Student Bodies is a 1981 American parodyslasher film written and directed by Mickey Rose, with an uncredited Michael Ritchie co-directing. A spoof of slasherhorror films such as Halloween, Friday the 13th and Prom Night, Student Bodies was the first film to satirize the thriving slasher film genre. A prominent feature of the film is a body count that is superimposed onscreen whenever a death occurs.
Plot
Student Bodies is about a serial killer who stalks students at Lamab High School, while at the same time, voyeuristically watching them. The killer calls himself "the Breather", presumably because the killer is always breathing heavily. The Breather enjoys stalking victims over the telephone and, much like Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th films, he hates seeing youngsters having sex. The Breather uses many unusual objects to kill his female victims such as a paper clip, a chalkboard eraser and a horsehead bookend. The film itself ends with several twists: initially, it is revealed that the Principal and his elderly female assistant are working as a duo as "the Breather", even though they are shown at one point in the film in the same room as other characters when the Breather contacts the school in order to threaten to commit further murders. The film then goes to reveal that the entire film was a fevered dream, caused by the main character Toby being sick and consumed by overwhelming sexual repression. In a send-up of the film The Wizard of Oz, many characters are revealed to be much the opposite of what they appeared to be for the bulk of the film: the jock-like shop instructor is really the school's French teacher, the stuck-up would-be prom queen is actually the school nerd, the two handicapped kids turn out to be ablebodied, and a local ROTC cadet is a hippie. After being released from the hospital, Toby and her boyfriend are about to have sex, at which point he puts on gloves similar to the ones worn by the Breather and strangles Toby, as he has lost respect for her. However, in a homage to the nightmare-ending of the film Carrie, Toby's hands rise up from the freshly dug grave after her funeral to attack her killer.
Student Bodies features a cast of true unknowns; most of them have never made another feature film. Third-billed Cullen Chambers has appeared in numerous films and TV shows since 1981, but his main employment has been as a body double for such actors as Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker. The best-known performer in the film is probably Mimi Weddell, an actress in her 60s who later went on to play several roles on film and TV, including a grandmother in the hit series Sex and the City. Comedian Richard Belzer was the voice of the Breather. Mickey Rose wrote and directed the film, with executive producer Jerry Belson offering additional material; however, Michael Ritchie was placed on set as an overseeing producer to guide Rose should he need it. Some sources say that Ritchie was actually the co-director/writer and had to take the "Alan Smithee" credit due to a strike by the Writer's Guild of America; others maintain that he took said credit to distance himself from the project. Mickey Rose was also a WGA member and received full credit; this would seem to debunk the "union problem" rumors.
Student Bodies contains no graphic violence or foul language—until 26 minutes into the film, when the action is interrupted by a man sitting at a desk. He explains that, in order to achieve an R-rating, a film "must contain full frontal nudity, graphic violence, or an explicit reference to the sex act." He intones that R-rated films are by far the most popular, so "the producers have asked me to take this opportunity to say, 'Fuck you'." A slide indicating that the film has been indeed given an R-rating by the MPAA appears for a few seconds, after which the movie continues.
Parodies
The film parodies several slasher and horror films, including Carnival of Souls, Black Christmas, Carrie, Halloween, When a Stranger Calls, The Shining, Friday the 13th and Prom Night.
"The Stick"
One of the film's oddest aspects is a character called Malvert, a creepy-looking janitor. Malvert mumbles, does bizarre things like urinate into wastepaper baskets and moves about in a herky-jerky fashion. Malvert was played by a tall, double-jointedstand-up comedian known only as "the Stick", who made no other films; his only other credit seems to be as a guest appearance in the pilot episode on the 1984 TV series Out Of Control. Several online reviews give the film itself a mixed reaction, but praise the Stick's performance. An obituary from the Corsicana Daily Sun dated May 8, 1989, confirms that the Stick's real name as Patrick Boone Varnell, born in Lawton, Oklahoma on January 22, 1941. He died at Medical City Dallas Hospital in Dallas, Texas on May 7, 1989, aged 47. His body was donated to science by his sister who was a lab technician in Corsicana at the time of his death.
One of a group of films directed towards teenaged audiences during the late 1970s and early 1980s, Student Bodies grossed $5.2 million at the box office. It became famous as a late-night cult favorite on cable afterwards, appearing frequently on the Rhonda Shear-hosted USA Up All Night, as well as the network's USA Saturday Nightmares double feature series. The DVD was released on June 3, 2007. The HD Blu-ray version was released May 3, 2011.
Critical reception
of The New York Times called the film "a real disappointment," writing that it "just slowly topples over as you watch it, like a stand-up comedian in the act of failing." Variety found that the jokes became "depressingly repetitive," writing that "unfortunately, once you've seen the trailer, you've seen all but one of the good gags included in the entire film, meaning that there are about three minutes of effective material over the course of the 86-minute running time." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave it two stars out of four, writing that it "exposes all its comic tricks in the first reel, suggesting that the genre itself is not all that deep and that there may be less to parody than one might think." Linda Gross of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "The film has some very funny moments, but it is definitely not another 'Airplane!'." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote, "Although it frequently misfires and occasionally keeps firing away on empty satiric chambers, 'Student Bodies' is a likeably sarcastic and knowing assault on the clichés of horror movies." AllMovie wrote, "Student Bodies, though occasionally very funny, is not consistent enough to recommend as a comedy or scary enough to be an effective horror film."
