Movie Review: Graduation Day (Blu-ray) 1981

BLU-RAY ALERT: GRADUATION DAY (1981) by Matt Boiselle

 It’s time to go back to high school…and trust me, this is one graduation ceremony you probably don’t want an invitation to.

 If you’re a fan of early ’80s slasher movies, there’s a good chance you’ve at least heard of Graduation Day. Released in 1981, this one arrives right in the middle of the slasher boom, when seemingly every movie studio was asking the same question: “How many teenagers can we kill before the credits roll?” In Graduation Day, a high school track star suddenly dies during a meet, and before you know it, somebody starts picking off the students and faculty one by one. Naturally, nobody seems particularly interested in figuring out who the killer is until the body count starts getting really difficult to ignore. And that’s where Graduation Day gets pretty damn entertaining. Is this one of the absolute heavyweights of the ’80s slasher genre? No. But does it have plenty of the stuff we’re here for? Oh, hell yes.

 You’ve got the creepy masked killer, a whole bunch of suspicious characters, plenty of questionable decisions, some wonderfully cheesy dialogue, an appropriately sleazy early-’80s atmosphere and, most importantly, people getting murdered in increasingly unpleasant ways. There’s also a fantastic cast of familiar faces, including Christopher George, E. G. Daily and Linnea Quigley, and if you’re anything like me, spotting familiar horror faces is half the fun with movies like this. What I really enjoy about these early slashers is the atmosphere. There’s something about that grainy, slightly grimy early-’80s look that just works. Before everything became overly polished, these movies had a strange little charm to them, and Graduation Day definitely has that vibe. It’s not without its problems. The mystery isn’t exactly airtight, some of the characters make decisions that would get them eliminated from any horror movie survival contest almost immediately, and the movie can be a little uneven. But that’s part of the fun of digging into these lesser-known slashers. And honestly, I’d much rather spend 90 minutes with a flawed, weird ’80s slasher than watch another perfectly polished horror movie that feels like it was assembled in a committee meeting.

Special Features:

• Classic introduction featuring Lloyd Kaufman

• Interviews with Patch Mackenzie, Herb Freed, David Baughn, Martin Jay Sadoff, and Linnea Quigley

• Commentaries featuring producer David Baughn and the hosts of ‘The Hysteria Continues’ podcast

• Coming distractions