Friday, March 28, 2008

April Fool's Day

     This was one of the more clever slasher movies of the mid-'80s in the fact that it very effectively psyches you out and truly lives up to its title with one of the greatest endings ever made. 

      The story goes something like this... Muffy St.John ("Valley Girl" actress Deborah Foreman) is a popular somewhat rich and eccentric college student who has invited eight friends to come and enjoy spring break at her newly inherited island estate. Being that it's April Fool's Day, the jokes are aplenty. It starts when two idiots fake a knife-stabbing accident while on the ferry to the estate.  One man falls into the water and a few people have to dive in to save him. Everybody has a chuckle, but when one of the men that jumped into the water is accidentally crushed between the ferry and the dock, the hilarity is instantly turned to panic and remorse. He's rushed to a hospital, which leaves everyone on edge because he really looks like he ain't gonna make it. 

      Muffy greets everyone and tries to lighten the mood with the commencement of their spring break festivities. Continuing with the April Fool's Day tomfoolery in a much calmer fashion, the jokes include endless dribble glasses, exploding cigars, and a trick chair that flips you backward when you sit in it.  

     After the party when people start retiring for the night, they all find strange items left in their rooms. Drug paraphernalia, bondage equipment, newspaper clippings of grisly car accidents, just to name a few. Everyone is concerned as these aren't the typical jokes, but something that looks rather serious.

      The next day, Muffy is not quite the same. All of a sudden she is very shy and timid, when before she was quite bubbly and light-spirited. She now looks disheveled, and confused, and is wearing a drab outfit complete with nurse's shoes. She also keeps getting her close friends' names wrong. 

      To make a long story into a shorter long story, everybody starts disappearing or showing up dead. The last two people left, a romantically involved couple named Rob and Kit discover certain clues such as a photo of two female twins in an office belonging to Muffys father, and a letter addressing the family that "Ms. St.John" has escaped from an asylum. They know Muffy hasn't been in an asylum because she's been at Vassar College with all of her friends. When they sneak back into the house through the basement, they notice height measurement marks on the wall, like the ones used to measure a child's growth rate. Only there are two height measurements side by side, labeled Muffy and Buffy. 

     While in the basement, Rob and Kit notice a painting with the eyes cut out and real eyes staring from behind the painting. They pull the painting away only to have Muffy's severed head fall into their laps. It's now quite clear that Muffy has an insane twin sister named Buffy, who has escaped from an asylum and has murdered her twin sister Muffy and assumed her identity and that she's the killer amongst them.  

     Kit is cornered in the dining room by Buffy, brandishing a huge knife. Then, while trying to fend off Buffy's knife attack she manages to open the dining room door and stumbles into another room filled with all of her supposedly dead friends just sitting around hanging out as if nothing has happened. Buffy enters the room, lifts the knife and plunges it into her hand, and then retracts it, revealing it to be a fake knife. Kit is less than amused as everyone shouts out "April Fools!". 

      Evidently, everyone got sucked into it and was only a part of the master plan after they had been killed off. As it turns out, Muffy has received the estate as part of her inheritance, but only if she can prove that it can carry itself. She wants to turn it into a country inn, but not some ordinary "run of the mill" country inn. Instead, one that specializes in a once-in-a-lifetime whodunnit weekend, and she needed a rehearsal so she suckered all her friends into it. It's a totally unexpected ending because the movie has every indication of being a typical 80's slasher flick with a typically predictable ending. This has always been one of my favorite movies and it's gained quite a cult following in recent years. Truly an enjoyable 80's classic.

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