Schrei - denn ich werde dich töten!

A good slasher movie, made in Germany, with a good young cast of anonymous people, this movie is a threat for the fan of the genre. A few of the stylish murder scene are very well made and very effective in catching the eye of the spectator (and new enough to hold the attention even of the more smaliziate viewers). After all, a movie to belong to every genre fan video shelf.

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.

I've been a horror/thriller/mystery fan my whole life, and I enjoyed this movie very much. On the DVD the director mentioned that he thinks of the film as a "teen giallo", rather than just another slasher film, which I thought was a good way to put it. Anyway, I did not have high expectations, but after watching the film, I realized I had enjoyed it. It satisfied the following criteria for me: 1) The body count was high, 2) the murders are mostly on camera and bloody, but not overly gory or over-the-top gimmicky murders; the weapon of choice is a nasty looking pair of scissors 3) sympathetic characters die, along with the unlikable ones 4) I couldn't guess who the killer was for sure -- the movie plays with suspicions very well, and is tricky, but doesn't cheat 5) the story was complex enough to keep my interst through-out 6) All the actresses were (to me anyway!) very attractive --but real, not typical slasher-film bimbos. This is a German-made film and some people won't like that it is dubbed. Me, I always liked dubbed films! You couldn't be a fan of a lot of foreign horror and NOT like dubbed films! So, I enjoyed it enough to track down a copy of the DVD to own.

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.