before graduation seems like a logical
continuation of the genre. I mean if they don’t get you at summer camp or on
Prom Night then Graduation Day is the next logical milestone for murder. Plus,
this one has Vanna “Wheel of Fortune” White in it!
The movie
starts at a track meet where a young girl is being pushed by her coach to set a
new personal best record and win a race. Her name is Laura and the good news is
that she wins the race, the bad news is that she immediately drops dead from
the strain and a blood clot! A couple of months later her class is graduating
and her sister, Anne, has come back from the Navy to accept her diploma and
trophy (she did win the race after all). Coincidentally at the same time a
black gloved fencing enthusiast starts to murder everyone that was on the track
team, hiding the bodies around campus.
Who is the
killer? Well it could be the creepy music teacher, the coach who is being fired
at the end of the school year, the sister, or the random weird cop. Hell, I
haven’t even mentioned all the suspects yet! Eventually after a few twists and
turns we do find out the identity of the murderer and I suppose it makes sense
in a way. Though I wasn’t happy with how they reveal it as I felt it was
anticlimactic.
Graduation
Day is a movie that should be a hell of a lot better than it is. The cast is
solid and filled with many familiar faces such as Christopher George as the
angry coach and Michael Pataki as the principal are prime examples. These guys
were legends in the seventies and could have carried the movie. Graduation Day
also has Linnea Quigley on one of her earliest roles, and yes within seconds of
appearing onscreen she is taking her top off! I even thought that the actress
playing Anne, the older sister, is very good. There is a lot of talent in the
cast of Graduation Day and they are all let down by a really bad script or
maybe it was the editing. I’m honestly not sure so let me try and explain what
I’m getting at.
Look kids it's Vanna White! |
The story jumps
around and ignores the established characters to establish someone else who
then is also ignored. At the beginning I thought this was going to be about the
older sister, Anne, returning to town and either becoming the killer or getting
wrapped up in the killings. This seems to be what is going to happen until the
twenty-minute mark when she disappears only to show back up at the end. Of the
three that I’m going to mention this was the most frustrating as I sort of liked
the character and was hoping she was our protagonist there to unravel the crime
or in a shocking twist be the killer! But that doesn’t happen. Instead…
We have
Christopher George’s coach Michaels who seems to have an unhealthy fascination
with some of his female student athletes. This also goes nowhere as it is
hinted at as a motive and then ignored. Then we have the principal, Pataki’s
character, who is also a bit creepy and isn’t fond of the “children”. We spend some
time with him and then ignore his storyline as well. With all three we get that
scene with black gloves and a stopwatch appear in their possession, which we
have seen the killer use. I guess the movie is just setting them up as
suspects. But it does so in a way that feels choppy and disconnected. Again,
I’m not sure if this is to be blamed on a script that is poorly written or
maybe just crappy editing. While I’ve mentioned these three there are more
characters that get introduced and then ignored to move onto someone else. So
yeah, it gets really annoying.
Fencing and football don't mix well! |
Since
Graduation Day is a slasher movie, we need to talk kills and gore. They are
unevenly spaced with two happening in the first forty-eight minutes and the
last five happening in the last forty-eight minutes. Yeah this is a long movie,
which might also point to the editing being the issue. We do get a cool sword
thru the neck and another taking a head off. If you didn’t catch on with my
fencing enthusiast comment earlier most all of these kills are sword related.
The other kills happen offscreen and are only seen after the fact. Though for
an early eighties Slasher it wasn’t bad. This of course only makes the story
issues that much more annoying.
What we
have here is a Slasher with a good cast, passable kills, and an interesting
setup with the graduating seniors. All of this is ruined because they didn’t
write a script and/or edit the individual characters and storylines together in
a cohesive plotline that flows nicely. Instead this is a choppy flick that
keeps jarring the audience by yanking them from one character to the next. I
was very disappointed and can’t recommend Graduation Day.
© Copyright 2019 John Shatzer
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