The Perils Of Muff Diving *Updated* (April Fools Day [1986] (DVD))

Name: wampyrii

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Product:	April Fools Day [1986] (DVD)
Date:	13.10.01 (100 review reads)
Rating:

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April Fool's Day is one of the more overlooked movies in the slasher movie genre. It is however, one of the better ones if you ask me, and one of the few not to have spawned 101 sequels.

Muffy St. John(snigger) has inherited an island(must be nice) and this April Fool's Day has decided to throw a wild party for an assembled group of her teenage friends there. It starts well - with the grisly death of one of the aforementioned friends in a boating accident. Still, since when did a little thing like the death of a best friend put anyone off a party? Our horny bunch of revellers carry on regardless, but Muffy has a few games in mind, leaving clues to some secrets she has discovered about her houseguests around their rooms etc. What is Muffy up to? All will be revealed as Muffy's actions get stranger and the number of houseguests starts getting whittled down in a murderous fashion...

Most of us have probably seen more than enough slasher movies to not really be interested in seeing another and in all honesty there's not much thats different here for me to be able to urge you to watch this one. April Fool's Day works better than many of the others because it was one of the first to not take itself too seriously, whilst not decending into self-parody and farce like those of today. It marked a kind of watershed between the Friday the 13th/Halloween movies of the early 80s and the self-parodying slasher flicks of the 90s like Scream. Here there is a mixture of horror and comedy, but the comedy comes from a few smart remarks and gags(and yes, the inevitable muff diving gag is there) as opposed to nods and winks at other horror flicks or the chesy one-liners espoused by such slasher 'heros' as Freddy Kreugar. Don't expect to laugh aloud, but do expect a humourous tone which personally I think works better than the tone of the otherwise typically very dour slasher movie of yesteryear or the very silly 90s flicks.

Of c
ourse, the comedy aspect is a minor part of the movie, 'horror' being the main draw of any slasher flick and thats certainly here too. 80s video nasties were somewhat hauled ove the coals and came under the attack of the censor's scissors when each tried to outdo their predecessors with how much gore and violence they could get away with. Watch how later Friday the 13th movies are so less bloody than the first couple - blame the US censors, but April Fool's Day escapes by not showing the actual killings but rather the gross-out aftermaths of them. It kept the censors happy because no one was being skewed by pitchforks, stabbed 50 times etc. in typical video nasty style and at the same time is somewhat more effective because none of that really worked for me anyway - you get immune to it so quickly and the special effects so often stunk! Anyone who has sat through any more than a few sasher movies will testify that there is something less than thrilling about watching an arm waving a knife around when you have seen it all before 500+ times!

Still, all things considered, April Fools Day is not exactly 'original' in its ideas - no slasher movie since Halloween really has been! We have the usual assembled group of 80s teenagers complete with the same array of soon-to-be-dead stereotypes such as the goofy-kid, the comedian, the promiscuous slut, the beauty queen, the goodie-goodie...you know the kind of thing. It doesn't take a genius to work out which characters will survive and which will die as this movie conforms directly to the rules of a slasher movie. Its that same old 'moral' message again; do something wrong, especially if it involves promiscuity and you'll get punished. Sex, crime or stupidity = death in slasher movie land. That said, the characters may be stereotypical and 'obvious' but the actin gisn't that bad - or at least, not bad for a slasher movie anyway! Its the usual array or tight bodies an
d pretty faces from Hollywood's Z-list, but they do an adequate job for a change. Don't ask me for names, I haven't the faintest idea!

April Fool's Day is not going to be a movie which appeals to everyone, but rather one which will appeal to genre fans and those looking for a late night scare without going too far into the genre. Its definitely not the scariest or most gory horror movie out there but it is one of the more watchable in the slasher movie genre. If you liked Scream etc. then you will probably find something of merit here as well, and you can rest assured that despite being around 15 years old now, it hasn't aged badly at all. Its worth a look at least.

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