At the Falcon Academy of Athletics, a crazed killer is using a well-aimed javelin to bump off the school's most promising young sportsmen and women.
Given the wide range of sporting apparatus readily available to the lunatic in Fatal Games, it's a shame that the victims only ever meet their fate skewered on the sharpened point of a javelin: although it makes for a reasonably gruesome demise, the novelty soon wears off.
Thankfully, the repetitive nature of the film's kills is easily offset by the excess of female nudity, which is shoe-horned into proceedings at every available opportunity: a character gets topless for her boyfriend, girls are regularly seen showering in the changing rooms, 'final girl' Annie (Lynn Banashek) enjoys a naked massage (but not as much as the masseur!), and, in the film's most gratuitous scene, a totally nude victim is chased all over the school by the maniac after being interrupted taking a sauna. All that nekkidness certainly helps to make matters a lot more enjoyable.
Throw in an unscrupulous doctor plying the athletes with steroids and hormones, a coach having a lesbian affair with her student, a cool, lo-fi synth score and a lousy 'Eye of the Tiger'-style theme song (Take It To The Limit), plus a delightfully bonkers motive for the killer, and what you have is a reasonably entertaining piece of '80s slasher silliness. I may be in the minority, but I found it a lot more fun than Graduation Day, that other '80s slasher featuring high-school athletes.
6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.
