| April Fool’s Day Released: 1986 MPAA Rating: R Genre: Slasher Nuts and Bolts: Muffy is having a party. All of her college friends are invited but mysterious events begin occurring as one by one each of Muffy’s guests disappear. Someone is pulling some pretty intense April Fools pranks, but nobody is laughing. Summary: A college student named Muffy Saint John decides to hold a spring break party for her friends at her ancestral family home. Muffy also stands to inherit the island property once she turns twenty-one. A group of college students board a ferry and take off towards the island for the weekend. Included in the cast are: Arch and Skip (the Pranksters), Chaz (the Horn-dog), Harvey (the opportunist), Nicki (the whore), Nan (the conservative) and Kit and Rob (the couple). On the ferry, Arch and skip get into a fight and Arch throws a switchblade into Skip’s stomach and he falls off the boat. Several of the others jump into the water to save him including a boat hand named Buck. It is revealed that the whole thing is a prank and that nothing is at all wrong with Skip. They all get back onto the boat except for Buck who decides to shore the ferry from the water. He tries to lasso the boat to the dock pylon, but the boat comes in to close and runs him down. Buck’s face is severely lacerated and he is forced to be taken back to shore. The students are all pretty upset about the event. Skip blames himself feeling that if he hadn’t been joking around, then Buck wouldn’t have been in the water to get hurt. They finally get to the house. Everyone gathers in the dining room for dinner. Muffy has left a Barbie doll at each guest’s place setting. She leads the group in a toast and most of the guests fall victim to various pranks like dribble glasses, whoopee cushions and collapsible chairs. After dinner they each retire to their bedrooms. Most of the guests find something bizarre and prankish in each of their rooms. Harvey (Hal) finds newspaper clippings of various automobile accidents in his dresser. Kit and Rob find their lights have been tampered with and a strange painting with moving eyes hangs on the wall. Chaz finds S&M gear and other assorted props. Nan finds a recorder of a baby crying. The only one not joining in the festivities is the guilt ridden Skip. Skip is outside nursing his woes over a bottle of whiskey. As he is wandering about the docks, Skip is attacked and disappears. The following day, the group realizes that he hasn’t been seen and they all take off to try and find him. Arch goes into the woods where he is caught in a trap and attacked by a snake. But the snake is the least of Arch’s worries as an unseen predator stalks him. Bye-bye Arch. We hardly knew ye. Later that day, Nan gets into an argument with Muffy. Apparently Nan once had an abortion and was deeply offended at the idea of finding a recording of a baby crying in her room. Muffy denies any involvement in the prank. Hal overhears the argument and begins to notice that Muffy has been acting very strange lately. Nan disappears soon after. Later on, Nicki tries to make some tea and finds that the water isn’t working. Hal and she go down to the well to investigate the problem. Nicki descends into the well, but the iron rungs fall away plopping her into the brackish water. While floundering about she comes upon Nan’s body as well as the heads of Skip and Arch. Screaming intensely, Hal finally pulls herself out of the well. That night, Nicki is overwrought with grief and the whole house is heavy with anxiety. Rob radios the constable on the mainland and warns him that a killer is stalking them. He pledges to send a boat out as soon as possible. He also warns Rob to stay away from Muffy; a comment that Rob prefers to keep to himself. Everyone is scared now, and Muffy retires to her room. No one trusts her anymore. Hal finds a gun and agrees to sit on the doorsteps watching for the constable’s boat. Rob and Kit explore the attic while Chaz and Nicki go to their rooms. Chaz and Nicki are the next to go. While Nicki takes a shower, Chaz is playing around with some of the S&M props. Nicki returns to the bedroom to find Chaz lying dead, his genitals removed from his body. As Nicki turns to flee she too is greeted by the attacker. Meanwhile, Kit and Rob search through the attic. Kit discovers the clue that may explain why Muffy is acting so differently. Apparently Muffy had a twin sister named Buffy who had spent three years in a psychiatric hospital. As Kit learns more she finds Muffy’s severed head lying in a closet. Rob and she now know that the true killer must by the sister, Buffy. They race down to warn the others only to find that Hal has been killed too. Buffy emerges and quickly locks Rob in a kitchen closet. Now its just Buffy versus Kit. Kit tries to plead with the deranged lunatic, but there’s no stopping her. Buffy lunges at her with the knife and Kit begins backing away. They chase each other into the adjacent room and Kit falls through the double doors into the study. As she stumbles she turns to find Arch, Nan, Nicki, Chaz, Hal, Skip, Buck, and the Constable sitting in the room talking. They all turn towards her smiling and shout “April Fools!” While Kit is still stunned, Muffy (Buffy) reveals the blade to be a collapsible knife and begins wiping the ‘spooky’ make up off of her. Rob is released from the closet and joins the others. Muffy explains that in order to pay off the taxes on her inheritance she decided to turn her family home into a Mystery theatre Inn. But she needed to test it out first to see if it was a viable concept. Buck was apparently not really a boat hand, but rather a special effects genius who designed the severed heads and bodies that had been seen throughout the debacle. Apparently no one really knew what was going on until it was his or her turn to be the victim. No one actually died and there was no crazy twin sister. All is forgiven, and the group celebrates together with bottles of wine. Acting/Dialogue: The acting is fairly decent all around. Kit, Rob, Chaz and of course Muffy prove to be the most likable characters. The dialogue is a little hammy, but it’s really no different than anything else you would find in a 1980s horror flick. Everyone convincingly portrays the characters they are supposed to be. Gore: Not a lot going here, but I guess that depends on your perspective. We see a really wicked looking boating accident as well as some severed heads. (Now when I say severed heads, I’m INCLUDING Chaz’ non-existent penis.) Ultimately, its all shown to be horseshit, so that takes away from the dramatic level of the gore. Guilty Pleasures: None. Not even a nipple-slip. Although the ladies may delight in seeing Mister stud muffin Ken Olandt (Rob) prancing around in his BVDs. The Good: April Fools Day has a nice atmospheric quality to it that can be compared to the original Friday the 13th movies. This is coupled by the fact that we also have Friday the 13th Part 2’s heroine Amy Steel back in the saddle as Kit Graham. Every time we see Skip out by the docks or Kit scrounging around the attic, I expect to see Jason Voorhees popping up somewhere. Charles Bernstein delivers on his music score and offers us some tingling elements that seem like a cross between Harry Manfredini’s Friday themes and Bernstein’s own work on Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s all very subtle and has some good creep qualities to it. But the ultimate scene-stealer is Muffy herself (Deborah Foreman). Deborah is chameleon like between her scenes where she is the bouncy perky Muffy, and the later sequences where she is the crazed looking harridan Buffy. What I like about this movie is that it’s a film that only pretends to take itself seriously. I’m sure many viewers were pissed at the ‘shock’ ending, but I actually found it to be a breath of fresh air. All in all, this is a low-key low budget thriller, but the combination of music; atmosphere and FX all work well together to bring us an enjoyable popcorn film. The Bad: This film is hopelessly stuck in the 1980s. Dated hairstyles and unforgivable fashions seem to be even more horrific than the actual horror elements themselves. All the worst of the 1980s are represented here from spiky two-toned haircuts to mullets to polo shirts and Flashdance sweaters. At one point I thought all the cast members were going to stop running in terror and break out into the chorus line from Fame. There are two characters in this which are really annoying as shit. The first is Arch, who I guess is supposed to be the happy-go-lucky goof, but he really just comes off as being a loud geek. For some reason, Arch gets a lot of screen time and I really don’t know why. His most memorable moments involve the ‘turning up of the collar’ sequence whenever he plans on making a play for somebody. The other Oscar winning annoying turd of the year award goes to Harvey. Actually Harvey is only his birth name, he prefers to be called Hal. Hal makes us aware of this at least six times within the first half of the movie. He’s a redneck who doesn’t believe he’s a redneck and thinks of himself as some sort of entrepreneur sales exec. This guy also espouses the all time worst pick-up lines I have ever heard. It won’t surprise me to see Hal-don’t-call-me-Harvey on this week’s next exciting episode of Not Getting Any! This clown couldn’t get laid if he crawled up a chicken’s ass. The worst quality would have to be this films predictability. I’m sure that viewers from 1986 may have fallen for the gimmick, but by today’s standards it just doesn’t fly. Let’s face it folks, its called April Fools Day for a REASON. Overall, this film is fairly forgettable and there’s not a lot of re-watchability potential here. April Fools Day offers nothing that you can’t find in any other film and most others usually do it better to boot. Great Lines: “I’d like to plow your fields.” --This is dipshit Hal-don’t-call-me-Harvey’s suave pick-up line that he lays on Nicki. Believe it or not, she ALMOST falls for it. The slut. Overall Rating: 5 out of 10 severed heads. |
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