Graduation Day (1981)
(In French, On Cable TV, June 2020) First-generation slasher films had a thing about special days (Friday the 13th, Christmas, Saint Valentine, April Fool’s Day, etc.), which makes sense considering how hard they had to distinguish themselves despite their limited story elements, repetitive structure and fierce competition. Unaccountably, Graduation Day landed on… a graduation day as a motif. Much of the plot alongside the murder scenes has to do with a young woman visiting the campus where her sister died, and a string of brutal deaths accumulating during that time. But who cares? It’s a slasher, and not a very good one at that—you get bad acting, low-budget filmmaking, unconvincing effects (which is a plus in slasher terms) and a dull death sequence every ten minutes until the film is over. Try as you might (and most fans won’t), there really isn’t much more to Graduation Day than this. If you like early-1980s slashers, this is for you—otherwise, stay clear.