STUDENT BODIES [R]
review by Robert Newton
Long the ’80s cable staple, this highly-sought 1981 horror spoof makes its way to DVD for the first time courtesy of Paramount sub-licensor Legend Films, which also just released 1982 riotous Jekyll & Hyde…Together Again. Over a dozen years before Scream parodied the genre, this one, by former Woody Allen co-scribe Mickey Rose, sent up the slasher flicks of its day like Halloween, When A Stranger Calls and Friday The 13th in rapid-fire, relentlessly funny style, and without the need for graphic violence, sex or language. In fact, it had so little of all those things that an announcer interrupts the film and points out that in order to receive the then-desirable “R” rating that a film had to contain an aggressive form of the f-bomb, upon which he tells the audience, “F*** you.”
The story concerns a string of murders at Houston’s Lamab High (nothing clever in the name, just the production designers not wanting to change out all the letters in Houston’s actual “Lamar High”). When a virgin named Toby (Kristen Riter) tries to solve the murders of her sex-crazed classmates, she becomes a suspect, though the audience knows that the killer is The Breather, a hilarious, asthmatic, galoshes-wearing chatterbox. Beyond him, the shop teacher obsessed with horse head bookends, the freakishly gangly janitor Mr. Malvert and the running, on-screen body count and suspect tracker all keep the laughs moving as fast as a half-naked co-ed running scared through the bramble.
The Breather was played by Richard Brando. He was no relation to the late, Oscar-refusing titan, because he was actually comedian Richard Belzer. It would seem that when late producer and co-director Michael Ritchie, whose career would top out with The Warriors (1983) and Fletch (1985), opted for the moniker of shame “Allen Smithee,” The Belz followed suit. It’s really too bad, because the role is a hilarious one, and helps make this otherwise minor horror-comedy memorable and worthy of being the centerpiece of your next party.•••
