This was the second film to be released under the title 'National Lampoon's' apparently. Unfortunately it was a bit of a disaster and flopped, this could easily be held down to the fact that 'Animal House' was a smash hit before and this film lacked its cast and punch.
I guess this may have felt like a rehash of 'Animal House' without Belushi. The plot is merely a spoof on slasher horror films, a high school reunion in progress within an old dusty crumbling school is halted when one of the former pupils goes on a murderous rampage. This student being the butt of a practical joke years ago back in high school by his classmates which mentally scared him.
The main issue is there really isn't any murdering going on in the film. There's one kill I think, then the rest of the film is made up of the rest trying to find the killer. The sets and atmosphere aren't that bad I found, it looks like your typical cheesy haunted house affair with dark cobweb ridden corridors and classrooms. The humour is as you would expect from this franchise, its stupid, obvious, predictable and childish, but it serves the spooky quite genre well I suppose.
The cast are all pretty obscure, a few recognisable faces but in general no one that can match Belushi and co. All the characters are rather dull really, nothing very funny about any of them accept for Gerrit Graham's character who is a cowardly pompous stuck up rich boy (stereotyping at its best naturally).
I didn't think this was too bad in all honesty, its still miles better than all the modern equivalents such as the 'Scary Movie' franchise which takes its cue from this I'm sure. Its hammy as hell but lets remember this was made in 81, at that time all these jokes and setups were new. I suppose if you liked 'Clue' then you may like this silly horror comedy, not really much horror though.
5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment