GRADUATION DAY

Sorry for the quality. Of the picture and the film. 

STATS:

Graduation Day

1981

Directed by Herb Freed

Written by Herb Freed, Anne Marisse, and David Baughn

Starring: Patch Mackenzie, E. Danny Murphy, and other teens who look like they’re a hard thirty

Doesn't this photo remind you of It's Pat? 

WHA’ HAPPENED?

A young track stars drops dead after winning a race, and now a gloved killer is wandering the campus picking off the other track stars, who don’t seem to get the hint that they shouldn’t wander around alone. It’s a who-done-it without any clues.

I always suspect the guy in the ascot. That's

probably why I'm usually surprised

at the end of Scooby Doo.

WHAT YOU SAY?

“You have lovely eyes. My sister had eyes like yours. She’s dead now.”

“You like snakes? I call this my little cobra.”

Though not exactly a quote, I did enjoy this little caption. I’ll let it speak for itself:

Why did the director focus on this sign?

It has nothing to do with anything.

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

Well, I’ve been waiting for months to review a movie like this: a pure, brainless slasher. (And I do mean brainless. At one point, our heroine flees through a clearly populated suburb and runs straight into the empty school. Because she is stupid.)

And she runs like a special person.

It would be completely disingenuous on my part to write a horror movie blog and not include awful 80s slashers. I’m talking about holiday-themed cash-grabs like Silent Night, Deadly Night and New Years Evil, which is so bad that it doesn’t even include an apostrophe in its stupid title. Technically, graduation day isn’t a holiday, per se (except for me, as I gleefully danced on the grave of my high school experience), but it has the same exploitative stench to it. God I love these movies.

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

There is some nudity, but strictly of the female variety, though we do get some welcome early-80s bulges:

To highlight how this film (and by extension all similar slashers) treats its T and A quota, let’s look at one of its many death scenes: A teenage gymnast does gymnastics on the uneven bars in slow motion whilst opera music plays. The adult male characters leer at her accordingly. In the next scene, she’s stripping down in the locker room when the killer comes with a big, phallic fencing sword and pokes her to death.

This example illustrates the titillation/death/titillation/death pattern of this movie and countless others. That’s why most of the victims are female and barely clothed.

BLOOD AND GUTS:

See above.

PLOT HOLES AND CRAZINESS:

Like 100% of slasher films from this era, Graduation Day ends with one final shocker. The main girl is asleep in her bed when the killer (still bleeding through his chest wounds) comes back in holding a knife… Wait. It wasn’t the killer. It was just… her drunk father about to hit her with a bottle? Okay. All better.

And that, my friends, is how to end a film.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

Much like the similar picture Prom Night, Graduation Day has its own theme song: Graduation Day Blues. Interestingly, the singalong scene is immediately followed by another musical number which has nothing to do with anything. It’s catchier, but irrelevant. Can you say filler?

This film is produced (or at least distributed) by Troma Studios, the company behind the Toxic Avenger and various other horror movies with inappropriate humor. Is it just a coincidence that Troma rhymes with “soma,” the pleasure drug from Brave New World? Yes. Yes it is.

Here is a butt:

OK. IS IT GAY?

When the film opens, my first thought was, “Oh my God. This is really gay!” It starts with a young male athlete holding balls…

…Then there’s the title accompanied by disco music. Cha-ching, right? I thought it would be an hour and a half of thirty-somethings in short-shorts running around playing teens in short-shorts.

Alas, the very next scene shows the cheering crowd at a track meet, and we get close-ups of a young fan basically climaxing over someone else’s race.

At that point, I realized this film wasn’t intentionally gay or straight. It was just weirdly sexual and inept.

Sure, there are some lesbian undertones. For example, there’s a scene where the gruff army cadet lady follows a girl into the woods, confronts her, compliments her eyes, and starts fondling her necklace. It’s meant to make her seem suspicious and other-y, but it’s just kind of dumb.

For the most part, though, the cast is rounded out by adult males who treat their underage female students like kibble, bits, and meat. The principal tells his assistant to be “quick like a bunny,” the music teacher stays late to serenade his students, and the track coach leers a lot. Sure, they all get their comeuppance, but so do the women who, for the most part, are never guilty of anything. There are some very muddled morals here, as is typical of this genre.

So what’s my verdict? Graduation Day isn’t gay; it’s just very 80s and sexual and dumb. So let’s give this two Christopher Atkins and a Steve Guttenberg.

One final thought: if there were any gay men on set, then they wouldn't have chosen mustard yellow graduation gowns. Just saying.

Evil Bong

STATS:

Evil Bong

2006

Director: Charles Band (His name is before the title. Like Walt Disney.)

Writer: August White

Starring: David Weidoff, other non-famous people, Tommy Chong

WHA’ HAPPENED?

The film opens with white-man-reggae music, pictures of pot leaves, and credits that include “Tommy Chong as Jimbo.” That pretty much sums up the tone.

Evil Bong is about four roommates who buy an evil lounge chair. Actually, they buy an evil bong. Whenever they use the evil bong (named Eebee, which is short for Edie Brackell), they get sucked into a strip club universe inside the bong. There, they are murdered by demonic strippers who eat them alive with their MonsterBras. (For the record, MonsterBras are actually real, and you can purchase them through Full Moon’s website. They may or may not murder you.)

The only one who can stop Eebee is the nerd roommate, who teams up with Tommy Chong, Eebee’s previous owner. Will they save the day? Yes, yes they will.

WHAT YOU SAY?

“Give me a monkey, bro. Come on. Give me a f#*king monkey.”

“You do know what red meat is?”

“Oh. Monkey.”

“You just suck. You don’t blow. That’s all.”

“It looks like an old, moldy dick. I ain’t sucking that shit.”

“Cease and desist with your offensive gyrations immediately.”

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

This is a movie that really, really wants to be a cult classic. (Evidence: some faux-quotable lines and a few too many cameos.) I’m not sure how many people have joined this particular cult, but it does have two sequels so far. It also dragged MonsterBras into the public conversation.

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

Lots of topless female demon-strippers. A few demon-strippers with evil boobs. One male stripper partially concealed inside a go-go cage. The jock character brags about his rippled physique, and yet we see nothing.

BLOOD AND GUTS:

All the murders come courtesy of killer boobs. We have shark-boobs that gnaw off a guy’s arm. We have lip-boobs that give a fatal blow job. And we have skull-boobs that eat a character’s neck meat. (I think this paragraph will tell you whether Evil Bong is your kind of movie.)

PLOT HOLES AND CRAZINESS:

(Special note: This is a movie made for stoned people. Of course it has plot holes.)

Once the characters are transported inside the bong, none of them act high except for Janet, who turns into Slut-Janet. (Insert Rocky Horror reference here.)

Once the first roommate dies, why do the remaining three decide to hide the body? And why doesn’t Janet freak out when she finds out that her new boyfriend tried to hide a dead body?

Jimbo (aka Tommy Chong) says that he survived the bong before, but that his brain cells didn’t. If Eebee can eat your soul after one toke, how did Jimbo manage to escape?

What were the vitamins that Jimbo gave our heroes?

Why are we introduced to Larnell’s grandfather and new step-grandma? Nothing happens except old-people jokes. Where was the necessary murder scene to justify the extra characters? (That said, Dame Rosemary Cornwallis has replaced Maria Conchita Alonzo as my new favorite name.)

Don't look so excited!

How did Gingerdead Man end up trapped inside an evil bong? (This is my new favorite question, and I plan to use this as an ice breaker at a bar.)

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

Pogo sticks are surprisingly unsexy.

Did the MonsterBra craze ever catch on? Please tell me yes.

Luann does the world’s craziest sexy-dance that leaves two characters horrified and one character asleep.

That old lady was the piano player from “The Nightman Cometh” episode of It’s Always Sunny. Damn, she’s got range.

Larnell has “got a mind like a urinal cake.” Maybe if his parents hadn’t named him Larnell…

OK. IS IT GAY?

Yes and no. All the characters are decidedly straight (with the possible exception of Luann, who had much more chemistry with Janet than Brett). Yet the main characters’ camaraderie is very frat-house-homoerotic and they never hook up with the ladies. (One falls asleep while being seduced, and the other one pays more attention to the dead body in the room.) When they finally succumb to their urges, they are eaten alive by demonic lady parts. I’m not sure what message that conveys, aside from “Don’t let your girlfriend buy a fricking MonsterBra” (now available for purchase).

Horror movies have a history of offering up nudity while simultaneously delivering anti-sex messages. This is a good example of that. On a gayness scale of one to ten, I’d give Evil Bong two Cary Grants and one Paul Lynde.