Student Bodies (1981)
STUDENT BODIES (1981)
Dir: Mickey Rose, Michael Ritchie
I’ve seen Student Bodies a few times and each time I do so, I’m let down all over again. I wanted to view it this time with the hopes of adding it to our upcoming 31 Days of Horror list for Halloween 2021, but I don’t want to subject others to this letdown.
The film starts off strong a title card says it’s Halloween, then says Friday The 13th, and finally Jamie Lee Curtis’ Birthday. We enter a suburban home where a babysitter is chatting with a friend on the phone while a heavy breathing POV shot lingers outside. The breather calls the babysitter multiple times and here we learn we are firmly in Airplane! (1980) slapstick territory with a parody of slasher films. Next, the babysitter’s boyfriend shows up, and they head upstairs for sex. The breather opens a roll top desk to find an arsenal of potential weapons, but the killer chooses a paperclip. Slapstick territory indeed.
Student Bodies features a Carnival of Souls (1962) surrealist fake-out ending after it is discovered the killer is a mother and son duo, but the mother is actually the son’s father, and none of it matters anyway because our star wakes up to a Wizard of Oz (1939) ending. And you were there, and you were there, and you were there too. But if those endings weren’t enough, they throw in a Carrie (1976) one as well. In this style of spoof, they toss anything at the screen to see what will stick. But that’s the anomaly, that so-called style of spoof didn’t exist in 1981. Maybe I have to walk that statement back and take a look at horror parody through the ages and see if this thesis holds up.
Abbott and Costello met Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolf Man, Boris Karloff, The Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll, and The Mummy during the 1940’s and 1950’s with sight gags and drawing their stories around the central fiends. Mel Brooks gave us a parody of Frankenstein’s monster with Young Frankenstein (1974). In Brooks’ film, the knowledge of the Shelly’s Frankenstein helps; however, the laughs come from humor built into the situations springing from the plot. Without knowledge of the creature or a new creature all-together, and the comedy may remain. You could argue Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978) was another creature feature spoof as well. Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) is at times a parody of RKO science fiction films of the 1950s. But what does all this data imply? Well, I’d like to say it means that Student Bodies is wholly different, but it’s not. It is true, the film mimics a sub-genre for laughs like all horror parodies that came before it. The major difference seems to lie in the source material for the spoof. When Abbot and Costello poked fun of horror they did so with long established Universal characters. And again, when Mel Brooks did horror for humor he did so with one of the most iconic monsters. The killer tomatoes rolling across movie screens were just an extension of 1950’s B-movies. But when we get to Student Bodies we get a film that isn’t spoofing long held traditions in horror. The slasher film had only become a firm sub-genre within the same year of the filming and release of Student Bodies.
This is not the place to discuss the golden age of the slasher. We merely place this here to create the historical relevance of Student Bodies. And while the film itself isn’t great, it holds a landmark status for how quick the popularity of a slew of films veered to a parody of itself. This isn’t just a one-off strange occurrence; it would happen again. At the peak of the slasher resurgence after Scream (1996), Scary Movie (2000) would be released and lead to the downfall of Slashers 2.0. But if we go back to May 9, 1980 when Friday The 13th was released, it was the starting gun for a marathon of slasher films. Yes, we all know that Halloween (1978), Black Christmas (1974), and Psycho (1960) were blueprints for the slasher film, but we’re talking about that great river of imitators that spewed forth between 1980 and 1984. Let’s narrow our search to May 1980 to August 1981 – when Student Bodies was released. In a little over a year there were nearly 40 slasher films released. Even in 1980 when Airplane! Was released, it drew from Airport (1970) film series and various disaster films of the 1970’s. It pulled from a decade of films. This is Student Bodies greatest achievement and greatest failure at the same time. The makers created a spoof of a sub-genre that had not been established which is impressive; however, there wasn’t enough material or subtext from the sub-genre to pull from.
