A young teacher gets a permanent position at a church-run university, which is good, yet attracts a nutbar who escaped from a mental institution who targets those around her before settling on her, which is bad.

Judging a Book by its Cover

-Hey, two taglines and a quote from a magazine! What a fancy poster this is!  Let’s not save any other good ones for the other “killer in a school” movies.

-I’m going to guess that 1984 wasn’t a big year for “terrifying films.”

-Seriously lady, if you’re that frightened maybe you should stop looking at the camera and roll off the bench.

-Is the killer “psycho” if he’s inside the shower instead of outside?

Where the school colors are blood red!

Directed by Richard W. Haines

Starring Forbes Riley, Ric Ranrig and Dick Biel

The film begins in a mental ward where a group of doctors and nurses who clearly don’t care about their patients are on the look out for an especially crazy one who has escaped his room.  One dick stabbing later and the nutball is on the loose and subsequently goes on to murder a teacher at a nearby school in broad daylight.

That hole wasn’t there a minute ago!

A few months later, Julie (Riley) arrives at the school for a job interview with the head priest.  Oh, it’s one of thoooose schools.  Despite telling her about all the bad things that have happened in the past, Julie is eager to get into the classroom and make a difference so she gets the job.  Within minutes of starting, she asks someone to start a conversation about a hot topic so a student brings up abortion which doesn’t go over well with her superiors though she is given another chance.

She always wanted to try sword swallowing.

Meanwhile, her student body starts to dip at a slow enough rate to at least notice that they’re missing.  Honestly, they’re all played like absolute fools and morons so there’s not much need to care about them.  Except for maybe one girl, who finds out she’s pregnant and I began to think that the heroine label was going to shift to her from Julie.  Nope, she turns out to be just another victim.  The writers of this movie have it out for unborn babies.

Can’t say I approve of that.

After such a hot opening, the entire middle of the film is a slow crawl to the end punctuated from time to time with bad and too frequent jump scares, stabbing scenes — the killer keeps things simple with just a knife at his disposal — and lots of bad characters and dialogue.  Par for the course for a Troma film as far as I’ve seen which leaves the effects as the sole reason to watch the movie aside from finding out who the killer is, of course.  The ending is not usual fare for these types of films and I almost liked it; I just wished it were in a better movie.

Two minutes into the movie and this guy is warning you.

Splatter University has a great title and certainly lives up to it when the murder pieces take place.  Aside from that, however, there’s very little to make me recommend the time investment.  During a time where a great slasher was few and far between, this was just one of the many movies that filled the void in between those good ones.

TL;DR

Story: 3 – A mental patient escaped you say?  Killing everyone around them?  I may have heard that before…oh, but it’s at a Christian school?  Yeah that’s different.

Blood: 6 – While there isn’t much in the way of variety in the kills, the stabbings lead to several gushers from the victims and usually in the school so the movie covers the title.

Nudity:  1 – I have to give one point for a dirty magazine with boobies on the cover.

Overall: 3 – Slow and bland + dumb and bloody = a bad combination.

Trivia

– Splatter University was originally filmed in 1981 with a lean running time of 65 minutes.  The following year another 13 minutes were added to pad the running time.

– The copyright at the end of print originally stated “Copyright MCMLXXXIII” however, an extra handwritten “I” was added to read MCMLXXXIIII as 1984 even though 1984 in Roman numerals should be MCMLXXXIV.

– Director Richard Hained played a role in the film when the actor hired to play a priest didn’t show.