By 1981, all manner of slasher had been slashed. From dates on the calendar to holidays to high school, college, probably every trade schools, if you could kill someone someplace on some special day, there was a great chance that cinemas, drive-in and video stores had documented evidence of the murders. But a track team getting offed? What a twist!At one of their track meets, star runner Laura Ramstead collapses at the finish line, pushed too hard by her coach and dying of exhaustion. Soon, her sister Anne is on leave from the Navy, back home with the mother and stepfather she desperately wanted to leave behind.Meanwhile, a killer is wiping out the track team one by one, complete with giallo-like black gloves and a stopwatch. With each kill, he or she uses bright lipstick to cross another member off of the team's photo. If Anne has gloves just like the killer, is it all a coincidence? Hmm?There are all manner of people of interest, from Kevin, Laura's boyfriend, to Dolores (Linnea Quigley!) the team's bad girl and Principal Gugilone (Michael Pataki, who is in almost every movie that we watch), who has a stopwatch and plenty of knives in his desk drawer. And oh yeah, Coach Michaels (Christopher George, Gates of Hell/City of the Living Dead, Day of the Animals, Mortuary, Pieces, pretty much every movie that I watch that doesn't have Michael Pataki in it, so this is a rare crossover), who isn't allowed to coach any longer, despite the fact that it was a blood clot that really killed Laura.Hey look! There's Vanna White as a school bully! And more dead bodies! Soon, Kevin and Coach Michaels get into a huge argument over who the killer is, but the cops get there and shoot the wrong guy. Yep, it's Kevin and he has Laura's corpse all made up in her graduation cap and gown. He also has a sweet Vampirella poster on his wall.A fight ensues and Anne ends up pushing Kevin into spikes - but not before body after body is revealed. That night, he comes back to kill her - an undead version of him at least - but it's all a dream. It's just her asshole stepfather, which makes it even easier to leave the town behind forever.I ended up liking this one way more than I thought that I would. It has some elements of style, plenty of gore and lots of ridiculous moments, like a bed of spikes killing a high jumper. Plus, there's a heavy metal concert with the band Felony, a roller disco scene and a combination football/knife murder weapon. Truly, something for every member of the family to enjoy.

Graduation Day (1981) * (out of 4)A high school track coach (Christopher George) pushes all of his students but in particular one who he wants to finish a race in thirty second. While pushing the student to run faster she ends up hitting the goal but falls death from a heart attack. Flash forward a bit and soon all of her team mates find themselves being stalked and murdered.GRADUATION DAY was released during the Golden Era of slasher movies and was reportedly made on a budget of just $300,000. When you look at the film the only thing you can really see are money signs because it's clear that there wasn't too much thought put into the picture because they were just trying to rush anything out there in order to have a slasher in theaters so that they could count the money coming in. GRADUATION DAY has a couple memorable moments but for the most part it's one of the worst that the genre ever put out there.There are countless problems with this thing so we could start at countless places. I think the biggest problem is the fact that the film doesn't contain an ounce of suspense. The murder scenes are all rather silly and they either contain no suspense or get dragged out to the point where you're ready to move onto something else. Just take a look at the one chase sequence that is edited with a band playing. Completely boring. Another problem is that the murders themselves are pretty lame and unconvincing. To make matters worse is the fact that at 96-minutes the film seems to run three times as long because there's just nothing interesting going on.It also doesn't help that there are so many characters brought into play and for no reason at all. The mystery of who the killer is really isn't a mystery as most people will figure it out early on. As I said, there are a few things that keep this from being a complete disaster and one is George. Say what you want about the man but he always managed to be entertaining no matter what he was doing. Linnea Quigley has a small role here and does a nude scene, which is another positive. You can even look closely and see Vanna White in an early role.GRADUATION DAY is a film that flunks out on most every level and is at the bottom of the genre. After watching a film like this it just goes to show how much better something like Friday THE 13TH was.

After being pushed hard by her demanding track coach (George), Laura Ramstead (Ruth Ann Llorens) collapses and dies on the high school track. Her boyfriend Kevin (Murphy) is in shock from it, and soon a black gloved killer starts picking off other track team members in typical Slasher movie fashion. Is it the grieving Kevin, the demanding Coach or the loopy Principal (Pataki)? Laura's older sister Anne (MacKenzie) has returned home to be right in the middle of it. There are a few inspired deaths like when a pole vaulting victim landing on some spikes in the matte below, and one girl stabbed through the neck while jogging. Most of the time Graduation Day is displaying terrible acting, practically no script and way too many scenes involving cast members singing along to a bad songs! Director Herb Freed, who also co-wrote this did what many low budget film makers did in the early 1980's and cash in on the success of "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th". With no suspense, atmosphere or timing bad examples like this movie is what quickly killed the Slasher film by the end of the decade.

Let's face it, GRADUATION DAY was never going to win any film-making awards. It's a low budget slice of sleazy trash, rushed out on the cheap to cater for the audience's new-found appetite for horror in the wake of HALLOWEEN and Friday THE 13TH. The plot is threadbare, the editing is slightly dodgy, and most of the cast give performances so wooden that you'd think you were down the local forest.And yet, and yet...GRADUATION DAY has a certain charm all of its own. The high school setting is a fun one, and the various HALLOWEEN-inspired stalk 'n' slash sequences are a hoot. The cheesy gore effects are equally great fun, and then there's the presence of the hammily entertaining Christopher George (THE EXTERMINATOR) as the coach, George Michaels (yes, really). A dodgy musical interlude goes on FOREVER, and of course it wouldn't be a slasher film without the twist endings.Director Herb Freed seems intent on making his film as sleazy as possible given the constraints of the day; his camera lovingly lingers on his actresses (including a young Linnea Quigley) as they strip off and inevitably find themselves murdered soon afterwards. Playing "guess the killer" is part of the fun. It might be cheap, shoddy and occasionally distasteful, but is GRADUATION DAY fun? The answer is a resounding yes!