April Fool's Day (1986)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

good back-story, and good acting

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

I love horror movies - in particular slashers - that are holiday or calender related, so April the 1st is the perfect day/evening for sitting down and enjoying this one. Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians is very much evident regarding the plot here, which is no bad thing. In fact you could call her story the template for what was to become the slasher/body count movie. Those wanting a gory & nasty affair will be disappointed, this is very much a fun movie (though I would stop short of calling it a comedy) where most of the kills appear off screen, though there are plenty of mutilated corpses so it's certainly not gore-less. Filmed in Canada but with a mainly American cast it has some good characters and is well acted. Plus it has that wonderful and nostalgic 80's slashers look/feel about it, my favourite decade for the sub-genre. No spoiler here but it is called April Fools Day for good reason - watch it and enjoy.

I have a huge fondness for 1980s-era cinema in general and the slasher genre in particular, so my enjoyment of a film like APRIL FOOl'S DAY is a given. It has a typical set-up in which a bunch of vacationing teenagers end up at an isolated location before being bumped off one by one by persons unknown, Agatha Christie-style. What makes this one stand out are the unusual plot twists and turns along the way, particularly that big twist ending which is unlike anything else. The film is obviously low budget but the photography is crisp and sharp and director Fred Walton infuses the proceedings with the appropriate atmosphere. Watch out for Thomas F. Wilson, playing another jerk character much like his Biff in the BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy.

With the IMDb October Horror Challenge taking place,I decided to take a look at the Horror section on Netflix UK. Hearing about the movie after catching the tense Slasher/Giallo crossover Happy Birthday To Me,I was pleased to find that the title had recently been put on the site,which led to me getting ready to perform a vicious April Fools.The plot:Celebrating the start of April over the weekend,pals Harvey, Nikki, Rob, Skip, Nan, Chaz and Kit decide to spend time on Skip's sister Muffy's isolated island mansion. Playing April Fools on each other as they take the last boat to the island,which leads to deckhand Buck getting hurt and being rushed to hospital. Shaken by the accident,the gang soon discover that Muffy has transformed the island into a deadly April Fools.View on the film:Talking about Agatha Christie when they find dolls round the dinner table, (for being "dumb kids" their quoting of Christie/James Boswell and John Milton sure looks like a mature reading taste!) the debut screenplay by Danilo Bach holds back on diving into the full-on Slasher gore to instead stab the psychological fear of the Giallo. Opening up the Slasher box of "mommy issues",Bach wonderfully uses the title for a jack in the box Giallo mystery,leaping round via the "jokes" that Muffy has left round the mansion,to the (off screen) Slasher killings cleverly being placed for a completely different perspective being revealed in the richly macabre,Christie/Giallo-style twist ending.Losing its entire third act, (which Jeff Rovin's novelisation shows to be a much darker final to the "upbeat" studio final) director Fred Walton and cinematographer Charles Minsky impressively hold things together by casting an eerie Giallo atmosphere over the title,as gliding shots stylishly display the isolation of the Christie-style mansion. Running on a classy note which keeps all the sexy girls dressed (boo!) Walton gives the Slasher murders tantalisingly brief glimpses,that are finely balanced between offering a body count,and being vague enough to quietly place clues towards the sharp twist ending,as Muffy gives everyone an unforgettable April Fools Day.

April Fool's Day is really a byproduct of a period of time when horror was overcrowded with cheap imitators and unworthy ripoffs. Consumers and horror fans alike were alienated by an overblown market of horror films that were low-budget, spit into theaters nearly every weekend, and made on a shoestring budget. The ones that were able to garner enough recognition while in theaters were released to VHS and Betamax and wound up achieving a cult status, whilst the ones that failed to drum up any business in theaters were left to fade in complete obscurity, some not meriting a home video release until the dawn of DVD and others, to this day, never been released.April Fool's Day is interesting because its campiness and its tongue-in-cheek approach to the horror genre predates the wildly successful Scream franchise, yet comes years after other horror spoofs like Saturday the 14th and Student Bodies. Needless to say, however, it doesn't come close to being as successful as the aforementioned franchise mainly because it can't even conjure up half the wit that particular series had. The film concerns a group of faceless twentysomethings that venture out to their friend's large home for Spring Break in light of April Fool's Day. Their friend is a wealthy individual, who has gone through the trouble of setting up a series of goofy little pranks like whoopee cushions to lighten the mood. However, the pranks turn more and more sinister, as drug use is suggested in the home, before finally turning deadly, as the group of friends begin to wind up dead as they all try and outlast and play the game their host has set for them.The film was directed by Fred Walton, who churned out cheap eighties horror efforts like authors were churning out pulp novels in the 1960's and 1970's. Walton, who also directed the original When a Stranger Calls and its sequel, however, keeps things mostly sterile with April Fool's Day in a directorial sense, never adding any kind of zest or cinematic flair to the screen. He directs this film like a TV movie, with very basic, predictable camera angles and a limp aesthetic that fails to amuse or provoke, much like the film's throwaway characters.Yet, the campiness of the film is the downfall here; this is a film that can't decide whether its cheekiness wants to work in bringing a more comedic edge to the film or if it wants to be campy to give the presence of simply being an amateur production. The tonal unevenness here comes at how much of April Fool's Day is just one big joke on the audience, playing us for fools, as the title would suggest, but not in a fun, "whodunit" way, but a tired and tedious way. The suspense lacks on almost all fronts, other than generic eighties synthesizers letting us know when we should be frightened and when we should be unsettled, the music is thoroughly boring, effectively exuding no personality, and the characters are your generic souls who make improbable decisions that come to light once the ending rolls around.Give April Fool's Day credit for carrying out an ending I'm sure would never fly in mainstream cinema today. However, despite how interesting it is, it's also very impractical, even by the standards of an eighties slasher film. It'd be nice if the encompassing package of April Fool's Day was as intriguing as its ending, but it's simply another cash-in on the boom of a genre, lacking in personality and suspense and, in the end, being able to take as seriously as anything else on April 1st.Starring: Jay Baker, Deborah Foreman, Deborah Goodrich, Ken Olandt, and Griffin O'Neal. Directed by: Fred Walton.