“Why are these parents so upset? I don’t understand.”

Drake’s rating: Just another day at Giallo High

Drake’s review: Although Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, were the iconic faces of slasher cinema by the mid-80s, the early part of the decade was another matter entirely. The genre was still finding its footing and was forced to look outside its own boundaries for influences. And where better to look than the giallo?

Giallo, literally “yellow” in Italian, was that country’s cinematic version of the sensationalistic thriller. Finding its origins in cheap pulp paperbacks with yellow covers, giallo became known for lurid murder mysteries that became even more gruesome as the films progressed, eventually treading into straight-up horror territory. Often focusing on an unknown killer, it was an obvious influence on the first Friday the 13th, which utilized the first-person point of view shots for the killer and of course the shocking murders, both common giallo elements.

In Graduation Day, the comparisons are even more apparent. We not only have an unknown killer, but they also wear the giallo-trademark black gloves! Add in victims aplenty, suspects galore, incompetent cops, and imaginative kills, and it becomes fairly obvious that the filmmakers were wearing their influences on their sleeves.

When a local high school girl dies after winning the Midvale track meet, her sister Anne (Patch Mackenzie) returns home from the Navy to a grieving mother and abusive stepfather. The coach (Christopher George) is blamed for the girl’s death and given notice that he’ll be fired at the end of the school year. The day before graduation, the other members of the track team begin to meet their grisly ends at the hands of a mysterious killer who uses everything from simple knives and axes to a wickedly spiked pole vault landing pad. And after every kill, the victim’s face is crossed out of a team photo.

In the meantime, we’re introduced to a wide cast of suspects. There’s the disgruntled coach, of course, but the principal (Michael Pataki) has a desk drawer full of knives and uses a switchblade to slice up an apple. And how about the pervy music teacher, who bought a blue polyester suit in 1974 and has seemingly worn it every day since? Or could it be the school’s security guard, roundly mocked by the students and looking for some payback? Even Anne herself is seen sporting a pair of black gloves, a sure sign of suspicion in any giallo.

Unfortunately, the victims themselves are merely window dressing to be dispatched in creative ways without much thought given to making them actual characters. The sole exception is Dolores, played by B-movie scream queen great Linnea Quigley. She gets a decent amount of screentime before her untimely demise. The kills themselves are decent if fairly tame by slasher standards. You get your expected slashings, a few beheadings, and some fairly creative stabbings. Nothing Saviniesque, of course, but they’re effective enough to keep the film rolling along.

Also unfortunate is the fact that we never get a central character to focus on. Anne is obviously meant to fill that role, but she disappears from the film quickly, missing the entire second act only to suddenly reappear late in the third. In the meantime we have murders galore, which seemingly go unnoticed until the parents begin calling the school wondering just what’s become of their sons and daughters. The police finally get involved, Anne at last decides to take the protagonist role, and in the end we get a fairly bonkers resolution that features some truly awkward fight choreography.

Despite those structural issues, however, Graduation Day is a fairly decent slasher/giallo hybrid. It’s obviously a low-budget affair and the younger actors, with the exception of Quigley, are a fairly wooden lot, but the majority of the dialogue is wisely given to the more experienced cast members. Again, this establishes the list of suspects while leaving the victims with little to do but die a grisly death, but when you’re working with a $250,000 budget, concessions have to be made.

If you’re in the mood for a slasher — or maybe a giallo where you don’t have to read subtitles — then Graduation Day is a fun watch. Although it made a ton of money at the box office it slipped through the cracks in the following decades, especially when compared to its plethora of more famous 1981 siblings. But, hey, it’s hard to compete with Friday the 13th Part 2. And The Burning. And My Bloody Valentine.

Man, 1981 was a great year for slashers.

Intermission!

• Always great to start a slasher flick with a disco track.
• I’m kidding. It’s never great to start anything with a disco track.
• Fans got stoked at track meets in the ‘80s! You’d think Van Halen just showed up.
• Look for future Wheel of Fortune co-host Vanna White in a supporting student role.
• Graduation Day made nearly $24 million! In 1981! How did this not turn into a franchise?