My Review Of “Student Bodies” (1981)

     First off I am gonna be 40 in July so chill out because I am well aware that for anyone born after 1992 this movie is totally lame. However just like the  DVD cover says “The Worlds First Comedy Horror Movie” ever! That means for anyone close to my age growing up loving horror this movie was ground breaking. There had never been anything like it before. The obscene gestures, crude humor, and over the top melodrama cheese that we all associate more readily with “Scary Movie” started right here.
      Directed by Mickey Rose and starring Kristen Riter, Matt Goldsby, Cullen Chambers, and Richard Belzer as The Breather the parody flick follows a slasher on his continues quest to rack up a mean body count. Shot mostly from his point of view during most of the flick he task was not an easy one. As his presence becomes known among campus others take up his identity for their own personal vengeance which makes finding the kids to kill a little harder than your average slasher deals with.

     The hilariousness that is this movie not only comes from the manner in which the victims die, one death by a paper clip. Not to mention the continuous references to all the horror movies the director and writer could find room to fit into this film. Movies like Halloween, Carnival Of Souls, and Prom Night were all parodied here. There is even a small nod to The Shining. Sort of a hell yeah to horror and a fuck you to censors.

     As a kid watching this it took a deep breathe and some understanding to realize this was not a normal horror movie. It was the first film to have a slasher set up but not be so serious. That is hard to take when all you want to do is be scared as you watch to see if the people will get away from the psycho after them. However this is a film now and has been for a long time since that first viewing that I always go to when in that horror-comedy mood.

       When watching this film you have to keep in mind that this was over a decade and a half before the Wayans Bros gave us “Scary Movie” so now the gags are no longer original. Bare that in mind when watching. The great things about this film is the over the top gratuitous violence, nudity and obscene subject matters from start to end playing out with subtitled descriptions as the killer moves along. Then bam at the end it is all a fucking dream and shit can’t be said about the over excessiveness of material on screen because it never really happened-HAHAHA! Normally that would piss a viewer off but not with this movie, not at that time in horror history. The original horror/comedy classic and a must try once for younger fans of the subgenre and a must have for us older horror/comedy fans.

There I have managed to talk about this film with only giving a way one spoiler! The fucking ending –YEAH! Sorry had a douche-ey moment. If old school cheese fest is not your thing avoid this movie because everything about it is under-budgeted and over-the-top. If you can handle that vibe this is the quintessential for a collection.

****4/5*****