April Fool's Day
BY Ryan LaMarca / 2008-03-16
A surprisingly well-done holiday-themed horror movie, April Fool's Day certainly surpassed any expectations I had before watching it. I initially dismissed it as a generic 1980s slasher film, but the movie was able to pull off a good mystery story without an excess amount of blood and guts. One thing's for sure, it's the best April Fool's Day horror movie there is, and that's probably because its the only one. The story is one written in the vein of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, also known as And Then There Were None, revolving around a group of people that are invited to an island getaway for the weekend while one by one they are picked off and killed. This Paramount picture was directed by Fred Walton and stars Jay Baker, Pat Barlow, Deborah Foreman, Ken Olandt, Griffin O'Neal, Leah King Pinset, Clayton Rohner, Deborah Goodrich, and a young and upcoming Thomas F. Wilson (Biff Tannen, Back to the Future).
The story goes that a group of college students are invited to the secluded private home of their friend Muffy St. John (Foreman) for Spring Break. Likewise, it is also Muffy's birthday and she intends to celebrate it on April 1, April Fool's Day. On their way to Muffy's island, the kids are playing around on the boat and one gets stabbed in the chest and falls in the water, which is revealed as an April Fool's joke. However, the dockhand, who jumped in the water to rescue the stab victim gets his eye crushed by the oncoming boat. He is taken to shore and to the hospital by a nearby boat. Upon their arrival at the island, Muffy has set up various tricks and April Fool's gags to entertain her guests from whoopee cushions to trick faucets to a painting with moving eyes.
Then, while in the boathouse nearby, two kids, Rob (Olandt) and Kit (Steel) notice a dead body floating by who looks like their friend Skip (O'Neal). The kids cannot leave the island until the end of the weekend and thus try to discover what is going on. While looking around the island, more and more kids turn up missing or dead. Chaz (Rohner) gets a fatal crotch wound and another boy Harv (Baker) has hanged himself. Meanwhile, Nikki falls down a well and discovers the heads and bodies of many of their friends, including Muffy's. The phones are dead and it's finall only Rob and Kit left and they learn that Muffy has an evil twin sister named Buffy who is the one terrorizing and killing everyone. She even shows up at the door with a knife and starts chasing the couple. She chases Kit into the living room into which she falls through a door to discover all of her friends, alive and well.
It turns out Muffy was playing an elaborate April Fool's joke on all of them. When Rob arrives, Muffy explains that although she is going to inherit the mansion from her parents, she needs a way to maintain money for taxes and so forth. So, she decided to make her house into an authentic who-done-it weekend escape and needed a test group. It is revealed no one was killed and Muffy was aided by Hollywood special effects artists to construct the props and fake heads. However, it's not over. After everyone leaves, a drunken Muffy returns to her room only to find a present wrapped on her bed. She opens it and discovers it to be a jack in the box. As she begins to crank it open, someone appears from behind and slits her throat. After a few seconds, Muffy realizes she isn't really bleeding and it was one of her friends from earlier who was getting back at her for scaring all of them.
Although the movie was entertaining, it was in no way perfect. And unfortunately, I had already known the ending of the movie before watching it for the first time and thus did not get the same shock factor as a first time viewer who had never seen it before. I think it could have been a lot better if they had tried to emulate more of the Ten Little Indians and Agatha Christie motif, but the movie turned out fine. The acting's not the best from some of the leads, but they're able to pull it off. Thomas F. Wilson was my personal favorite in the movie mainly because of his other role as the infamous Biff Tannen in the Back to the Future trilogy. Wilson is able to deliver the lines in such a way that it always sounds great. The movie was produced in 1986 and therefore has that nostalgic 80s feel to it. However, it is not without its faults. The whole notion of the movie is ludicrous and is topped off with a cop-out ending. Who in their right mind would want to spend a weekend on a secluded island and participate in a who-done-it weekend mystery experience? I sure wouldn't.
The video for the movie is in pretty bad shape. There's lots of grain present especially in the dark scenes. Other than that, it seems fine. The colors are sharp and the details are discernable. However, there is not one special feature to be found on April Fool's Day. It's part of those early barebones Paramount Widescreen Collection DVDs that featured no extra features whatsoever. But I do love how they try to trick you on the back of the DVD with the special features list which include: widescreen version enhanced for 16:9 TVs, English subtitles, and Dolby Digital English 5.1 surround, English Dolby surround, and French Dolby surround. Oh, and be careful because the special features aren't rated!
In the end, April Fool's Day is no Halloween. It's not a genre-defining movie that everyone knows and will remember. The only reason that it is possibly remembered is because of its surprising ending. It's not scary in the sense of "things pop out at you" scary, but more of "who's going to die next" scary. There's plenty of other good movies out there, but this isn't too bad and only runs for eighty-eight minutes. I'd say it's worth seeing once, but I honestly don't think it has re-watch potential. However, how many other April Fool's Day movies do you know of? If you're in the mood for a quick April Fool's Day scary movie, then you might want to check this one out, but I'd recommend this only for a rental.
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