This April Fools’ Day I decided to hunker down and watch an 80’s slasher dedicated to the holiday. The story centers around a group of college friends going to Muffy’s private island for spring break. They arrive on April Fools Day and play a bunch of practical jokes on each other. It’s all fun and games until a killer picks the friends off one by one and secrets are revealed.
I had such a fun time with this movie! It’s fun, silly, and sooo 80s. The set of characters we follow all have fun personalities and it is so entertaining to watch them navigate through the situations they are thrown in.
The setting is also really intriguing. The cast of characters are stuck on this private island, so when things go awry they are trapped. This helps with the overall suspense. The audience really doesn’t know who is killing off the friends so it makes for a pretty good who done it.
There is also one of the greatest endings (which I won’t spoil now). But I think it was very well done and very different from other slasher films of the time.
This film is not perfect though, there are some logistical issues, the decisions made are mind boggling, and some of the acting is quite corny. But I think all of these issues are what made my viewing experience so fun.
This is a lesser known slasher of the 80s, and I think that is such a shame. Especially for the spirit of April Fool’s Day this movie is so on theme. If you like corny slashers with a twist I highly recommend this movie to you!
SPOILERS:
The main thing I want to talk about in the spoilers section is that ending. Our main character Kit plays detective the whole movie and discovers their friend Muffy who owns the mansion, is actually her crazy twin sister Buffy. As Kit faces off she runs into a room where all of her friends are still alive! No one was actually killed and it was all just a prank. Being that this movie is April Fools themed and has a silly atmosphere throughout I absolutely loved this ending.
All the friends say “April Fools’” into the camera and we get a whole bunch of exposition from Buffy. She explains how she is turning the mansion into a bed and breakfast and her goal is to create a murder mystery. Her friends were the test subjects, and when they were ‘murdered’ they were out of the game. She had some family friends create some practical body doubles of her friends’ bodies to make them all believe there was a real killer.
This is where the logistical issues came into play when I rewatched the movie. When the fake bodies turn up it doesn’t make any sense who planted them because all the people in on the prank were either not on the island or nowhere near the scene of the crimes. I can personally look past these flaws, because at the end of the day this is a goofy 80s slasher.
I give this film a ★★★☆☆ / ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ It is a great way to celebrate April Fool’s Day!
(you can watch this film on Paramount+ and Shudder)
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Love this movie, the 80’s were the best…