I had some trepidation about watching “Graduation Day.” I had it in my head that it was a super-cheeseball horror film with terrible acting and unconvincing gore.
That it announced it was a Troma Entertainment release at the beginning didn’t assuage these concerns. (I like a lot of Troma material and once met the production company’s head, Lloyd Kaufman, but you’ve gotta be in the right mood for those films.)
I shouldn’t have worried. “Graduation Day” is a perfectly serviceable 80s horror flick.
The setup is juicy. A female high school student dies during a track meet. It could be argued she was pushed to overexert herself by her coach and teammates. And if people are responsible for her death, then PEOPLE MUST DIE!
Which they do at the hands of a serial killer with a fetish for swords.
There is no clear protagonist. Characters filter on screen, then disappear for long periods.
Vanna White, the vowel-turning babe of the “Wheel of Fortune” game show, has a meaty side role. So too does Linnea Quigley, famous as the character Trash in “Return of the Living Dead,” who I recently saw in “The Black Room.”
The music stood out. During the initial track death scene, we have a strange kind of Rick Wakeman-esque disco song filled with keyboard noodling. Then, during a well-done kill scene, a live band plays what feels like a fifteen-minute new wave rock song.
Substantial portions of the soundtrack were very similar to various Bernard Herrmann scores. Like plagiarism similar.
The ending meanders a bit. I thought they could have ended the movie on a particularly dark note about fifteen minutes before they did, but they chose differently.
All in all, it was a hoot!
