#29 - April Fool's Day (1986)


(dir. Fred Walton)

A group of college students are invited to spend the weekend at the summer home of their mutual friend Muffy. It's a huge mansion on an island and Muffy has set up April Fool's Day pranks all over the place. Unfortunately the mood is soured when on the ferry ride over a terrible accident maims one of the ferrymen, and the only boat on the island is taken to rush him to the hospital. They try to enjoy themselves anyway, and mostly succeed - until one by one they start to go missing. With no way to leave, they must fight for their lives until help arrives.

This is a fairly standard '80s slasher that's executed pretty well but is ultimately kind of toothless. Familiar faces among the cast include Amy Steel (Ginny from Friday the 13th Part 2) and Thomas F. Wilson (Biff from the Back to the Future films). It has a couple of memorable moments and I appreciate how most of the gags in the first two acts come back into play later in the film, but I thought the ending was pretty dumb.

Not much else to say about this - overall I enjoyed it and if you like '80s slashers you could do much worse, but I probably wouldn't go out of my way to see it either.

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