April Fool's Day (DVD)

April Fool's Day is one of the more overlooked movies in the slasher movie genre. It is however, one of the better ones if you ask me, and one of the only ones which hasn't gone on to produce 101 sequels.

Muffy St. John(snigger) has inherited an island(must be nice) and this April Fool's Day has decided to throw a wild party for an assembled group of her teenage friends on that island. After a terrible boat ride which results in the ...
...fashion...

April Fool's Day works because it was one of the first slasher movies to not take itself too seriously, playing the horror along with the humour - and yes the name Muffy does result in the obvious muff diving gag. The jokes are actually quite funny as well, not exactly about to give rise to belly laughs but still quite funny, which at least sets its above your usual slasher flick which is pretty much impossible to take ... more

April Fool's Day is one of the more overlooked movies in the slasher movie genre. It is however, one of the better ones if you ask me, and one of the only ones which hasn't gone on to produce 101 sequels.

Muffy St. John(snigger) has inherited an island(must be nice) and this April Fool's Day has decided to throw a wild party for an assembled group of her teenage friends on that island. After a terrible boat ride which results in the grisly death of one of their friends. Of course, our horny buch carries on the party anyway but Muffy has a few games in mind - leaving clues to some secrets she has discovered about her houseguests around their rooms etc. What is Muffy up to? Well she starts weirding out and then the houseguests start getting whittled down in a murderous fashion...

April Fool's Day works because it was one of the first slasher movies to not take itself too seriously, playing the horror along with the humour - and yes the name Muffy does result in the obvious muff diving gag. The jokes are actually quite funny as well, not exactly about to give rise to belly laughs but still quite funny, which at least sets its above your usual slasher flick which is pretty much impossible to take seriously anyway but demands that you do anyway. At the same time the horror element is definitely here with soem typically gross gore scenes, but not much in the way of on-screen killing for once, but rather the gross-out aftermaths of them. I think this makes it a little more effective because anyone who sat through such things as Friday the 13th, Halloween and all their imitators during the 80s would probably have got more than a little tired of seeing shots of a knife waving around...this at least spares us from that.

Its of course not exactly very original once again - no slasher movie ever is. We have the usual assembled group of 80s teenagers complete with the same array of soon-to-be-dead stereotypes such as the goofy-kid, the comedian, the promiscuous slut, the beauty queen, the goodie-goodie...you know the kind o thing, where you can pick those about to die and those who will live through the night before the first five minutes is up. Once again we see that same old 'moral' message - do something wrong, especially if it involves promiscuity and you'll get punished but the addition of the humour raises it above the rather mediocre crowd which surrounds it. So to does the acting which, despite having the usual assembled cast of pretty faces, is surprisingly good - actually hitting around about 'average' in terms of its standard. That might sound like a criticism but in this kind of movie it is enormous praise believe me.

April Fool's Day is not going to be a movie which appeals to everyone, but rather one which will appeal to genre fans and those looking for a late night scare without going too far into the genre. Its definitely not the scariest or most gory horror movie out there but it is one of the more watchable in the slasher movie genre. If you liked Scream etc. then you will probably find something of merit here as well, and you can rest assured that despite being around 15 years old now, it hasn't aged badly at all. Its worth a look at least.
 

...less