MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH

I remember seeing this film for the first time on TNT network late one Saturday evening. It was introduced by Joe Bob Briggs - a definite plus in my book - but severely chopped to shit. After watching it for that first time, it became a kind of obsession of mine to try and track it down so I could own it. I scoured every video store within 25 miles of my house but to no avail. Half the places I called had never heard of it, the other half informed me that it was not a title they would be able to order. I simply had to make due with my chopped to shit VHS tape - which was missing the first 5 minutes of the film as I wasn't really planning on taping it but immediately changed my mind when I saw the name Kimberly Beck in the credits; more on that later.


Massacre at Central High

I managed to score a nice, uncut VHS copy from a friend a few years later and, man oh man, did I play the hell out of it. By the time I finally retired that VHS tape for a brand new DVD copy, you couldn't even see the film at times. It had become so warped and worn. Since I managed to procure that DVD, I reckon I've seen this film more than 35 times. It resides on the very short list of movies I can watch at any time, on any day. It never fails to entertain me. Though it is far from perfect, I wouldn't change a single thing about it.


Massacre at Central High

For those of you who haven't seen MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH, I'll give you a bit of a rundown. David is a new transfer. His childhood friend, Mark, introduces him to his clique, a trio of rich, preppy bullies that all but run the school - that would be Bruce, Craig and Paul. David has already gotten off on the wrong foot with these guys when he interrupted their smackdown of a flaky hippy named Spoony earlier that morning. So naturally a bit of tension already exists between them. Mark is adamant that David fall in line, even though he knows David really doesn't mesh well with the abusive types. Compounding the problem, David is smitten with Teresa, Mark's girlfriend - played by the single most beautiful female ever to grace a FRIDAY THE 13TH film, the aforementioned Kimberly Beck.


Massacre at Central High

Things go somewhat smoothly until David has the audacity to interrupt Bruce, Craig and Paul as they try to rape a couple of girls, smacking the shit out of them in the process. In retaliation, they track David down, find him working on a car - that they destroyed earlier - and kick the jack out from underneath it, crushing David's leg. When David returns to school, the former sprinter is now hobbled and plotting his revenge. In a relatively short amount of time, David manages to wipe all three of them out, sparing Mark only because of his feelings for Teresa. Much to David's surprise, the removal of the Bruce, Craig and Paul doesn't solve a single problem. The people who were once the target of their wrath quickly morph into abusive cliques of their own. Bumping these new assholes off one-by-one doesn't seem to make anything better either. As soon as one is gone, another steps up to take their place. What's a guy like David to do?


Simple. Blow up the whole damned school.


Massacre at Central High

MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH probably wasn't the first film to use high school as a social/political allegory but it is, despite it's narrative clumsiness, one of the best. The high school David walks into is a very much a Fascist state, run by a four-headed dictatorship. As usual in these kinds of films - if not in real life - those who exist outside the Fascist regime, if you will, are beaten down or, in David's case, seen as a kind of revolutionary hero, a symbol for the end of abuse and the freedom of expression. Once David has completed his one-man insurgency and purged the school of this Fascist regime, the school effortlessly slides into a more Socialist environment, only to re-collapse. You could view this film in any manner of ways - HEATHERS, a film obviously inspired by MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH, plays by the same tune but lacks the depth of subtext to be found here - and walk away satisfied but the question for those who just want to be entertained is: will this film work for me?


Massacre at Central High

My answer is yes and then some. This is a film I have always found to be extremely entertaining. It's not a bloody film. Many of the death scenes are laughably absurd, though a few might come a bit too close to real-life school incidents for some. The film moves at a fast clip, never slowing down or pausing for reflection - there are no funeral scenes or police investigation scenes, for example; everyone in the film says "wow, he died. Bummer, let's go to the beach and get our minds off of it". The casting of the film is uniformly fine. Andrew Stevens, Steve Bond and Robert Carradine are the most recognizable male faces on display here though Derrel Maury, who plays David, might look a bit familiar if you are a fan of the TV show Happy Days. The female cast contains two names any diehard sexploitation and horror fan recognizes, Rainbeaux Smith and, of course, Kimberly Beck.


Massacre at Central High

Smith had quite a run playing small parts in a lot of genre favorites. CAGED HEAT, LEMORA, the adult version of CINDERELLA, REVENGE OF THE CHEERLEADERS and THE POM POM GIRLS - a personal favorite of mine for obvious reasons - are all on her resume. She has what I guess would be best called, again for you genre fans, a kind of Gloria Guida beauty to her, a doe-eyed innocence mixed with raw sexuality. Beck doesn't have near the resume of Smith but she is undoubtedly the most recognized name on the credits for horror fans, if only for her performance as Trish in FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER. Now I won't go off on a long, sprawling rhetoric here - lest I slip into mushy, gushy fanboy love - but Beck's performance is a keeper. She is unfortunately saddled with some rather lousy dialogue bits but she manages to push through it all with a great amount of charm. Plus her full frontal nude scenes help a bit.


Massacre at Central High

Rene Daalder has created here a minor masterpiece of genre cinema. I know, that seems like strong praise but, dammit, I don't care. We sometimes form strong attachments to pieces of film that we love and sometimes that bond might warp our perceptions of the work at hand, turning it into something much better than it actually is - I'm looking at you, FRIDAY THE 13TH fans - but I honestly think MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH is one of the best genre films of the 1970s. It is slick and potent but charming and likeable. It doesn't have the punch of the grittier grindhouse offerings of the decade but it has a kind of insidious charm to it and an atmosphere of devilish fun. It might be slight and undemanding viewing but who cares? It's tremendously entertaining with a great sense of humor


And sometimes that's enough.


Essential viewing.