trashgang We are at the slasher era and flicks pop up like flies. A lot of them were rip offs or just so bad but being bought due the VHS cover. Others were so weird that they became OOP. This here is one of those although nowadays it's available on DVD full uncut. It's a rare piece. It starts with a boy fully clothed coming out of a lake. That's already some weird stuff. And he has two thumbs on one hand. Whatever, it was made by first-time actors and directors. Only Jeannette Arnette made it somehow into the scene, she appeared in series like Invasion and The Fringe. But overall it's so odd. You hear a priest telling what's good and bad, then it's of to someone cutting out pictures of students out of a book and every time you have a flash forward to the person seen in the picture. Once all six persons are cut out and shown they meet at a class reunion. Why we did have to see those flashes is still a question, once they are at the reunion they start telling about themselves. After 40 minutes the killings starts but never becomes messy or bloody. Most of them are off-camera or you will see other mistakes made by rookies. A burned victim, dead of course is sitting in a chair but you can easily see him breathing. The killer disguise himself in so many ways that you will argue afterwards with geeks what you just saw. It's surely is a slasher but it is not made for everyone.

Woodyanders Six folks gather together for a ten year high school reunion at their old alma mater located in the remote countryside. The motley bunch are knocked off by a mysterious moralistic psychopath (a gloriously hammy, stylized, and theatrical performance by T.G. Finkbinder, who went on to become an English teacher after he quit acting!) for their various "sinful" indiscretions. Director Constantine S. Gochis, working from an unflinchingly dark and grim script by William Vernick, does a sound job of building a considerable amount of gut-wrenching suspense and delivers a potently brooding atmosphere of pure dread and absolute hopeless gloom. Moreover, the murder set pieces are quite brutal and upsetting: one guy gets set ablaze with a flamethrower, another fellow has a dagger dropped on his head, a woman is drowned in a bathroom sink, and so on. The solid acting by the capable no-name cast helps a lot, with praiseworthy work from Damien Knight as greedy, cynical shyster lawyer John Sinclair, fetching future 80's "Head of the Class" sitcom regular Jeanetta Arnette as sweet, but promiscuous harlot Cindy, Nikki Carter as stuck-up rich snob Jane, Michael Hollingsworth as vain, preening actor Roger, Nick Carter as gross, lazy glutton Terry, and Gyr Patterson as lovely lesbian Kirsten. Moreover, the main characters are surprisingly well-drawn and even pretty sympathetic individual beings who aren't totally deserving of their ugly untimely fates. In addition, there's a striking ambiguity evident throughout which gives this picture an additional profoundly unsettling flesh-crawling creepiness: Whether this singularly sick and mean-spirited film is a savage condemnation of a rigid puritanical ultra-conservative morality run viciously amok or a stark endorsement of the same warped religious values is certainly open for the viewer to decide. Harsh and unpleasant for sure, with some perplexing oddball touches (what's that vague wrap-around stuff about an extra possessed thumb all about?), but undeniably effective and often genuinely harrowing just the same.

Cujo108 This offbeat little curiosity happens to be one of my absolute favorite slasher films. In fact, only 1974's "Black Christmas" (which is also my pick for best of the horror genre in general) beats it. Released mere months before Carpenter's "Halloween" would kick start the core slasher movement, it's an extremely eerie picture. There's a sense of the foreboding here that is more prevalent than you'd expect. It focuses on a mysterious morality killer who tricks a group of "undesirables" into attending a fake high school reunion, only to begin picking them off once they arrive. If you think this sounds a bit like "Slaughter High", you'd be right. This came first and is the infinitely better of the two. It's religious subtext alone makes it far more intriguing than that popular, but ultimately quite bland effort.The six so-called degenerates include a lawyer, a gay actor, a lesbian, a cute girl who takes pride in her appearance, a rich snob and a cocky former football jock with gluttonous tendencies. Despite negative comments about the acting on this site and in a horror reference guide of mine, the six main characters are perfectly believable people. In fact, all but the glutton wind up being rather likable, particularly Cindy, played with a free-spirited innocence by the lovely Jeannetta Arnette. The Redeemer himself comes off as over the top at times, which actually works in the character's favor, really making him seem like an absolute lunatic. His Shakespearean rant in the auditorium is a highlight. Props to T.G. Finkbinder for going all in with the role and, in turn, bringing to life one of the most memorable psychos on film.Indeed, the Redeemer is a very creepy individual. Throughout, he dons many different costumes (as "Terror Train"'s killer did a few years later), each one representing an aspect specific to his victims' lives. It's an unsettling touch that really adds to the overall tone. Perhaps the creepiest scene in the entire movie is when one of the girls is yelling for someone in the distance to let her out of the locked down school. Said individual turns out to be the Redeemer, dressed as the Grim Reaper, who proceeds to pound on the barred window with his scythe.This film is an exercise in the surreal, the above mentioned sequence being positively nightmarish in execution. The film's ambiguous opening and closing segments revolving around a sinister child reinforce this feeling tenfold. The school itself is an atmospheric setting, imprisoning our characters like a tomb. The rural area surrounding it certainly lends to the feeling of hopeless isolation.Having originally seen this via the big box "Class Reunion Massacre" VHS at my local video store, I was instantly taken with it. Not easy to forget, it's a bleak, dread-inducing slasher with a unique utilization of religious themes and well worth rediscovering. It should be regarded much more highly. It truly is one of a kind.

charlytully What is it with all these folks in horror movies? Most of them look like the type of people who would watch gore films all the time, but except for the characters in the SCREAM series, it's as if all these dumb dodos have never seen even ONE slasher flick in their soon-to-be-curtailed lives. They always persist in running off alone on pointless errands, instead of sticking together and overwhelming an often vulnerable looking killer (such as the "Redeemer" here) through the sheer force of a mass attack while they still have the advantage of superior numbers. And Jeanetta Arnette, who plays former high school glee club singer Cindy (destined to be drowned in the sink of the girls' john), did you realize you spoiled the whole movie by flopping around about two minutes after you were supposed to be "dead"? Sheeesh!