Jeux de massacre

The bottom line of this movie is that it's a horror movie, not a great one, not a terrible one.

I watch these kinds of movies with my family and friends, so that balances my opinion a little bit. A lot of the scary parts scared me, but not all of them. The people I watched it with were scared by all the parts, however.

The acting was average and the story was average, but without the plot twists it would have been predictable. Because of the plot twists, it was worth it to rent and watch this movie -- I also gave this movie 7 stars because of it.

Of course, that doesn't mean it was worth buying it -- it apparently was made for TV (in Germany, though, which is different from here in the U.S.) and I think that affects the quality of the movie so it's really only worth one good watching.

Obviously, this flick was not made for gore-hounds. Admittedly you don't get to see the murder victims' innards, so avoid it if that is your cup of tea. What you get to see in plentiful are fascinating and nightmarish images that should be envied by the majority of contemporary genre film makers. These images emanate an underlying violence that is much more frightening than gut-spilling excesses. Recommended.

Up until recently I had never heard of this movie and being a big fan of Slasher movies, especially when they became popular again during the late 90's, this one totally passed me by and don't recall seeing it on the shelves of my local video shop. So when I seek ed this out and looking at the cover with the killer wearing a creepy red mask and an awesome looking clown outfit, so naturally I was intrigued by this and when I got round to seeing it. Well I can see why this got lost amongst the shuffle.

The story follows a group of friends spending graduation night setting up pranks for their teachers at the school after hours and soon enough a killer shows up with a massive pair of scissors shows up and starts picking them off one by one.

This movie wasn't all bad, it does offer some great creepy locations with the school itself with a room full of creepy mannequins as well as a room of stuffed animals, which with the dark lighting does create an eerie atmosphere and the long dark corridors are used really well with a really cool Gothic look to them which does make for some really tense moments. The killer was very creepy and made for a real threat. The twists and turns that involve the killer or the last act which really took me by surprise and it really do keep you guessing up until the last act.

But there are several things that let things down in this movie, firstly the tame and lifeless acting, I don't know whether that was down to the bad dubbing and the pace was really sluggish and the dialogue was just stilted and awful. There were three distinct acts to this and the first act was really boring and dragged out and struggled to adapt to the tone. It's not until the killer appears is when things get interesting.

All in all 'School's Out' was average with some definite things that works in its favour including the mystery aspect, but gets bogged down by the pace and boring characters and if these things were tweaked a little, then this could have made for a much better movie.

Out here in the US, this film is called SCHOOL'S OUT. When I rented it, I had no idea that it was a German movie. And when I started it, I knew something was wrong. The dubbing on this tape is very poorly done. Why the hell didn't they just subtitle the damn thing? By the end of the first hour, things have finally picked up, and then we are merely confused. But, by the end of this tripe, everything explains itself. SCHOOL'S OUT gets 3/5 because it was so poorly dubbed.

This movie had a cool case, and the summary on the back actually sounded kinda cool (can't go wrong with people getting trapped inside something and stalked by a masked killer), but after two minutes of watching the this trash The word FAST FORWARD, or better yet EJECT popped into my mind continuously. The plot involves four teens and one of the guys sister getting locked in a private school while trying to set up tricks for their teachers, they also haven't heard the warning on the radio that a lunatic has escaped. WOW!..don't get me wrong, I love slasher pics, NEED them actually, i could watch a lot over and over, it's not about the story, but mainly what the director does with the material. There is little gore, the characters are ugly and boring (no it wasn't the REALLY BAD dubbing, but that still annoyed me)and there was no suspense.

The direction is to basic, what he thinks as stylish confuses me. How many times is he going to flash the killers weapon in front of the camera and hold them while the soundtrack blares it's epic over the top ho hum sleaze. There was only one little thing in this slop that interested me was the stalk sequence involving all these school board maps. That was pretty cool (Visual wise) but cut way to short. The chick as the opening victim (?or is she?) was dumber then rocks and freaking annoying. ON the back case summary it says the teens are "preaparing for the big rave", what rave?..that shitty excuse where their serving wine with plastic cups???..nice rave. Avoid this, especially if your a fan of slasher pics where people get trapped inside an enclosed area (michele Soavi's STAGEFRIGHT is a perfect example of this type of thing done right), this film is a childish excuse for SLASHER.