Synopsis
The Class of ‘81 is running out of time!
After the death of a high school track star during a race, a mysterious killer in a fencing mask begins murdering her friends and teachers.
1981 Directed by Herb Freed
After the death of a high school track star during a race, a mysterious killer in a fencing mask begins murdering her friends and teachers.
Christopher George Patch Mackenzie E. Danny Murphy E.J. Peaker Michael Pataki Richard Balin Carmen Argenziano Linnea Quigley Billy Hufsey Virgil Frye Denise Cheshire Vanna White Beverly Dixon Hal Bokar Viola Kates Stimpson Patrick Wright Erica Hope Karen Abbott Ruth Ann Llorens Tom Hintnaus Carl Rey Aaron Butler Grant Loud
День выпускника, Выпускной день, El día de la graduación, Ден за дипломиране, 血溅毕业日, Dia de Formatura, 졸업날, День окончания школы
The opening scene is a barrage of amazing editing and pumping disco that reverberates in your head until boom... heart attack.
I usually love boring slashers (Final Exam! The Slayer! Twisted Nightmare!) from the early 80’s golden age and I was hoping I’d flip flop on this one but I dunno... I'm sad to say this isn’t really my jam, sure there’s some solid kills and inspired editing, but the plodding boredom factor on display makes even me, the great appreciator of plod, eager to watch just about anything else.
Bummer.
At least there’s Christopher George, he makes any movie better!
A high school superstar track star collapses and dies after winning a running race. The team is devastated. The coach is numb with pain. Her family and friends mourn her passing, and the school plans to honor her memory at the upcoming graduation. However, an unknown killer has another idea. The plan? To kill all the track team members, and cause total havoc at graduation. Who's the killer? Will you guess correctly? Will you care if you do? Why didn't cool rock bands play at my school dances?
Graduation Day has a giallo vibe. The unknown killer. The stopwatch the killer holds before the killer goes into kill mode (That's just odd.) The way you think someone is about to…
30. a movie with a celebrity before they were a celebrity
You might think I picked this one because it has a young Vanna White in it and that’s all fine and good, but if you know me then you know I’m like “Vanna who bitch I picked this movie for ❤️ LINNEA ❤️” and when I say her name out loud those heart emojis actually do appear so yeah. It’s so wonderful to see her all fresh faced and new here and really my only surprise is that they didn’t just immediately see her amazing star potential and have the camera turned on her at all possible times. Like at the beginning, she’s just a…
It had been well over a decade since I had last seen this, so a rewatch was definitely in order. Graduation Day was made during the slasher golden age, sure, but it doesn't reach top-tier status for me sadly. That's mostly because the kills were pretty meh overall. The movie isn't terrible however. Any horror movie that is set at a highschool or college earns a couple of points in my book. Plus, this stars Christopher George, who is a welcome addition to any movie. Add Linnea Quigley to the mix and you have at least a moderately good time.
As always a fun time watching it with Michelle.
I guess slasher filmmakers were running pretty low on holiday titles by the early eighties, so here we have one focusing on Graduation Day. Graduation Day gets off to a decent start. A track and field montage set against a disco soundtrack and ending in tragedy when one of the runners drops down dead. Cut to some time later and Graduation Day is upon us. The sister of the unfortunate girl is home from Guam and someone has started to pick off the remaining members of the track team. There's a heavy Giallo influence on this one, with an unseen killer crossing the kids off a photo as we go along. The film is sure to introduce a number of…
the boyfriend had way more medieval weaponry adorning his bedroom than the movie led me to expect was plausible
pretty cheap, derivative teen slasher that felt much longer than 90m but nonetheless kept my attention mostly based on the insane, borderline manic editing choices (including multiple full length song montages for very little discernible reason) and a couple strangely conceived kills that if not particularly effectively directed were still occasionally surprising. lost it when the dude shoved the sword into the football and then threw the football at the kid to shish kebab him
Dolores: It must be nice to be a boy. You can piss anywhere you want to.
Tony: The world's my toilet!
When a future track star dies during a race a masked killer begins to kill off all the remaining members of the track team. Just who is behind these slayings? Could it be the dead girl's sister who just happens to have come to town at the exact time of these killings? Surely, not!
After a good opening and one hell of a theme song, this boring 1980s slasher just fails to deliver on its promise. I found the killings quite uninspired most of which are done in POV as it desperately tries to be a Giallo so you…
Graduation Day is a pretty solid American giallo, released during the horror boom made possible by the success of Friday the 13th. It’s fairly sleazy, has a couple music numbers, and gets decent mileage from its use of staccato editing, which helps to camouflage budget limitations. It’s not breaking the mold by any stretch but Graduation Day does a decent job of hitting the proper genre beats. I’ll take this over Prom Night but not Happy Birthday to Me.
This was the second horror film I watched in as many days that featured a music video interlude.
An unexpectedly decent early 80s slasher directed by an ex-rabbi. It drags a bit at times but you can see that some serious effort went into this one. It's competently directed, with some flashes of stylish editing and an almost giallo-esque vibe. The central mystery keeps you guessing and the final reveal hearkens back to Psycho. We get some nice kills here, though I would have liked more of them, and there are some real moments of tension and atmosphere. There's a lot to like. Perhaps, in an alternate reality where this wasn't lost amidst a sea of similar films, this might have been better regarded.
It's also worth noting that there's a young Vanna White in this thing, as well as an early appearance from Linnea Quigley, who was brought in to replace another actress.
Watched with Jozlyn
Hella sexist, but the killer does attach a sword to a football and then throws it at a dude, killing him in the process, so we'll call it even.
"It must be nice to be a boy. You can piss anywhere you want to."
- Dolores (Linnea Quigley)
Underwhelming tale of a pussy-boyfriend, an androgynous sister, an abusive coach, a drunken father and a worrying mother, who all have some kind of motive for going on a relentless murder spree.
There's really not much going on in this 80s slasher flick. The killer looks stupid, the plot's all over the fucking place and the actors are neither good nor bad enough to be entertaining.
Linnea Quigley and the soundtrack save this thing from being a total catastrophe.