STUDENT BODIES (1981)

STUDENT BODIES is the very first Slasher parody. It came out in 1981, barely a year after the first FRIDAY THE 13TH and it already understood the rules of a genre that would run strong for another decade. This is a full 15 years before SCREAM. But being ahead of the curve is just part of a legacy.

The pedigree behind this movie is bat shit. It’s the only directing credit for comedy writer Micky Rose, who wrote for Johnny Carson for 20 years and on early Woody Allen movies such as WHAT’S UP TIGER LILY, TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN, and BANANAS.

It also was produced and ghost-directed by Michael Ritchie—the director of ‘70s classics such as THE CANDIDATE, SEMI-TOUGH, THE BAD NEWS BEARS, both FLETCH movies and…THE GOLDEN CHILD, of all things.

Sadly this doesn’t directly translate into a very good film. Yet I recommend you watch it anyways because STUDENT BODIES is full of brilliant jokes and moments.

It’s ultimately a movie made by a person who knew what a good joke was but not how to execute it.

The movie starts with a lot of promise though. We open on a black screen and an ominous subtitle setting the stage…

The prologue follows the POV of a maniac stalking a teenage babysitter having sex with her boyfriend while the parents are out (HALLOWEEN). The killer sends a series of slobbering phone calls (a la WHEN A STRANGER CALLS) then kills her and her boyfriend. The references hit us at a zany ratio of AIRPLANE!. Not all of them land but a shocking number do (“Julie! You're not responding to my maleness!”) Then THIS JOKE happens:

This may be one of the funniest things I’ve seen. There’s nothing less funny than deconstructing humor out of context but here we go: By itself, the joke is a cute piece of absurdist humor that wouldn’t be out of place on Tim And Eric decades later. In the context of this movie, it hits you OUT OF NOWHERE. It’s so wonderfully weird that you have to laugh. Nowadays, this opening would make an amazing digital short on SNL.

This movie keeps sneaking up clever deconstructionist ideas like this on you. Like how a newly introduced pair of teens try to have sex about every other scene regardless of the context (“How can you think of sex now?!” “I can never stop thinking about it. Funerals get me hot!”). Then such said horny teens get killed in non-sensical ways (with subtitles that keep track of the kill count). The kills are tame, even by early ‘80s standards. It would have been rated PG-rated if it weren’t for this scene a half an hour in:

 If the whole movie had this level of precision, we’d be in good hands. Then the plot takes over:

Kristen Riter (not the one you’re thinking of) plays the virginal Toby, trying to solve the murders with her boyfriend (Matt Goldsby).

Meanwhile, the Killer (credited as “The Breather”) keeps talking to himself as he stalks and kills AND TALKS AND TALKS.

And none of it works. This comedy tells you “this is funny” rather than allowing you to laugh.

I’d also warn that there’s also an unfortunate amount of dated racial humor, transphobic putdowns, ableist jokes plus a series of running gags about Malvert, the creepy school janitor ("The Stick" or Patrick Boone Varnell) that just do not play at all. So WOWSERS.

And yet, the amazing dialogue keeps whizzing by:

 “Who could have done these murders?”

“I don’t know, it could be anybody.”

“Well, it can’t be anybody. It’s got to be somebody.”

“Of course, it’s somebody. But that somebody could be anybody.”

“Look. We didn’t do it, right?”

“Right?”

“So, you can’t say, ‘it could be anybody’ because we’re anybody.”

“True, but we’re also somebody.”

 OR

 “[Mom] also told me that sex was bad and dirty… but only with my father. With everyone else, she said it was great!”

I could spend the whole article on memorable quotes because this is some amazing comedy writing.  But for all his scripting skills, Mickey Rose just doesn’t know how to visually set up a gag. It’s only when he gives the cast the room to sell a joke does the movie score a laugh.

Equally an issue—Rose doesn’t seem to enjoy horror movies. Parody works best when you have affection for the genre.

You have to honor it in your deconstruction. Zucker/Abraham/Zucker movies love the weird details and rhythms of disaster movies and cop procedures at their core.

There’s no love for the genre here and some flat-out sloppy filmmaking gets in the way (a lot of the corpses in STUDENT BODIES have a nasty tendency to flutter their eyelids accidentally).

By the end, I don’t know what specific horror movie it’s trying to make fun of. I get the CARRIE reference or a halfway successful WIZARD OF OZ one, but the story’s not tied to any framework that coherently ends the film. The original AIRPLANE! pretty much stole the plot of ZERO HOUR! and that simplicity was to the movie’s benefit.

The filmmakers knew they had a potential bomb (Michael Ritchie took an “Alan Smithee” credit) and Paramount buried the movie. But like many cult movies of the time, it was eventually rediscovered on repeated late-night cable airings. Thankfully, its qualities are too good to ignore.

If given a choice, I would rewatch STUDENT BODIES again over any entry in the SCARY MOVIE franchise. And that’s my pull quote.