Massacre at Central High (Rene Daalder, 1976)

Derrel Maury in Massacre at Central High 

Cast: Derrel Maury, Andrew Stevens, Robert Carradine, Kimberly Beck, Ray Underwood, Steve Bond, Rex Steven Sikes, Lani O'Grady, Damon Douglas, Dennis Kort, Cheryl Smith, Jeffrey Winner, Tom Logan. Screenplay: Rene Daalder. Cinematography: Bertram van Munster. Art direction: Russell Tune. Film editing: Harry Keramidas. Music: Tommy Leonetti.

With its often clunky acting, gratuitous nudity, and marginal production values, Massacre at Central High looks like a standard exploitation flick. And knowing that writer-director Rene Daalder's mentor was the master of exploitation flicks, Russ Meyer, only goes to confirm that first impression. The film's teenagers are played by actors in their mid-20s; there is a sappy musical score with an inane song over both the opening and closing credits; the visuals* reflect the tightness of the film's budget. The setup is familiar: A new student comes to a high school where the student body is harassed by a group of bullies. When he stands up to the bullies he is seriously injured. So he decides to take revenge by offing the bullies, one by one, in imaginative ways. But murder will out, and in the end he is hoist with his own petard -- literally. And if Massacre at Central High had stuck to that formula, it could have been the conventional exploitation flick. But Daalder takes things a step further, adding some provocative and intelligent twists to the tale. The revenge plot doesn't end with the protagonist, David (Derrel Maury), taking care of the bullies. Once he's done that, the bullied students become bullies themselves, and David has to deal with that unforeseen problem. And for the better part of the film, we never see an adult authority figure, a parent, a teacher, or a school administrator. David takes their role on himself. It's an adolescent's dream world turned nightmare. Even at the end, the adults who do appear, at an improbable "Student-Alumni Prom," are ineffectual -- they seem to be the students' grandparents -- and in danger of becoming victims of David's planned massacre. The film takes an unrelentingly harsh view of human nature: It's often compared to William Golding's 1954 novel Lord of the Flies and the films made of it by Peter Brook in 1963 and Harry Hook in 1990, and considered a precursor to the movie Heathers (Michael Lehmann, 1989). I don't think Massacre at Central High quite measures up to that standard -- there's still a lot of cheesiness for the viewer to overcome -- but it's a kind of classic in spite of itself.

*Cinematographer Bertram van Munster is better known as the Emmy-winning creator and executive producer of the reality competition series The Amazing Race.