Σφαγή στο Σέντραλ Χάι

George Carmi2.0

so miasma-pilled right now i just wanna keep watching slashers. spooky season hates to see me coming. this was buns tho.

Bob McCully4.0

Despite what that title might make you think, this is actually one of the most unique exploitation films I've ever come across - and not a formulaic slasher. Coming out years before the slasher boom would even take hold, Rene Daalder's film actually utilizes the same gruesome level of murders but instead to examine the dynamics of fascism within an unruly high school. David is the new student at Central High, but luckily for David he has an old friend there, Mark, who immediately tries to catch him up to speed with the school politics and bring him into his tight-knit clique. What David sees though keeps him away from this crew, as they run the school with their own domineering tactics by bullying kids and acting like they're above the law. It's a surprisingly sinister look at the social hierarchies of high school, but where the plot goes delves even further into violence and nihilism.Truly a fascinating and dare I say singular genre-film here. The closest comparison would be Class of 1984, but I found this to be even more nuanced and slippery in both tone and intention. What starts out as a ruthless war between a small group of jocks and just about everyone else led by this new kid David then morphs into something even more dystopian and bombastic. The main take-away, for me anyways, was that violence is always inevitable, no matter what, but there may also be no responsible way of engaging with violence. Even at its most noble of implementations, it will eventually lead to corruption. Fascism infects all. I might be overly intellectualizing this one, and I'd actually warn against that as there are a handful of flaws in this film. There are moments that defy logic and yet, it's consistently entertaining, and maybe that's because at the end of the day (or when the credits roll), it's just a horror movie. Something to get the blood pumping. Compelling stuff though and it was nice to see something so sensational also give me chills from what it was trying to say. Like the drive-in b-trash spectacle-laden precursor to The White Ribbon. Highly recommended.

Paul Thomas4.5

An absolutely wonderful film. Earnestly insane. You think you know what kind of movie it is, then it turns the wheel harder into the wild, and then it takes the wheel and just flails it back and forth into an unrecognizable and uncategorized form of lunacy.Massacre at Central High is about a morally-driven homicidal psychopath domestic terrorist who is kind of the good guy. It asks deep questions about humanity and about how the hero can become the villain, the underprivileged can become the privileged and how the haves will always bully the have-nots, even if who fills those roles is fluid. Peace is never an option. Crime, punishment and a god-like retribution will always play catchup to our sins. And it does all this within the poorly-acted flubbed lines, wildly unmotivated photography and jackhammer messaging that makes exploitation cinema so beautifulCriterion just released this in their collection of High School Horror. Enjoy.