Post by stefancrosscoe on May 12, 2017 10:29:48 GMT
"I think obviously somebody in this school is insane."
For the rich and wealthy students at Central High, the natural order of the food chain is about to meet it's match, as new kid in town David (Derrel Maury), decides to go up against the school bullies and put and end to the reign of terror by beating them at their own game.
Another film that I stumbled upon one day in a second-hand movie store and picked up a dirt cheap DVD copy of this film, where you are meet by a crazy looking psycho who's about ready to swing a gigantic axe into some poor bastard's head, and I went in, thinking it was gonna be another poor but hopefully, a somewhat entertaining little slasher/b-movie horror film.
Turned out that just as with The Creeper (1977) and Christmas Evil (1980), Massacre at Central High was far away from being just that.
In this film, there are no "hero", and even though you get a fair share of brutal and nasty kills, that in some places fits right in with the slasher genre, the plot and characters are quite complicated for it's lowbudget/exploitation style, and sure comes off as being more than just another ordinary revenge story, where you have some new kid in town, who comes in and saves the day by rescuing the fair maiden and slaughters the evil dragon and that's it, everybody lives happily ever after and all that crap, "the end!".
No, in this film, we get to see what happens afterwards the witch or troll has finally been brought down from it's thrown, and I guess that this is something which happens quite often, either it is in school or a workplace, where you'll have a situtation where one tyrant ends up getting replaced by someone new, and maybe even worse.
Massacre at Central High has it's highs and lows. The acting is not bad and the action sequences are very well done, considering the low budget of the film.
The story is much better than the usual exploitation b-movie stuff, and it does come with some neat surprises along the way.
The downside is that the picture and sound quality is at times very poor, and I do hope we one day might get to see a decent/good DVD copy of the film, as it surely deserves that, considering that many fans and critics think of it as a bit of a lost "cult" gem of the 70s.
Those crazy italians tried to sell it off as a typical skin flick, where the title was changed into Sexy Jeans and they even went so far that they even included pornographic clips edited in, to make it a more sellable hot'n'steamy experience for their audience.
That is one fine looking movie poster, I gotta give em' that.