Massacre at Central High (1976)

To me, this movie is perfection.

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The plot = A new student David starting at school quickly becomes a victim of nasty bullying by four of the jocks, after a near fatal accident David turns the tables and kills off the bully's through a series of violent accidents, but things don't change and the former victims quickly become the new bully's so David decides to take drastic action.What sets "Massacre At Central High" apart from other slashers, is the theme of revenge against the school theme and the methods of dispatch, rather than the usual knife or axe, we get nasty fatal accidents, which is rather a fresh idea and still holds up by todays standards. Ultimately though, while containing several murders and a near double gang-rape scene, Massacre At Central High is not a slasher film. Most of the deaths consist of off-screen moments of impact or fireball explosions. There's a minimalist amount of blood thrown around and while the near gang-rape scene is a little out of place due to its sexual violence, it's never shown graphically. But the film is still quite horrific and shocking.I also liked the fact that the gorgeous Kimberley Beck is in this movie, I loved her turn in "Friday The 13th pt 4" and I equally love her in this, she brings true beauty and elegance in the role, as the only likable character in this movie.Of course this movie does have it's bad points, like the fact that none of the cast (except for Kimberley Beck) are even remotely likable and makes it hard to root for anyone, and the pacing is off at times and this movie does tend to drag on a bit.All in all, not perfect but still a hidden gem of a movie.

A new student named David comes to Central High.Unfortunately the school is terrorized by a gang of snobbish bullies.David can't accept the other students being bullied for no reason.He decides to fight back after his one of his legs is crushed under a bare drum rotor.One by one the bullies begin to die.Pretty interesting and captivating political allegory mixed with some slasher elements.The bullied becomes bullies themselves and the spiral of violence becomes overwhelming.The much-better-known 1989 film "Heathers" certainly borrowed several plot elements from "Massacre at Central High".Also Italian version of this film called "Sexy Jeans" was edited with pornographic inserts.8 out of 10.

Between working for Mr. Russ Meyer and directing Mr. Sid Vicious's "My Way" video, Mr. Rene Daalder contrived one of the classic drive-in films of the 70s. In gorgeous technicolor, masterfully cast from the familiar faces (and boobs!) to the utter unknowns, smothered in Marxist/nihilist commentary too vulgar to describe as 'subtext', this would have been the birth of punk rock if not for all those flutes. The new kid in town takes on the high school power elite, first with words then with highly inventive murder, only to see the underclass - peasant farmer, intellectual librarian, nerds, dyke-esques, fat kid, the gamut - form their own snooty hierarchy. What else can you do at that point but blow up the school? Very Sid Vicious, even if commerce prevented them from following things to their logical conclusion. WOW is it ever fun - the perfect mix of head and cheese.

As has been pointed out by other users, this is clearly not a horror film. Perhaps a highschool-exploitation-revenge flick but without splatter or gore and there are certainly no massacres. The DVD-cover (at least the one I own, Dark Vision - 2001, different from the German cover shown here) even shows a guy holding an Axe, who is not in the movie at all, as there are no axes in the film for that matter either! When I first heard about this film, I was fascinated, mainly because of the name of the director, Rene Daalder. I was a bit puzzled, because there's only a handful of Dutch directors active in the U.S, so who was this Daalder? Perhaps just a Dutch name, as there are many in the U.S., but apparently he did come from the Netherlands and came to America around 1970 after making several films in the Netherlands. One of them, DE BLANKE SLAVIN (The White Slave) (1969), made on a budget of 1,100,000 Guilders (at least $500,000), actually was the most expensive Dutch movie made at the time. Trivia note about this, he co-wrote the script with the now (world) famous architect Dutch Rem Koolhaas! I don't have the exact figures (not even available anymore) but something like 845 people went to see it and as a result he wisely decided to leave the country for a while and went to America.After first seeing the film some five months ago, I thought it was OK, but nothing special, but barely a month later, a documentary was shown on Dutch public television, titled HERE IS ALWAYS SOMEWHERE ELSE, made - to my knowledge - by the completely vanished (from Holland at least) Rene Daalder! It's a portrait of the late Bas Jan Ader, fellow Dutch artist in exile, living and working in Los Angeles in the '60s and early '70s. A interesting portrait of a forgotten artist but to my surprise most of the documentary was about Daalder's own work, part of it about the making of MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH. In this documentary Daalder pointed out, that every poor teenager losing it's life in this film, is killed by the forces of gravity. The first time I saw the film I didn't really notice this, but indeed, everybody is killed in this way (falling of a cliff, jumping in an empty pool, the crashing of a hang-glider etc.). Even more bizarre is the fact that Bas Jan Ader, whose work this particular documentary dealt with, also had gravity as the main theme in his work. There is some earlier, very strange, footage of him (shot in Holland), falling of a roof or driving his himself with his bicycle in the water, all of it perhaps even filmed by Renee Daalder himself. The resulting material on film itself was apparently considered the end-product, the actual work of "Art".Somehow Renee Daalder incorporated some of these concepts about gravity in MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH, but besides this peculiar little fact, I can only mildly recommend the film itself. During the whole film, there is a strange, somewhat menacing, atmosphere. But somehow this movie continued to haunt me, not because it's such a good film. Daalder probably had a lot of good ideas and is obviously a better writer than a director, but most of the dialog is poor and with some exceptions, the acting is amateurish. Perhaps some messages about authority, social class and status, but I wouldn't take these to seriously. Perhaps this film turns out to be more a work of experimental art than a real movie, but it's cult status seems to be firmly established by now. 7/10 for pure strangeness and sheer curiosity value.