Unlike writer Daniel Waters and director Michael Lehmann, who pitched Heathers<\/em> in such a way that its arch dialogue was a natural outgrowth of the film\u2019s heightened reality, the off-kilter cadences in Massacre<\/em> are due to the fact that writer\/director Ren\u00e9 Daalder was not a native English speaker and some of the cast didn\u2019t alter the at-times stilted lines their Dutch-born director put down on the page. (In the retrospective documentary included on the Synapse release, a few of the actors talk about meeting up after hours to finesse their scenes, but that practice didn\u2019t extend to all of them.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As in Heathers<\/em>, the characters in Massacre<\/em> fall into broadly defined types. At its center is David (Derrel Maury), the proverbial new kid on the block who refuses to go along with the way things are run at Central High. This is in spite of the efforts of his friend Mark (Andrew Stevens), who knows him from the last school they both attended (where David helped him out of an unspecified jam), to set him up as one of the top dogs under the smug Bruce (Ray Underwood) and his two cronies. The targets of their unchecked bullying include a nascent social justice warrior, a working-class kid with a beat-up car, an overweight slob, the egghead student librarian, and a pair of probable lesbians. About the only student who escapes their wrath is Mark\u2019s steady girlfriend Theresa (Kimberly Beck), who is just as fed up with the status quo, but isn\u2019t prepared to take the same steps as David.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Notably absent from all of this are teachers, parents, or authority figures of any kind, making Central High a Lord of the Flies<\/em>-type pressure cooker as well as a microcosm of society. This is where Daalder\u2019s script and direction really shine, and his potent political allegory culminates in a dramatic confrontation at the prom (where else?) between the three people left standing who know what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As with many independent films that achieved cult status back when midnight movies were still a thing, Massacre<\/em> has had a curious afterlife. While it wasn\u2019t successful on its initial release in 1976, it hung around on the second-run circuit before gaining momentum four years later when Vincent Canby caught a random screening and raved about it<\/a>, touching off a wave of critical notices that it was a film to watch. (Amy Taubin<\/a> and Roger Ebert<\/a> were two others moved to belatedly sing its praises.) The key, however, was its inclusion in Danny Peary\u2019s Cult Movies 2<\/em> in 1983, placing it in rarified company. Between Synapse\u2019s restoration job and its Criterion-prompted higher profile, the cult of Massacre at Central High<\/em> will only grow from here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMassacre at Central High\u201d is currently streaming on the <\/em>Criterion Channel<\/em><\/a> as part of its twelve-film <\/em>\u201cHigh School Horror\u201d<\/em><\/a> series.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first film in the Criterion Channel\u2019s \u201cHigh School Horror\u201d collection proves ordinary people make the scariest monsters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":463,"featured_media":20752,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1399,1430],"tags":[1431,1422],"class_list":["post-20749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-looking-back","category-classic-corner","tag-classic-corner","tag-looking-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/463"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22481,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20749\/revisions\/22481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/massacre1-1024x576.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Because you can\u2019t have a movie called Massacre at Central High<\/em> without the massacre, it isn\u2019t long after David is crippled for daring to stand up to Bruce and his goons that he starts methodically killing them in ways designed to look like accidents. His classmates are quick to pick up on the pattern, though. \u201cOne accident, groovy, it\u2019s an accident,\u201d says hippie holdout Spoony (Robert Carradine). \u201cBut two? That\u2019s something else.\u201d An unforeseen consequence of David\u2019s actions, though, is the way various factions approach him about forging alliances so the school can be run their way. Those once under Bruce\u2019s heel find their time on top short-lived, however, as David takes it upon himself to beef up the body count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n