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Synopsis:
A group of college friends waits for the ferry that is to take them to
the island owned by the wealthy Muffy St John (Deborah Foreman). A
latecomer is Nan Youngblood (Leah King Pinsent), who explains that she
knows Muffy from the Drama Society, and embarrasses the others with her
fulsome praise of Muffy’s acting talents. As the ferryman (Lloyd Berry)
prepares for departure, Kit Graham (Amy Steel) begs a few extra minutes
for those running late. Even as she speaks, a car screeches to a halt on
the dock and disgorges Rob Ferris (Ken Olandt), Kit’s boyfriend, and
Harvey “Hal” Edison Jr (Jay Baker). As the ferry pulls out, Chaz
Vyshinski (Clayton Rohner) warns the others, only half-jokingly, to be
careful what they say in front of Skip (Griffin O’Neal), is he is
Muffy’s cousin. Skip insists a little grimly that he is a very distant
cousin or he wouldn’t have been invited, as Muffy prefers to keep her
family and her friends separate. He then, to the slight alarm of the
others, produces a flick-knife, and taunts Arch Cummings (Thomas F.
Wilson) into a game of ‘Stretch’. Meanwhile, Nikki Brashares (Deborah
Goodrich) sunbathes, while Hal tries – unsuccessfully – to put the moves
on her, and Chaz rather cruelly teases Nan over her bookishness.
Suddenly, the game between Skip and Arch turns ugly. As Arch tries to
back out, Skip tosses the knife to him derisively, accusing him of
cowardice. Arch catches the object and, in a surge of anger, throws it
back. The knife embeds itself in Skip’s gut. He staggers, and falls into
the water. As the onlookers cry out in horror, Rob and the ferry-hand,
Buck (Mike Nomad), dive in to the rescue. As they search desperately for
Skip, he emerges at a distance waving the apparatus with which he staged
the gag. He and Arch howl with laughter as the others react with various
degrees or amusement and annoyance. Rob climbs back on board but, as the
ferry prepares to dock, Buck announces that he will help moor it from
the water. As he concentrates on his task, the ferry slides towards him,
finally pinning him against the pylons. He surfaces screaming in pain
and with his face horribly disfigured. Constable Potter (Tom Heaton),
nearby in his motorboat, is a witness. The ferryman commandeers the boat
to take Buck to hospital. As they leave, the injured man screams that it
was all the visitors’ fault. Muffy is waiting on the dock. The constable
inquires rather oddly for her father and, learning that he is not on the
island, insists on borrowing Muffy’s boat, warning the young people to
stay together. Muffy and the others head for the house, which proves to
be a mansion with magnificent views. Gathering in the luxurious
dining-room, the guests are bemused at being served a meal of beans and
franks. Then the practical jokes begin: whoopee cushions, tumbling
chairs, dribbling glasses. As the visitors retire to their rooms, still
more jokes are unveiled. Some are harmless, like detachable doorknobs,
backfiring taps and a portrait with moving eyes. Others are not
so harmless. Nikki discovers a drawer full of bondage gear; Hal, another
containing newspaper clippings of fatal accidents. Arch’s bathroom
cupboard contains drug paraphernalia, while a distressed Nan follows the
sound of a crying baby to a hidden tape recorder. Outside, Skip, still
deeply troubled by his part in Buck’s accident, is rapidly getting
drunk. Hearing noises, he moves with uncertain steps towards the
boathouse, convinced that there is someone lurking inside. He’s right….
Comments:
We are so used these days to thinking of the 1980s as the decade of the
slasher film that it comes as some surprise to realise how rapidly the
genre became stagnant. After surfing along for four swift years on a
tidal wave of blood and body parts, by the mid-eighties the slasher had
wiped out. Jason Voorhees, flag-bearer for his generation, was killed
off in 1984, while 1985 saw his remains buried deep in manure. But like
the killers for which it was famous, the slasher genre proved remarkably
difficult to dispatch, continuing to twitch no matter how
enthusiastically the critical machete was wielded. The liberal
application of fertiliser that was Friday The 13th: A New
Beginning would spawn a sturdy new crop the following year, while in
two more the world would witness the co-resurrection of Michael Myers.
In the meantime, the genre stubbornly coughed and spluttered along,
tossing up traditional but unmemorable efforts like Slaughter High
and Nail Gun Massacre; going in new directions by grafting its
teen-kill plot onto a supernatural backbone, as in the Nightmare On
Elm Street movies; and producing the occasional interesting exercise
in Trying Something A Bit Different – like April Fool’s Day.
It would be fair, I
think, to call April Fool’s Day a slasher film for people who
don’t generally like slasher films – simultaneously acknowledging that
those people who do like them are liable to be driven into a
frenzy of exasperation by it. Superficially, the film could hardly be
more traditional. An “event” title, a group of young adults gathered in
an isolated location, a mysterious killer, a series of gruesomely
improbable deaths.… And yet – and rightly so, for a film with such a
title – it is apparent throughout that something about the events that
we are witnessing is a bit---well, off; that this is not so much
a who-dunit as a what-the-heck-is-going-on-here? Part of this feeling
stems from a bit of deliberate rug-pulling on the part of the
film-makers. Like many slashers, April Fool’s Day opens with a
prank gone wrong, with the appalling injury suffered by Buck the
ferry-hand being the direct consequence of the practical joking of Arch
and Skip. The disfigured victim out for revenge is one of the genre’s
most beloved stock characters, of course….meaning that the viewer may
well be caught off-guard when the film demonstrates unequivocally that
Buck could not be responsible for the disappearances and killings
that are whittling down our cast of characters.
Nevertheless, the
off-kilter feel that pervades April Fool’s Day is predominantly
the result of the fact that, certainly by slasher film standards, its
emphases are all in the wrong places. Like the Friday The 13th
films, April Fool’s Day was a Paramount production. Unlike them,
however, there is never a moment when it doesn’t look and feel like a
“real” film; there is never a sense, as you tend to get with the
adventures of Jason, that the studio executives were rather ashamed of
it. The film’s production values are comparatively high, and the
cinematography, and the use of the story’s setting, quite beautiful
throughout. The screenplay is also solid, without being brilliant, and
pleasingly studded with humour both overt (Nikki’s sour-grapes summation
of the view from Muffy’s palatial home: “On a clear day you can see the
Kennedys.”) and deadpan (my favourite line: Kit’s desperate insistence
that, “Muffy hasn’t been in an institution for the past three years!
She’s been at Vassar!”). However, with respectability comes
restraint. Although spiced up with plenty of gruesome post-killing shots
and shock find-the-body scenes, there is no explicit violence in
April Fool’s Day. Nor is there any nudity (and boy, don’t I wish I
had a dollar for every howl of indignation I’ve heard from a male
reviewer over the moment when Nikki, while wearing an open shirt, leans
forward out of a window….but not quite far enough); while the only sex
scene is both discreetly shot and played for laughs.
By now I might have
said enough to turn some people off April Fool’s Day altogether –
not to mention off this review. To those few hardy souls still
travelling with me, I shall further declare that where this film really
separates itself from its less reputable brethren is, of all places,
upon the strength of its cast. In a genre where mere competence is
uncommon enough to be startling, April Fool’s Day features an
unusually able group of young actors. In fact, it may not be too much to
say that only Halloween can beat it for across-the-board
on-screen talent. And with this talent at their disposal, it is not
surprising that the film-makers chose to put more weight than is usual
upon the character scenes; nor that for once these scenes are not mere
padding, but an important part of the set-up. Rarer still, you can
actually believe that the characters really are friends – and
that the couples really are couples, not just ciphers with no interest
in one another beyond getting into each other’s pants. (Or perhaps we
should say, with no purpose in the film beyond titillating the viewer
with a gratuitous sex scene.) The various backgrounds within the group,
their likes and dislikes, the alliances and tensions, are lightly but
convincingly drawn – which makes it all the more effective when it
finally dawns upon the survivors that one of them must be responsible
for the killings….
It’s a funny thing
about slasher films: that in a genre often, and often justly, condemned
for its misogyny, it is nevertheless the women that we remember, and the
men who are truly disposable. Lord, I sound just like Carol Clover,
don’t I? Well, that’s okay. As it happens, I agree with a lot of what
Carol has to say, not least her highlighting of this singularly perverse
contradiction. Let’s suppose that you’re a frequent horror film watcher.
You have, almost by necessity, seen a fair number of slasher films. I
bet if I asked you to name half a dozen Final Girls, you could do it
without too much difficulty. But what if I asked you to name half a
dozen male characters? I’m not sure I could do it; not
by name, anyway; possibly by mode of death: Ol’
Machete-In-The-Forehead, Ol’ Harpoon-In-The-Groin…. The place where
April Fool’s Day is most strongly in step with its fellows is in
this sexual division: even more than most, this film belongs to the
ladies. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with the work of
the male cast members; merely that they tend to fade from the memory
beside three particularly strong female performances – or, to be fair,
four. Leah King Pinsent adds nice support as Nan; her painfully fixed
smile and involuntary squirmings convey most convincingly the discomfort
of the outsider playing hanger-on to a group of close friends; but as it
happens, Ms Pinsent’s contribution is, uh, rather brief. It is the other
three girls who carry the film – not least because none of their
characters quite fits the usual slasher film template.
Anywhere else, Deborah
Goodrich’s Nikki would be your standard issue slut. Here, the worst that
can be said of her is that she is a bit of a tease – and not even that
with any consistency. A brief, halting conversation between Muffy and
Nikki reveals their not always happy personal history: a boyfriend lost,
a boyfriend stolen. Nikki’s insecurity about her current relationship
with Chaz, in the light of her own past indiscretions and of Muffy’s
attractions both tangible and intangible, lends the kind of shading to
her character that you don’t often find in a film like this. This is
similarly true of the characters of Kit and Muffy. During my examination
of Friday The 13th: A New Beginning, the spineless and
aggravating behaviour of that film’s Final Girl provoked me to a
despairing cry of, Amy Steel, where are you when we need you?
Here I got my answer. I was honestly thrilled to find Ms Steel in this
film, and even more so when she was finally revealed as April Fool’s
Day’s Final Girl: it is her Kit who proves capable of following the
trail of clues that reveals the identity of the film’s killer, and who
consequently wins at last the dubious honour of going one-on-one with
that killer. Kit is, as you would expect, both level-headed and likeable
– and as you might not expect, frankly not a virgin: a fact that,
thankfully, has no bearing whatsoever on her ultimate fate in the film.
However, fond as I am
of Amy Steel, the fact is that April Fool’s Day is stolen by
Deborah Foreman, who gives an excellent performance in what turns out to
be a duel role. Even as Nikki Brashares is not merely “The Slut”, and
Kit Graham is not merely “The Virgin”, Muffy St John is very far from
being just “The Rich Bitch”. From the film’s opening moments, during
which we are first introduced to her, preparing for her party, it is
apparent that there is more to Muffy than meets the eye – and that her
friends are for in for something far other than a pleasant and relaxing
weekend. Attractive, intelligent and amusing as she is, there is a
streak of something less estimable in Muffy’s character, something that
leads her to take just a little too much pleasure in her friends’
discomfiture under her barrage of practical jokes. As for the jokes
themselves---well, they’re harmless enough….aren’t they?
Perhaps winking at all
those other occasion-themed slasher films, April Fool’s Day gains
a double benefit from its seemingly jokey set-up. First up, the film’s
very title is a confession, a warning to the audience to be on its
guard; and if the lesson is not learned at the outset, Skip’s fake
stabbing should be enough to convince the viewer to take care who and in
what he trusts. In this respect, April Fool’s Day often plays
remarkably fair, serving up numerous moments that are overt clues to the
story’s central mystery – or so, at least, we recognise in retrospect.
However, and alas, hindsight also allows us to see that in many respects
– not unfittingly, I suppose you could say – April Fool’s Day is
an outrageous cheat. I don’t just mean that in the normal slasher film
way, either: the killer being where s/he could not possibly be,
teleporting dead bodies, and so on. This film, almost inevitably, has a
kicker ending – and how the individual viewer reacts to the final
“explanation” of the events that have taken place will almost certainly
determine their opinion of the film as a whole. There are other
problems, too, like a few too many scenes where a character turns out to
have been, so to speak, performing for the camera: that is, acting in a
way that would only make sense if another character, and not merely the
audience, were watching. Persuasive as they may be on an initial
encounter, films that rely primarily on shock scenes for their overall
effect rarely hold up on repeated screenings. The extent of their
contrivances is simply too apparent. April Fool’s Day suffers
from this as much as any other film I can think of – perhaps even to the
extent of provoking in the viewer, not merely dislike, but outright
hostility.
I spoke of two benefits
to the film from its April Fool’s background. One of them is manifest;
the other, a more personal reaction, perhaps. April Fool’s Day is
really too polite a film to be a successful slasher. There are no rough
edges, no verisimilitude through its crudity or technical shortcomings.
It is entirely lacking that air of---of meanness that tends to
give the most effective slasher films their potency – or at least, so it
is with regard to its actual slasher plot. But there is a degree
of meanness in April Fool’s Day, as there must always be in any
situation, real or fictional, involving practical jokes. I have, as I
hope I have demonstrated over the years, a fairly well-developed sense
of humour. Nevertheless, I confess that the “humour” that relies upon
the shock or embarrassment, even the humiliation, of the individual on
the receiving end of a practical joke entirely escapes me. Nor does the
usual attempt to remove the sting – “It was only a joke!” – or
for that matter, the occasional piece of double victimisation –
“What’s the matter, can’t you take a joke?” – make things any
better. There is undoubtedly an undercurrent of cruelty in this film,
but it has nothing to do with any of the murders. The practical joking
may start out relatively harmless, but there is a rapid escalation in
their execution that is pointed, personal and very, very vicious.
Indeed, the prank involving a secret from Nan’s past, and the sequence
in which Rob undergoes his final torment, are as cruel as anything
non-violent – non-physically violent – could possibly be.
Compared to the mental anguish inflicted by these alleged “jokes”, the
killings in April Fool’s Day seem almost considerate. I said that
the film has a kicker ending, and so it does; but in fact, there’s a
kicker after the kicker, in which one surviving character metes out, or
so it seems, a measure of revenge. It was, frankly, a disappointment to
me when this turned out to be just one more joke, the punchline to an
almost unparalleled shaggy dog story. And I can tell you this: if I had
been the character involved – or even if I’d just been the screenwriter
– that final prank would have been anything but. My final joke
would have been, at long last, to have something happen in April
Fool’s Day that turned out to be – exactly what it appeared
to be….
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Director:
Fred Walton