Student Bodies is one of those films that was way ahead of its time, especially for 1981. While the title might conjure up a plot revolving around spring break or sorority girls, this is basically a slasher movie...but it also happens to be the FIRST EVER SLASHER MOVIE SPOOF! Forget Scary Movie, this one came way before, and while it takes a kitchen-sink approach to its humor, it is much funnier and more brilliant than you could ever imagine.

Ripped from out of hundreds of slasher movies, the plot is simple, a heavy-breathing killer is on the prowl, killing horny teens with terrible peripheral vision and bad judgment. Right from the beginning, the film lets us in on the joke by not just setting the film on Halloween or Friday the 13th, but on Jamie Lee Curtis' birthday. Then we watch as a baby sitter is taunted on the phone by the heavy-breathing guy, calling himself "The Breather", but all is forgotten when her boyfriend shows up and they head upstairs to do it. The Breather sneaks in and kills the girl with a paperclip when he could have just as easily chosen a knife or a gun (cheesy, I know). We soon meet Toby, our innocent, virginal heroine (played by Kristen Riter) who's snooping around places her at the scenes of the crime postmortem.

Not much plot to discuss from this point on, as random couples get bumped off in weird ways. One girl gets killed with an eggplant (and not how you might guess, you sickos), another gets killed with a horsehead bookend (which is a fetish for the Woodchop Teacher, who has become a suspect). A couple more kids get killed in ridiculous ways by ridiculous objects, and the final body count amounts to about 13 1/2 lost souls. The film provides a handy dandy body count counter to help us keep track. Also, if a door has been left unlocked, the film points it out to make sure we are paying attention by flashing big white text on the screen. Bits like this are fun at first, but kind of wear out their welcome soon.

Anyway, Toby has become suspect #1 because she is always whining and happens to be accidentally connected to every murder. She decides to go undercover and find the killer herself during the high school prom. The film's third act is a mess of reveals from which I don't know what exactly I can pull out to describe without getting it completely wrong. But I'm thinking that this was the point of the whole film. It's a spoof in the finest sense, because it manages to reference almost every cliché and tell its own story at the same time. The final scene of the film throws a Wizard of Oz style twist at us and caps it off with a bit of Carrie, to boot! There's also a mention of Swine Flu as well, which shocked me because I though that was a recent epidemic and not a well-known thing back in the early 80s, but I guess Swine Flu has been around longer than any of us knew...oh, well I'm glad I never got it.

Written and directed by Mickey Rose, a prolific TV comedy writer, this film is far from perfect, but there are a few humorous gems throughout that keep you watching. The acting is right where it should be, between realism mixed with high-handed schlock to go with the mood of the spoof. I wished the film had been bloodier but I guess that wasn't the point of the film. Still, almost all the kills were bloodless except for maybe one or two, and even then barely anything was shown. There was also plenty of space for boobies, but this important ingredient was left out as well. Maybe this was s TV movie, seeing as the director's background was mainly on the small screen, but if it wasn't then there was no excuse to skimp on the blood and ixnay the boobies. Still, we get the locker room scene and chicks in their bras...what a missed opportunity! I would recommend this movie if you've exhausted your catalog of slasher films and want something fresh, but at the same time something exactly like everything else. If you can look past the dog meowing and farting in the first two minutes, then you'll be rewarded with some very clever and unique humor that injects some new life into slasher cinema.

- Jose Prendes