Student Bodies (1981)

studentbodiesTo my knowledge, Student Bodies is the only slasher film in which the killer not only wears green rubber dishwashing gloves, but dispatches victims with paper clips and eggplant. It should be noted that Student Bodies is also an outright spoof — and a damn good one — of the subgenre’s biggest hits at the time, including Halloween, Friday the 13th and When a Stranger Calls.

Reportedly directed by Fletch’s Michael Ritchie, but credited to screenwriter Mickey Rose (a frequent Woody Allen collaborator in the earlier, funnier days of Bananas, et al.), the under-the-radar comedy plays fast and loose. Unafraid to be supremely silly, it takes place at a high school where the pupils perish due to an asthmatic heavy breather voiced by producer Jerry Belson (Jekyll and Hyde … Together Again), arguably the biggest name in the go-for-broke cast. Novelty comes in the form of an onscreen body count and arrows calling out such horror clichés as unlocked doors and windows. That’s a gimmick, but Ritchie/Rose hardly rest there, as gags fly at a ZAZ-approved speed, per the Airplane! model.

studentbodies1Like Airplane! just before it, the movie is smart in its stupidity. For example, a man returns home to find a Kentucky Fried Chicken drumstick in pieces on the kitchen floor; naturally, he picks it up and returns it to the fridge … but only after Scotch-taping the poultry piece back together.

Coming 19 years before, Student Bodies is the Scary Movie of its day. It even outdoes Scary Movie in the laughs department — not too daunting a feat, I know, but all the more impressive considering it had so few targets to parody. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

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