This is where we meet our main character, Muffy. Yes, you heard me right. From this outset we are led to believe we have pretty much summed Muffy up. For spring break she invites an unlikely group of college friends and acquaintances to her weekend island mansion.
When they arrive and all file off to their rooms in the giant house, they discover several April Fools tricks are greeting them. Some funny and clever; dribble glasses, chairs that make you fall backwards, others are dark, scary and confusing; a tape of a crying baby, drug paraphernalia and newspaper clippings of car accidents.Pretty soon, one by one, the friends begin to go missing and their bodies start popping up, or bits of their bodies anyway. The still alive friends decide they need to get out of there but amazingly, without them noticing, Muffy has slowly started to lose the plot. Complete with shifty, creepy eyes their host becomes someone to fear.
Some think the very idea of this film made it too arty to stomach but no matter what you think about its validity as a horror film you cannot escape the pretty clever, spooky imagery. In particular, the manikin being dragged across screen and when the two kids are canoodling on the slatted walkway and they turn to see a couple of dead bodies floating on the water beneath.
Something of a classic? I can't decide. It's glossier than most 80's horror and a huge nudge to what was to come in the 90's. An important and necessary installment of retro horror/comedy? Absolutely.
I love April Fool's Day! Nice to see it getting a bit of love;)
ReplyDeleteSounds interesting, S. I love how you write, have I mentioned that? Great stuff.
ReplyDeleteOne of my faves, and years ahead of the pack when it comes to so called "post modern horror"
ReplyDeleteAgreed with Pax, this film gets so much crap in the genre for supposedly killing the Slasher film, but I think it is brilliant, thanks for the review Sarah!
ReplyDeleteI remember the first time I saw this film. The scene with the body parts in the well always stood out to me, its one of my favorite scenes. Great review of a great film! :)
ReplyDeleteI'll grudgingly agree that the cover art and the general feel of the whole film up until the ending are all perfectly iconic of '80s horror material. There's some great, fun, & classic genre stuff happening in this movie and it just kinda sucks that all the legit slasher goods we are served up throughout APRIL FOOL'S DAY have to be ruined by the bullshit hoax ending.
ReplyDeleteInteresting selection. :)
This was the film that officially ended my childhood -- allow me to explain:
ReplyDeleteFor my like 10th birthday, I had a bunch of dudes over for a scary movie fest. We watched April Fool's Day, Dolls, and I think Child's Play. To that point in tiem, I was a scared little dochey kiddo when it came to scariness in films -- even covered my eyes during the taxi cab scene and the library scene in Ghostbusters. My 19th bday resolve -- to get thru these movies without squirming in front of my friends.
AFD was the first of the trio that we watched. Sort of my Bar Mitsvah (if I was Jewish)
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