It’s a Massacre at Central High Christmas

It’s interesting how different people create their own unique holiday traditions. We celebrated our most revered tradition on Christmas Eve Eve this year – our annual holiday double feature. Most folks would assume that we’d be enjoying a few holiday classics. Maybe It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, or perhaps a comedy like A Christmas Story. Well, every year we enjoy a lineup of two of the finest films ever to grace a movie or television screen – Massacre at Central High and The Van. I’ve been trying to piece together the foggy memories as to how this became an annual event. I think it was because I used to try and visit Denver every Christmas, and this was a good excuse for me and my friends TJ and Eric to get together, drink beer, and laugh at some familiar cheesy movies. It’s become a tradition with us – it’s not a question of if we’ll do this, but when during the holiday season we’ll do it. I’ve decided to give my thoughts on Massacre in this post.

My friend TJ was the first of us to discover Massacre, which was originally released in 1976. Back in the 80’s, an edited version appeared pretty regularly on late night programming on WTBS. He taped it at some point, and that was the copy we watched several times. Once we rented it for a party during our college days, just so we could see it uncut. A few years after that, I dubbed copies for us when I found it at Scarecrow Video in Seattle. The film has been out of print in this country for many years, but is available on DVD in England – I’ve actually entertained the idea of getting a multi region player many times for this reason. I recently found a DVD-r copy to replace my worn vhs dub, which I’d guess was burned from the foreign DVD, and this was what we watched this year.

(The next paragraph is a plot synopsis of the film and contains spoilers, so don’t read if you think you’ll be trying to track this down and see it for yourself. If you don’t mind knowing everything that’s going to happen, read on.)

The film is more or less about a group of bullies who run a high school, whom we’ve dubbed “the inner circle.” Enigmatic newcomer David arrives at Central High, and it turns out he’s old friends with inner circle member Mark (their mysterious past is never explained, but fighting every day to survive is mentioned, and Mark repeatedly says that he “owes” David). Mark is eager to induct David into the inner circle, so that his old friend (who he “owes”) can help he and his cronies rule the school and maintain the status quo. David doesn’t approve of the Gestapo tactics of the inner circle, and repeatedly asks the bullied students why they don’t fight back – this leads to friction between him and the inner circle. This culminates in David stopping an attempted gang rape by three of the inner circle members (Mark doesn’t join in on this particular activity) and giving the three toughs a good beating. The inner circle (less Mark, who wants to be left out – he feels loyalty to David, but also mistakenly believes that David is having an affair with his girlfriend Teresa which keeps him from trying to stop his cronies) visits David to exact revenge, and accidentally crushes his leg (it’s never explained if David’s leg is just injured, or if it’s actually lost). The inner circle believes this will be the end of David’s defiant stance, but once David returns to school he stars dealing out their ends one by one. At first, the demise of the inner circle is a liberating force for the formerly oppressed students. Soon enough, however, various cliques and individuals decide they the want to become the new rulers of the school – and they all try to enlist David to aid them. These new wannabe rulers start meeting their own demises, and David soon decides that the only way to truly end this cycle is to blow up the school and kill everyone inside during the annual Alumni Dance. A bomb is all set to go off, but at the last minute David has a change of heart – he doesn’t want to kill Teresa, who he loves, and is attending the dance with Mark despite knowing about David’s plot. David manages to hobble outside of the school with the bomb just in time, but dies when it explodes.

I’ve skipped over some of the plot points of the movie, but that’s more or less the story in a nutshell. I heard somebody describe it once as “a teen Death Wish,” which is fairly accurate in a sense. Also, if some of the above sounds like the movie Heathers to you, you’re right – I’ve read more than once that the filmmaker for Heathers admitted to borrowing liberally from Massacre. However, Heathers is a black comedy and Massacre plays everything totally straight (and is more of an unintentional comedy). If you do a search on the internet, you’ll find a few reviews here and there. Many of these that I’ve read have some plot inaccuracies, and some of the reviews focus on the film as a political allegory. Check out the entry on www.allmovie.com – the film only gets one and a half stars, but the review reads like a rave. WTF??!!??

It’s hard to explain my fascination with Massacre, but it’s something I never get tired of talking about. Part of it may be that the film is incredibly dated, and the 1976 fashions on display are pretty funny. That, coupled with the often hilarious dialog, makes it into an unintentional comedy for me. The actors play all of this straightforward, with the performances ranging from pretty good to downright awful. The film is incredibly low budget, with boom microphones showing up in a few scenes. Overall, it looks a lot like a made for TV film from that era, with a soundtrack to match. There is an inappropriate syrupy theme song, “Crossroads of Your Life,” which plays over the opening credits and pops up frequently in an instrumental version throughout the movie. No adults are seen in the film until the very end at the Alumni Dance – where in the hell were the teachers at this school? With all of these students dieing, you’d think the cops would be called at some point, but they don’t show up until the end either. How about a funeral or two for the dead students? Why do some of the high school kids appear to be in their early to mid thirties? Why do these kids park their cars in the middle of the road? Why does David live in what appears to be a garage? I could go on and on…but I probably shouldn’t!

As you can tell, this is a movie I never get tired of watching. The fact that I know that two of the cast members (Lani O’Grady of 8 is Enough fame, and Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith of too many 70's B-movies to list here fame) passed away in the last couple of years shows that I’ve spent too much time searching the internet for more Massacre information. Hopefully it will see a legitimate DVD release someday in this country. Until that day, track it down if you can.

(Maybe I'll write about The Van soon. I'm not nearly as obsessed with that movie.)