April Fool's Day (1986)

Two things if you've never seen April Fool's Day and don't know or want to know about the twist ending: one, you shouldn't be reading this to begin with (I never put a spoiler warning in these reviews because I think that should go without saying), and two, do not watch the documentary, Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, because they go straight into the twist when they arrive at the movie and even show you the scene where it's revealed without any warning. When I first saw that documentary in 2006, I'm sure I'd heard of April Fool's Day, but I didn't know about the twist, despite how infamous it is among aficionados, especially back then. That said, I wasn't mad that they spoiled it; in fact, knowing it ahead of time probably helped when I got around to finally seeing the movie myself, as I didn't feel cheated when it came around... unlike High Tension, which, in that documentary, Jeff Katz rightly referred to as a cheat, while defending April Fool's Day, "As a pretty smart setup." That was really the only positive thing said about it there, though, as the twist was viewed on as this major miscalculation that caused the movie to not do too well, and director Fred Walton actually said that he would take responsibility for it possibly having had a role in the downfall of slasher movies... only for a split-second. He then, as he should have, jumped up and said, "No, I won't. I'm blamin' the people at Paramount, those marketing people. They're the ones who messed us up." In any case, when I finally did see April Fool's Day, after finding that old, bare bones DVD cheap at McKay's, I thought it was just fine. In fact, I found it to be quite an entertaining, well-made flick, with above average characters and acting for this kind of movie, a great setting, a truly spooky atmosphere, a really eerie music score, and I thought the twist and the motivation behind it was kind of clever. Granted, when you look back at the movie in retrospect, some things don't gel with that revelation, and it's also a shame that, because of said reveal, you don't get too many of the great makeup effects you expect from slashers, but overall, this flick deserves much more credit for all that it gets right.

It's April Fool's Day weekend, and Muffy St. John, a wealthy Vassar student, has invited eight of her friends to stay at her family's summer home: a large mansion on a small island just off the mainland. The group includes Kit Graham and her boyfriend, Rob Ferris; the promiscuous Nikki Brashares; big goofball Arch Cummings; horndog prankster Chaz Vyshinski; withdrawn and studious Nan Youngblood; Muffy's dorky classmate Harvey "Hal" Edison Jr.; and her cousin, Skip St. John. While taking the local ferry to the island, Arch, in the middle of an argument with Skip, accidentally flings a knife into his side and he falls overboard. Rob and Buck, the deckhand, jump into the water to help, only for it to turn out to be a prank on both their parts. But, as they approach the island's dock, things turn serious when Buck is horribly injured while trying to tie up the boat from the water. The local constable, Sam Potter, comes by in his speedboat and allows Cal, the captain, to use it to take Buck back to the mainland. Potter then has to use Muffy's boat to make it back himself, leaving the group stuck on the island for the time being. Arriving at the house, they find it to be quite large and elegant, but also rigged with various types of pranks, some mundane, others more complex, and some even disturbing. Skip, feeling guilty about what happened, separates himself from the group, and after getting drunk, heads down to the pier to smoke some weed. He goes into the dark boathouse and is then suddenly grabbed from behind. The next day, Muffy begins acting strangely, and Kit and Rob get a glimpse of what appears to be Skip's corpse while down at the pier. They run back to the mansion and tell the others, who initially think it's a joke, but then realize that nobody has seen Skip since the previous night. Rob, Arch, and Chaz go looking for him, and find his broken knife down by the pier. They then split up to search the island, only for both Arch and Nan to suddenly disappears, while Nikki and Hal find Skip and Arch's severed heads and Nan's body at the bottom of the island's well. Initially, they think it may be Buck, out for revenge, but when Rob gets a hold of Constable Potter on the mainland, he says he's been with Buck all day. Now, those remaining have to consider that the murderer is not only someone else but closer than they may suspect.

Despite being somewhat infamous as the "slasher movie" that really isn't, April Fool's Day has a lot of connections to the Friday the 13th franchise, chief among them being producer Frank Mancuso Jr. One of the first films released by his production company, Hometown Films, Mancuso intended it as a way for him to branch out from that franchise, which he was still involved with but in a more hands-off manner than he'd been on Part 2, 3, and The Final Chapter. This was because he was concerned that being so closely associated with it would have a negative effect on his career, given how those movies, while certainly profitable, were so reviled by critics and looked down upon in the film industry at large. When he briefly mentions April Fool's Day in one of his interviews in the book, Crystal Lake Memories, specifically at the start of the chapter on Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, Mancuso said he was worried it would compared to that franchise. Also, considering that April Fool's Day came out the same year as Jason Lives, the most self-referential and satirical film in that series, it does seem like he was in a mood to set the slasher conventions on their head at that time.

Outside of April Fool's Day, director Fred Walton's most well-known movie is unquestionably When A Stranger Calls. But, while that proved to be very successful when it was released in 1979, Walton's career didn't exactly take off in earnest afterward. In-between it and April Fool's Day, he'd only directed one other feature, 1983's Hadley's Rebellion, as well as a segment of the television movie that kicked off the 80's revival of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and an episode of Miami Vice, which also aired in 1986. In fact, he said he almost didn't get hired for April Fool's Day, as Mancuso referred to his personality as "flaccid," which Walton has attributed to his tendency not to make good first impressions in general. Plus, not being that big of a horror fan, he mainly wanted the job for the money, but did enjoy the comedy in the script. Since April Fool's Day, while not a total bomb, wasn't a major hit either, grossing $13 million on a budget of $5 million, Walton's career didn't improve much after it, either. He did one more feature film, 1987's The Rosary Murders, starring Donald Sutherland, and then spent the rest of his career directing TV movies, including 1993's When A Stranger Calls Back. After directing the 1996 film, The Stepford Husbands, Walton retired from filmmaking.

It's very much an ensemble piece, but the character at the center of April Fool's Day, despite her not having that much significant screentime, is Muffy St. John (Deborah Foreman), the wealthy Vassar student who invites her friends up to her family's vacation home on the island (exactly where the film is set is left unclear, but given that the group all go to Vassar, I think it's easy to deduce it's somewhere on the East Coast, near New York). During the opening, she's looking forward to the weekend, straightening things up down in the basement and telling her servant, Clara, that she's going to do things, "My way," adding so her dad, "Won't have any excuses." Clara tells her to have a nice party and she responds, "Nice? It's gotta be better than nice. It's gotta be bloody unforgettable." As she continues cleaning up, there's a moment where she finds this old jack-in-the-box, which has some obvious sentimental value making her think back to the birthday party when she received it as a gift. However, when the memory ends with her screaming when what was inside the box (a monster, rather than a jester) popped up, it hints that things may not be as innocent with her as they seem. Despite the horrible accident that happens with Buck, Muffy takes her friends up to the house upon their arrival, saying she'll inherit it within a month, when she turns 21. She also mentions that she had a lot of fun summers there, before her mother died, and it's a special place to her. That night, when they've sat down around the dinner table, they start to realize that Muffy is quite the prankster, having set up a number of gags. The gags continue when everyone retires to their rooms, however they become annoying and, in some cases, a little unsettling.

The next morning, Muffy begins acting really strange. Kit and Rob walk in on her while she's cooking in the kitchen and she jumps back, then quickly scrambles upstairs, saying she needs to fix herself up. Shortly afterward, Nan, seeing her walking towards a smaller building on the property, runs to talk with her, only to find she's disappeared. She later confronts Muffy in the house, accusing her of avoiding her because she pulled a particularly nasty and personal joke on her with a tape recording of a baby crying in her room.

Muffy, however, pleads total ignorance of what she's talking about. And when first Skip, then Arch disappear, she, at first, isn't concerned, thinking they're just playing a joke, as they often did. That night, when the others find that Skip, Arch, and Nan have been murdered, Rob, managing to reach Constable Potter on the mainland, learns that not only is it not Buck, as they previously thought, but is told something about Muffy that he doesn't share with the others (mainly because Muffy is with them at the

time). Afterward, as they're closing the windows and doors while waiting for Potter to arrive, Kit sees a photo in Mr. St. John's study that suggests Muffy had a sibling at one point. She shows up in the doorway and acts both stranger and even menacing, ominously telling Kit, "Sometimes, with the tides, it could take somebody all night to get here from the mainland. And even then, sometimes... they don't make it." In the next scene, Kit, Nikki, Chaz, and Hal talk about how weird she's been acting, with Nikki mentioning the nurse's shoes she's been wearing, while Hal says

he overheard her argument with Nan, and they also mention the rather strange items they found in their rooms. In the midst of their talk, Muffy shows up and, in a strange tone, says she's going up to her room. Once there, she locks the door and continues acting weird, sitting down on the bed and looking at the door.

While Kit and Rob are up in the attic, so Rob can look out the window to see if he can see Potter coming, he tells Kit that Potter said not to trust Muffy or be alone with her, but didn't elaborate. They then find a set of dolls that were originally on the dining room table, representing everyone there, and see that some of them now represent those who have been murdered and how. And when they see a flare that Potter said he'd fire when he arrived, they find that everybody else in the house is now dead, save for Muffy, who's 

missing. Gettting out of the house and running down to the pier, they find Potter's boat, but no sign of the constable himself. While searching the boat, they find a letter he brought back with him, which reads, "State Hospital. 'Pursuant to our previous communications, please be advised that the patient under discussion has still not been found and returned to custody, and is now believed to be attempting to return to her home in your jurisdiction. If encountered exercise extreme caution and notify us immediately as Miss St. John 

has been a patient here for three years and is still considered incorrigibly unstable and extremely dangerous.'" Forced to go back to the house to find a spare key to the boat, they go in through the basement window. Inside, they find Muffy's clothes in the furnace, and a growth chart written on the wall referring to both her and someone else named Buffy. Remembering back to the picture she saw, Kit theorizes the person they've been dealing with is Buffy, who's Muffy's deranged twin sister. Moreover, they then find Muffy's severed head, and Buffy 

appears outside and nails the window shut. She chases after them when they run upstairs into the kitchen, getting in through the door leading from the outside. In the chaos, Rob gets separated from Kit, who's chased around by the knife-wielding Buffy. She chases her through the dining room, cutting off every attempt she makes to escape, and leads her to the living room, where the big revelation takes place.

The most obvious onscreen tie to Friday the 13th is Amy Steel from Part 2, who plays Kit Graham. I've read that she wasn't too crazy about the part (which probably explains her absence on the special features for Scream Factory's Blu-Ray) and I can kind of understand, as her role of Kit doesn't amount to much until the third act. For most of the movie, she does little more than hang out with her boyfriend, Rob Ferris (Ken Olandt), whom she gives a hard time on the way to the island because he was late getting to the ferry. That night, when they're sitting around the dining table, and Arch asks if any of them know what they're going to be doing after graduation, Kit reveals that Rob is going to medical school. Rob, however, is reluctant to talk about it, and when pressed, he tells them that his counselor told him to forget about it, saying, "He said my grades might be okay but, basically, I possess an essential lack of seriousness. And that's what they look for." He remains rather moody about this and Kit, feeling bad about putting him on the spot, does what she can to make him feel better. The next day, when they're down at the pier, he tells her how he feels like his life isn't amounting to anything, and suggests she not waste her time with him. Kit takes him into the boathouse, and the two of them are about to have sex, when they see what looks like Skip's corpse pass under them in a boat through the floorboards. However, when they run out of the building and see no sign of him, they head back to the house and tell the others what happened. Rob, Chaz, and Arch go looking for Skip, but when the latter disappears as well, Kit and Rob try to call Constable Potter on the mainland. It's not until that night, after Skip, Arch, and Nan have been found dead, that they get in touch with him, and he tells Rob something about Muffy. Rob doesn't let on what it is, and shortly afterward, when they're sitting around, talking about how strange Muffy has been acting, Kit is quick to defend her, despite how strange she acted when she caught her in her father's study earlier. Later, when they're in the attic, Rob tells Kit that Potter gave him a vague warning not to trust Muffy, and they then find a creepy display of dolls up there, suggesting Potter's warning may have some weight to it.

After that, the two of them, in rapid succession, find that everyone else in the house is dead, except for Muffy, who's conveniently missing. They run down to the pier, where they find Potter's empty speedboat, with no keys, but do find the letter suggesting that Muffy is an unhinged, escaped mental patient. Realizing they have no choice but to go back up to the house to find a spare key for the boat, they sneak in through the basement window, and find various clues that gives Kit the epiphany that the killer is actually

Buffy, Muffy's psychotic twin sister, whose existence was kept secret from everyone. As soon as she hits upon this, and then find Muffy's severed head, Buffy nails the basement window shut from outside. Kit and Rob run upstairs, into the kitchen, and scramble around in the dark, looking for the spare boat key, while Buffy tries to get in after them. Rob finds the key in a pantry, but somehow gets stuck in there when the doors close behind him. And that's when Buffy manages to get in and Kit is forced to deal with her by herself. 

I think one of the reasons why Steel wasn't too thrilled about her role of Kit is because she had some rather cringe-worthy lines to say. Not all of her lines in Friday the 13th Part 2 were winners either, but, here, she has gems like, "We just saw him down at the boathouse, drifting by on a boat, and he wasn't moving. He looked dead, unless he was joking...," "It's okay now. With the others, they were outside, but you...", and, "Muffy hasn't been in an institution for three years, she's been at Vassar!"

Speaking of which, despite how weird Muffy was towards her earlier, what Rob says Potter told him, and the unsettling display they find up in the attic, Kit still refuses to believe that she could possibly be a killer. That leads to another cheesy moment: as she and Rob are running out of the house after finding everyone else dead, Rob tells Kit to forget about Muffy and she yells, "She's my friend!" Fortunately, while she's not as tough or resilient as Ginny was in Part 2, she still manages to hold her own well enough when faced with the psychotic Buffy during the climax. 

After he became famous for playing the complete and utter asshole that is Biff in Back to the Future, Thomas F. Wilson now plays the infinitely more likable character of Arch Cummings. Since Arch is a big goofball who's always cracking jokes, Wilson really gets to show off his standup and improv skills here, and right from the start. As Chaz videotapes everybody as they're waiting for the ferry, Arch, taking a cue from something that Nikki said, says, "I fuck on the first date," then puts his arm around Skip and adds, "We did, on the first date. Didn't we, honey? He's an animal." Then, on the way to the island, the two of them act like they get into a fight that leads to Arch throwing Skip's knife into his side, only to reveal it's a prank after Rob and Buck have jumped into the water after Skip. However, this inadvertently leads to Buck getting maimed, but while Skip is really disturbed by this, Arch gets over it pretty quickly and is back to fooling around when they arrive at the mansion. As Chaz films him again, in the front yard, he mocks the way Nikki was acting before: "Hi, my name is Mary O'Riley O'Tool O'Shea. I want to go to convent school and things like that." He then motions towards the house and adds, "Welcome. Welcome to my home, and Lifestyles of the Rich and Undeserving."  Dropping the voice, he continues, "Uh, my name's Arch Cummings, and I'm on a mission here. I'm on a mission to... to bed as many women as humanly possible. Nan's out, to be honest. Uh, she likes the theater and, well, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, she's out of those first round draft choices, if you know what I mean." At dinner, when Rob mentions that he was told to forget about med school, Arch, trying to lighten things up, says, "Him too? That's what my guy said! I swear... I said, 'You gotta be kidding! I mean, how can anyone be serious about anything when... when some moron can steal a bomb or push a button and nuke us all until our shadows glow?' He wasn't impressed with that, but..." And that night, when he learns that he and Chaz are sharing the same room, right as he's pushed the two beds together, the two of them start messing around, with Arch declaring, "Hold me, big fella! Hold me!"

Arch actually tries to get with Muffy, but is rebuffed, and proceeds to walk in on Chaz and Nikki, as they're having the most uncomfortable-looking sex imaginable, before having a trick chair crumple beneath him when he tries to satisfy himself with a magazine in his room. He yells at Chaz and Nikki next door, "Really funny, you guys! Better ride than you could give me!" However, the next day, when Kit and Rob come back to the house, saying they saw Skip dead, Arch quickly takes it seriously 

and goes with Rob and Chaz to search for him. When they find Skip's broken knife down at the pier, Arch suggests they split up to search for him. For protection, he takes a fish-skewering pole with him, saying, "No sucker's takin' me in." This leads to a genuinely suspenseful moment where he walks back and forth in one spot in the woods, not seeing a snake on the ground near his feet. In the end, he gets caught up in a snare, with the snake snapping at him as he hangs there, but that's when he's faced with something, or rather, someone, infinitely worse.

Much like Arch, Chaz (Clayton Rohner) is a jokester who's also looking to get laid. There are two major differences between them, though One, unlike Arch, he actually manages to score, with Nikki. And two, he's a lot sleazier in both his humor and desire for sex. When the group is boarding the ferry, he tells Buck, "Guy, your, uh, fly's open and your Hostess Twinkie is hangin' out." Buck goes to zip his pants, only for Chaz to kiss him on the forehead while he's looking down. Shortly afterward, he tells Rob that his fly is open, which he, naturally, doesn't believe... and this time, it turns out to be true. En route to the island, he hits on Nan, feigning interest in her reading Paradise Lost for school, then shows her a porn magazine and says he's reading, "Treasure Island: The History of Pornography in America." When she's, naturally, put off by this, he says, "I mean, my God, we're not going to be sheltered little college kids our whole lives. Wake up! Smell the bacon, man!" Upon arriving at the house and first seeing the dining room, Chaz, videotaping the group like he did at the beginning, declares, "Hold it! Now don't anybody move. But before this night is over, somebody in this room..." He lets out a melodramatic, sinister laugh and finishes, "...will pull his wang." And, the next day, when Kit and Rob come running back to the house, Chaz comments, "Respectable young Quaker couple returning from a quiet afternoon of nonviolent sex." Once they realize that something's going on, Chaz is the first one to suggest it might be Buck. Then, when they learn that it's not,, he points the finger at Hal, as he acted suspicious the night before when Chaz walked in on him. Hal says he just found some random newspaper clippings about car accidents in his room, but Chaz suggests there might be something personally incriminating about that. Nikki soon gets freaked out to where she talks about leaving the island, and Chaz tries to make her come to her senses. He then tries to make her laugh, putting on some S&M stuff she found in her room, including a gimp mask, and attempts to get with her again. Unbeknownst to him, as he's lying on the bed, wearing that mask, she leaves him in the room, and that's when the killer makes their move.

Nikki (Deborah Goodrich) proves to be something of a perfect match for Chaz, as she's definitely the lewdest of the girls. The movie opens with her talking to his video camera, saying, after she introduces herself, "Um, I wanna work with handicapped children, and my parents are my best friends. Oh, and I start convent school next semester... and I fuck on the first date." Shortly after they arrive at the island, she's in the kitchen with Muffy and Kit, reading a sex quiz in a magazine, and when they get to the question, "My first experience was, A. Painful and degrading, B. Not so hot but I really cared about him, C. I was ready to try again, or D. Wildly exciting, I had an orgasm," she says that hers was a combination of B and D. She also has to put up with Hal hitting on her during the ferry, and while her silent but irritated responses to his corny attempts to impress her speak volumes, she seems to consider banging him later on. She does get with Chaz that night (she tells Muffy ahead of time that she wants him), but when Arch walks in on them, they're in middle of what can only be described as a sexual yoga position, with legs and arms in positions that shouldn't be humanly possible. 

Nikki's most notable scene is when she and Hal go out to the well when the water in the house stops working, and they lose both the bucket and a flashlight at the bottom. Hal proves to be too much of a wuss to climb down there, so Nikki opts to do it herself. On her way, she not only falls off the metal girders she's climbing on when one of them gives way, but also finds Arch and Skip's severed heads, as well as Nan's body. She's so traumatized by this that, when she's back in the house, she recoils when Muffy 

brings her a glass of water, assuming it's from that same well. Like some of the others, Nikki begins to suspect that Muffy may be up to something sinister, given how strange she's been acting, and because of what she found in her room. She becomes so freaked out, in fact, that she packs her things, intending to leave the house. Chaz asks her what she's going to do if Constable Potter doesn't show up, and Nikki declares that she'll swim to the mainland if she has to. She also rebuffs Chaz's attempt to calm her down, especially when he puts on the gimp mask, and

leaves the room to continue packing. When she comes back, he's still laying there, and she mocks his apparent ongoing attempt to bed her. But, when she gets tired of the act and tries to rouse him, she realizes he's dead. And right after that, she comes face to face with the perpetrator.

A massive prep-school geek, with his overly nice clothes, quaffed hair, and somewhat sissy attitude, and also a Southern accent, Harvey Edison Jr. or Hal (Jay Baker) is the one who gives Rob a ride to the dock. Upon arriving with him, he introduces himself and asks that they call him "Hal" and not "Harv," as only his parents refer to him as the latter and he hates it. This is a point he constantly corrects them on throughout the movie. He also says he knows Muffy because, "We sit together in Econ-345. I let her copy my marginal utility curves," and immediately proves to be quite the dork when he meets Skip, randomly yelling, "Springsteen, still the boss!" He's also instantly smitten with Nikki, and when she's sunbathing on the ferry's deck, he very awkwardly tries to make small-talk with her. Talking about Muffy, he admits he wants to get hired by her father, but also suggests that couldn't be the sole reason why she invited him specifically (again, Nikki doesn't appreciate his company). Shortly after they get to the island and the mansion, Hal goes into Mr. St. John's office, helps himself to a cigar, and later, while smoking it in his room, imagines having a conversation with her about their supposed connection (in doing so, he further proves that he's only interested in her money). He's then freaked out by some random newspaper clippings he finds in there, about traffic accidents and other sudden deaths; what's more, the cigar explodes in his face when he least expects it. 

The next day, despite having been exercising his arms and chest with a Bullworker, Hal is noticeably the one guy who stays at the house while the others go out to look for Skip. Similarly, when he and Nikki go out to the well (where he tells her, "I would really like to plow your field," and is when she seems to consider letting him), he's reluctant to climb down into it after the bucket and the flashlight fall in. When Nikki then goes to climb in, he tries to stop her, but when she falls into the water after one of the steel girders gives 

way and she finds the body parts, he initially doesn't do a damn thing to help, except stand up there and yell for the others. He finally does climb down and help Nikki, but, again, it takes him long enough. Like the others, Hal suspects there's something going on with Muffy, telling them about how he overheard the argument between her and Nan earlier. He and Chaz almost get into a fight when the latter accuses him of acting suspicious when he walked in on him the night before, but Hal insists he was just weirded out by 

those newspaper articles he found in his room. Chaz then asks if any of that was particularly personal to him, but whether or not it is never revealed. They all decide to just wait for Constable Potter to arrive, with Hal standing guard on the stairs, and, unbeknownst to the others, armed with a handgun. But, when Kit and Rob start to learn what a danger Muffy they find he's gone from the stairs, and Kit learns he's been hanged by a rope in one of the rooms.

Along with Hal and Skip, Nan (Leah Pinsent) is one of the outsiders among the group, having only met Muffy that year at Vassar, in the drama department. She comes across as rather quiet and withdrawn, intending to do some schoolwork while she's away for the weekend. That night, at the dinner table, she feels compelled to make a toast about the friends one makes in college, saying, "They'll be the friends you cherish most for the rest of your life. So, here's to us, and here's to my life, because I'm very glad to be here, and to be a part of all of you." When prompted to add to it afterward, Muffy herself says,, "In his Life of Johnson, James Boswell said, 'We cannot predict the precise moment when friendships are formed, as in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last one which makes it run over. So, in a series of kindnesses, there is at last one which makes the heart run over.' So, with this toast, may our hearts run over and our friendships be formed." However, that idea of friendship between her and Nan is tested early on, as Nan finds a tape recording of a baby crying in her room, which really disturbs her. The next day, she's so upset about it that she can't focus on her studying, and when she attempts to confront Muffy, she seems to be avoiding her. When she finally does confront her, Nan tearfully accuses Muffy of inviting her up there just to play that joke, demanding to know how she "found out." Though it cuts away before the details are revealed, you can kind of put together what it's about yourself. Later, Hal, who overheard the argument, confirms it by telling the others that Nan was yelling about "an abortion." By this point, Nan has been found at the bottom of the well.

Skip (Griffin O'Neal), Muffy's cousin, doesn't seem to be on good terms with her. When they're boarding the ferry, Chaz mentions to Hal that Skip is her cousin, but he quickly clarifies, "Distant. Over the horizon. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been invited. Old money never mixes family with friends." Chaz, like he did with Buck, then tries to trick Skip by telling him that his fly is open, but Skip simply says, "Eat it." During the trip to the island, he and Arch play a game called "Stretch," which involves his switchblade. However, after losing numerous times, Arch decides he's had enough, but Skip tries to egg him into continuing. They get into an argument and Arch flings the knife at Skip, hitting him in the side and causing him to fall overboard. But, after Rob and Buck have dived in to save him, it turns out to be a prank that he and Arch arranged, much to everyone else's irritation. However, when it leads to Buck getting horribly maimed, Skip is really shaken by it. On the drive up to the mansion, Kit tries to assure him that it wasn't his fault, but it doesn't work. He goes on to bitterly add, "Muffy. Nothin' bad ever happens to her." He keeps to himself once they arrive, getting progressively drunk, and spitting out his hatred for his family. While hanging out with Nikki on a terrace, he says, "A poor boy can say, 'Fuck you, Dad, I'm my own person.' What's his father gonna do? Kick him out of the house? Disinherit him? His life won't change much. He's got nothin' to lose." Nikki suggests, "His father's love," and Skip scoffs and retorts, "That was lost a long, long time ago." And, while everybody else is inside, having dinner, Skip continues drinking, and even howls like a wolf in one instance, before making his way down to the pier to smoke some weed that he finds. But, when he goes inside the dark boathouse, he becomes the first victim, when he's grabbed from behind.

(On a side note here, what's unsettling is how much the character of Skip reflects Griffin O'Neal's own troubled life. Not only did he have a very volatile relationship with his father, Ryan O'Neal, sometimes to the point of violence, and had substance abuse problems, but, just a little under two months after April Fool's Day was released, he caused a boating accident that killed Gian-Carlo Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola's oldest son.)

Another connection to Friday the 13th cast-wise is Michael Nomad, who plays Buck, as that same year, he was in Part VI as Officer Thornton, whom Jason kills during the third act. The most memorable thing about Buck is the gruesome injury he suffers following Arch and Skip's prank, which he can be heard blaming on them as he's taken to the mainland. Aside from that, all he does is fall for Chaz's raunchy joke, ogle Nikki when she starts sunbathing, and practice tossing the rope to the cleats, the latter

foreshadowing the impetus for his fate. The ferry's captain, Cal (Pat Barlow), is just a typical crusty old guy, and proves to be quite impatient when Kit asks him to wait for Rob, who hasn't shown up yet, though fortunately, both Rob and Hal show up at that very moment. When they reach the island, Cal, seeing what's about to happen to Buck when he's in the water, tries to warn him, but to no avail. Using Constable Potter's speedboat, he quickly rushes him back to the mainland. And finally, Sam Potter (Tom Heaton) himself is, naturally, less than pleased about

what happened, and warns everyone to stay put in case he needs to find them for some reason, before heading back using Muffy's speedboat. When Rob later manages to get in touch with him following the first batch of deaths, Potter tells him that not only is the perpetrator not Buck, as he's been with him at the hospital all day, but he gives him the vague warning about Muffy.

From its very opening, April Fool's Day shows off a real visual flair in its direction, cinematography, and editing. For one thing, it's very well-shot, with cinematographer Charles Minsky (who worked a lot with Garry Marshall) often accentuating the beauty of the shooting location. All of the daytime exterior scenes are set in bright, lovely sunshine, and as each of the two days the story spans go on, the lighting, both outside and inside, changes accordingly, with more contrasting and deepening shadows. The sunset

scenes on that first night are absolutely gorgeous, and when night falls, the interiors often have a Halloween-like blue light streaming in through the windows. The film also seems to have something of a hazy feel to it, an aesthetic that's sometimes very subtle and, other times, like in the scene with Muffy in the basement at the beginning, is more pronounced. The movie immediately proves to be quite inspired stylistically as well, starting up with the Paramount logo enclosed in a black square, as if your TV screen isn't formatted correctly. Then, the logo fades to 

black and the film itself actually begins, transitioning to the square-shaped POV of Chaz's video camera, as he films some of the group while they're on the dock, waiting for the ferry. And then, when it cuts to a shot of a mannequin being dragged across a basement floor by Muffy, the square suddenly widens to the appropriate aspect ratio. Throughout the movie, Fred Walton continually shows a propensity for not only style but also great shots and camera angles, ranging from beauty shots of the location and the inside of the mansion to some very memorable imagery. Some of 

the latter include an overhead shot of the ferry coming in and one of its front corners skirting along the side of the dock, alluding to what's about to cause Buck's nasty mutilation; Skip and Nikki looking out across the horizon as the sun sets; the eerie image of a portrait with moving eyes in Kit and Rob's room, which turns out to be a joke done through a Kit-Cat Klock hanging behind the painting's hollowed-out eyes; the Klock itself looking creepy as it hangs there, glowing in the dark, after the painting is removed; 

the shot through the boat-house floor of Skip's body floating by on a canoe; shots looking up from the bottom of the well; the creepy image of the dolls up in the attic; and a horrific twist on the portrait "gag," just to name a few. Walton also does a good job at establishing a fairly eerie atmosphere, such as through montages of different parts of the island where they look completely deserted and eerily quiet; spooky shots of the woods, such as when Arch is searching for Skip; the unsettling nature of some of the gags 

the group finds in the mansion; the mansion itself becoming eerily quiet, and then so dark and shadowy during the third act; and brief glimpses of the killer, as well as shots that are clearly from their POV, such as when Nikki is faced with them after she finds Chaz dead. And, as I'll get into later, Charles Bernstein's very unusual and spooky score adds all the more to the atmosphere.

The editing, courtesy of Bruce Green (another Friday the 13th alumnus, as he edited both Part V and Part VI), is very well-done, helping either to create suspense or establish some funny gags. Again, this is clear from the beginning, during the opening credits, where Muffy fiddles with this old jack-in-the-box, as it cuts back and forth between her and silent flashbacks to the birthday party where she received it as a present. There are also close-ups on her young self's eyes, her removing the box from its packaging, 

and her turning the handle, just as she's doing in reality. It ends with the monster figure popping up and young Muffy screaming, while in the present, she puts it back on its shelf, the first hint that things may not be as innocent with her as they seem. One of the best uses of editing comes in the scene where Arch is searching for Skip out in the woods and he walks back and forth in this one spot, continually hearing the sounds of twigs snapping nearby. Unbeknownst to him, there's a snake by his feet, ready to strike, and

the film keeps cutting from it to Arch as he walks back and forth, getting extremely close to it in some shots. As it goes on, you're just waiting for the snake to bite him, when he suddenly steps into a snare and is hoisted upside down. Now, he's helplessly swinging to and fro, the snake striking at him whenever he gets close. That's when someone walks in and kicks the snake away, but you only see their legs, and when it cuts to Arch's face, it seems like this can hardly be called a rescue.

Like I said, though, because of the movie's initially comedic nature, the editing is also used to set up some gags. When Chaz makes that joke about how someone in that room is going to "pull his wang," it suddenly cuts to a very suggestive close-up of a wiener being slid, little by little, out of its packing and into a skillet on the stove (I was going to show an image of that, but I had a feeling somebody would think it actually was an image of a wang and this review would get flagged). Moreover, this turns out to be the opening to the scene where Nikki is reading 

that magazine sex quiz to Kit and Muffy, and the way it suddenly cuts from that to Arch outside, talking about his mission to bed every woman there that he can while Chaz films him, and then to Hal, wandering around Mr. St. John's office and taking a cigar for himself, comes off as kind of funny. But that's nothing compared to the montage we get when everyone's retiring for the night, as it's just one prank and strange visual after another: Hal finds ominous newspaper clippings in his closet and dresser drawer, and then

his cigar explodes in his face; Nikki turns on the sink in the bathroom, only for the faucet to spray her with water; Arch opens the medicine cabinet in his bathroom and finds it's filled with stuff that would be used by a drug addict; Nikki finds S&M gear in one of her dresser drawers; Arch pulls on a doorknob, only for it come to off in his hand; Kit and Rob find that painting set-up, and Rob promptly places the painting outside in the hall; Nan finds that tape recorder in her room; Kit and Rob find a weird set-up with the lights in there when they try to go to bed; and Arch gets spurned by Muffy, then walks in on Chaz and Nikki going at it, and finally has a trick chair collapse beneath him in his room.

The film was shot almost entirely in Victoria, on Vancouver Island, and as I've already gone into, it's a lovely location. The ferry dock where the movie opens, which was actually Brentwood Bay, is rather picturesque in and of itself, and we get plenty more lovely scenery during the trip out to the island, with the sparkling water and the lush forests on the surrounding land. When the island itself comes into view, it's pretty, but also has something of an ominousness about it, with the loan dock they come upon, and the dense woods they drive through in

order to reach the mansion. Aside from the mansion and its grounds, the only other building on the island is the small boathouse at the pier, which are much closer to the mansion. There's also a smaller building behind the main house, which Nan sees Muffy walking towards at one point, but whatever it's for is never made clear. And just off the grounds, tucked slightly inside the woods, is the well where Nikki and Hal find several of their friends' bodies.

Needless to say, the house's interior is just as opulent as the outside (both of which were the Dunmora Estate in Victoria), with a living room that has an awesome view of the bay out the window, a dining room with a big table, and the large office. The kitchen, however, is noticeably a little less luxurious, albeit still nice and well-kept, and also comes off as rather old-fashioned, and the same goes for the various upstairs bedrooms. But, as nice-looking as the house is, there are some elements that, initially, just 

come off as strange and even a little annoying, such as the dolls on the dining room table that represent each of the guests, and the various gags and pranks set, such as the trick chairs, a whoopee cushion that Nan sits on at the dinner table, spill glasses, and the weird things some of them find in their rooms. The most intricate one is the set-up in Rob and Kit's room, where, when they try to go to bed, Rob will turn off one light, only for another to switch on elsewhere in the room. This cycle continues until he finally 

removes the bulb from the bedside lamp. However, the house becomes downright creepy during the third act, when the lights are out. Naturally, the two spookiest rooms are the attic and the basement, with the former being where Kit and Rob find the dolls from the dinner table, only now set up to represent the manner in which some of them have died. The basement was already eerie during the opening, when Muffy was preparing for the upcoming weekend with that weird-looking mannequin, but when Kit and Rob

climb through its window at the end, they find unnerving clues that make Kit realize that Muffy has a psychotic twin sister named Buffy; they also find Muffy's severed head hidden behind the painting the two of them first found in their room.

While not a full-on comedy or parody, April Fool's Day is something of a sly satire on the genre, taking the basic teen slasher set-up and mixing it with a classic "old dark house"/Agatha Christie-style murder mystery. In the book of Going to Pieces, the film's screenwriter, Danilo Bach, cites both James Whale's The Old Dark House and the 1945 adaptation of Ten Little Indians as sources of inspiration. It's also noted within the film itself, as Nan, upon seeing the dinner table and the little figures, says, "It's just like 

an Agatha Christie," specifically referring to And Then There Were None, which the film shares its setting, basic plot, and various scenarios with. From that alone, you can see Frank Mancuso Jr.'s desire to do something much more high-brow than Friday the 13th, as well as in the lack of extreme violence or graphic nudity. The movie often feels like it's poking fun at that latter aspect of the genre, with its sense of humor often being of a crude, sexual nature, and in scenes like when Kit and Rob are just about to have sex in the boathouse, only for them to 

see Skip's corpse pass by beneath, which sends them running out, with Rob tugging his swim trunks back into place. But the most overt example is that crazy yoga-like position that Chaz and Nikki are in when Arch walks in on them, which was deliberately made to look physically impossible, no doubt to send up the sex scenes you often get in slasher flicks (God, I have a feeling that image alone will get this flagged). And there's also some humor that pokes at the conventions of the "old dark house" subgenre itself, such as

everyone sitting around a big dining room table that's decorated with lit candles, the painting with the "moving eyes," or the ominous clues found in the rooms, which are later played straight when things turn genuinely sinister.

As I've already gone into, a lot of the humor comes from Arch and his constant riffing and wise-cracks, as well as Chaz's overt sleaziness and Hal's desperate attempts to come off as cool. In fact, just about all of the characters have their individual quirks that make for some laughs. And then, there's the gags that many of them fall for early on, with my favorite being the lights in Kit and Rob's room, and the trick chair that Arch falls for, twice. One moment that's funny in a darkly humorous manner, as well as due to some bad line delivery, is when, after what happened to Nikki in

the well, Muffy gives her a glass of water. She recoils, exclaiming, "God! Not the water!", as she thinks it's from the well, but Muffy says, "It's alright. It's Perrier!", as if that's supposed to make it any better. And there's a bit of black humor when, as she's packing her things, Nikki leaves her bedroom and comes back to find Chaz lying on the bed, still wearing the gimp mask. While we can guess that he's dead, she makes comments about how she's supposed to get naked and jump his bones, and sits down next

to him, putting her shoes on, continuing to knock on him, particularly his manhood (which doesn't seem to be there anymore, given what she soon sees). When he still doesn't react, she finally tries to get him to knock it off, only to then realize too late that he's not acting.

The only instance of onscreen "violence" happens at the very end of the movie; otherwise, each character suffers their fate offscreen, and their corpses or, at least, parts of them, turn up later. This includes Buck, as we only see the aftermath of what getting caught between the ferry and the dock did to him. Following that, Skip is grabbed from behind in the dark boathouse, and the next day, Kit and Rob get a glimpse of his body through the boathouse floor; Arch is approached while caught in the snare; Nan completely disappears in-between scenes, and her 

body, along with Skip and Arch's heads, show up at the bottom of the well; Nikki finds Chaz dead after leaving him alone in her bedroom, and is then confronted by the killer; Hal, after disappearing from the stairs where he was keeping watch, is found hanging in a room, his hands and feet tied together behind his back; and Muffy's severed head is found in the basement.

Because of the ultimate revelation, you don't get the series of gruesome kill scenes that you often do in slasher movies. You do get a few grisly makeup effects, courtesy of Martin Becker and REEL EFX, Inc. (another Friday the 13th connection), like Buck's mutilated face, the severed heads and the corpse at the bottom of the well, a bloody stab wound in Chaz's crotch (suggesting he was castrated), brief glimpses of a bed that's soaked and dripping with blood when Kit and Rob enter one room during the climax, and 

Muffy's own severed head, but it's nothing too spectacular. You also get a couple of bloody moments that are immediately revealed to be fake, like Arch flinging the knife into Skip or the very end, where Nan seemingly slits Muffy's throat, but, again, they're nothing too graphic. Like the reveal itself, all of this will likely disappoint hardcore slasher fanatics and gorehounds.

Since I wanted to talk about it in its own section, I've waited until now to actually mention the main reveal, but if you're a hardcore genre fan, you already know what it is. When "Buffy" chases Kit into the living room, she finds everyone in there, alive and well, and then learns that she was being menaced by a fake, retractable knife. Realizing that the whole thing was an elaborate prank, she, naturally, is irked, to say the least. Meanwhile, Rob, who's still stuck in the pantry he was trapped in, and declaring his love for Kit when he thinks she's going to die, encounters Buck, who 

removes the "wounds" on his face, revealing them to be just facial applications, and tacks them onto the side of Rob's face. Rob runs out of the pantry and into the living room, where he also sees that it was all a big joke. That's when Muffy finally tells everyone that the whole thing was actually a dress rehearsal for her ultimate plan for the mansion when she inherits it: to make it into a country inn with a "whodunit weekend" gimmick. When each person was "killed," they were told what was going on and then played along, pretending to be dead, until the big reveal.

What's more, Skip turns out to actually be Muffy's brother, and he didn't know what was going to happen to Buck. Speaking of which, Buck happens to be a makeup effects artist and supplied the fake heads, wounds, and blood, while "Constable Potter" is Muffy's uncle, Frank St. John, who co-owns a business on Wall Street with her father, and Cal is the actual ferry captain but simply put in some acting. Muffy admits that there were some unforeseen elements that came up, like Hal's gun, the snake in 

the woods (Arch is forced to make the embarrassing confession that that caused him to crap himself), or how some of them would respond to what they found in their rooms (i.e. Nan and the tape recording), but adds that, when the resort actually opens up, the paying customers will know what they're getting into ahead of time and that it won't be as extreme. And with that, they pop some champagne and celebrate Muffy's success.

While the backlash and hatred that this revelation inspired is understandable, it doesn't come entirely without warning. For one, the very title is something of a hint in and of itself, and there are others sprinkled throughout the movie itself. At the beginning, Muffy props open the window leading down into the basement, which Kit and Rob use to slip back into the house during the climax; Nan says she knows Muffy from the Drama Society, with all that entails; both Muffy and Buffy's fingernails are painted red,

meaning they're the same person; and, while Nikki is preparing to leave during the third act, she turns on the bathroom faucet and gets sprayed again, even though the main water line is supposed to be broken by that point. There's also how you never see anybody die onscreen, and the severed heads that the characters sometimes find look rather fake, even in brief glimpse. Still, since, as Fred Walton said, Paramount made the really dumb decision to market the movie as a straightforward slasher flick, which

they still continue to do today on home media, you can't really blame people for being upset. But, like the similarly deceptive Halloween III: Season of the Witch and Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, April Fool's Day has found its audience over the years (because of the lack of graphic violence or nudity, it aired a lot on late-night TV, contributing to its cult following), and it does deserve it. Like Jeff Katz said, when you look at it, the idea is rather clever and definitely unique, especially for the subgenre at that time.

Now, all that said, like a lot of movies with big twists, not everything holds up to scrutiny. Like Muffy herself says, so many things had to go absolutely perfectly for this elaborate joke to succeed, including the "victims'" willingness to continue playing along once they were let in on it; if just one of them were angry about being tricked and decided to let everyone else know it was fake in order to get back at Muffy, it would've all fallen apart. She also commends Rob and Kit for figuring out what the clues meant, which I've

always felt was hard to swallow. Kit's the one who guesses the perpetrator is meant to be a previously unknown, psychotic twin sister of Muffy's named Buffy, but all she had to go on to arrive at this conclusion was an old photo of Muffy and Skip as kids in their father's study (which Kit just happened to see in the one scene), a fake letter about an escaped patient in Potter's boat, and the incinerated clothes and the writing on the basement wall that mentions Buffy. Plus, shouldn't "Buffy's" looking exactly like 

Muffy raise some suspicions, as there was no indication that they were identical twins? And then, there are moments that don't make sense when you look back on them in hindsight. How was Buck able to get that makeup on his face so quickly, and while he was down in the water, no less? Since he wasn't in on that part, I understand Skip's brooding over what happened to Buck, and it also explains why he secluded himself from everyone else and started getting drunk, but what about all of that resentment towards Muffy and bitterness about his father? I think that suggests that Skip is actually a really screwed up guy, don't you? And why was Muffy still acting really weird even when she was alone?

Skip's behavior may be a holdover from an initial, and more twisted, version of the ending. It seems like there were actually various different ideas for the ending but the most well-known consisted of, following the revelation and the party celebrating the seemingly imminent success of Muffy's venture, Rob, Kit, Chaz, and Nikki planning to give her a taste of her own medicine. However, Skip would show up and attempt to actually kill Muffy, as he was genuinely resentful of her and wanted her inheritance. Rob, however, saved Muffy and killed Skip. According to 

Fred Walton, Paramount executives wanted the movie to end on a higher note, and also felt that would drag it on for too long, so all of it was dropped. However, the ending we now have is something Frank Mancuso Jr. insisted on, and was shot several months after principle photography (which is so obvious, since Deborah Foreman and Leah Pinsent's very different hairstyles). Muffy, rather tipsy from the party, and brandishing a champagne bottle that she continually chugs from, stumbles into her bedroom and finds a present with a jack-in-the-box inside 

waiting for her. She fiddles around with it, but stops just short of making it pop out, at first. But then, she decides to go ahead with it, and when she does, Nan suddenly pops up behind her, yanks her head back, and slits her throat... or not, as it was a fake razor with a blood pack. While it's not stated outright, you can guess she did this to get even with Muffy over the tape recorder in her room. It is a rather cheap ending, and the continuity errors caused by its being shot months later are distracting (I initially didn't know 

that was Nan), but it's harmless enough. Also, I do like that one of them got a little payback towards Muffy, given what she put them all through, and how she never really apologized for it (she apologized for certain things that got out of hand or were unexpected, but not for the fear and emotional torture she put everyone through). However, that final shot of the jack-in-the-box on the floor, winking at the screen, goes completely against everything and I don't know how to contextualize it within the rest of the movie (it's not even the same jack-in-the-box we saw at the beginning, as that had a monster in it rather than a jester).

Like he did with The Entity, Cujo, and A Nightmare on Elm Street, Charles Bernstein again proves really adept at scoring horror films with April Fool's Day. His music adds considerably to its eerie atmosphere, as the main motif is this strange, electronic whistling sound that, personally, kind of reminds me of a whip-poor-will. It's so odd and off-kilter that it makes the seemingly picturesque shots of the island feel not quite as innocent or safe as they may initially seem. Even at the very end, after everything has been revealed to have been a hoax, he plays one last bit of that motif when the jack-in-the-box winks, leaving things on an uncertain and spooky note. The piece of music that Bernstein opens the movie with is a much more poignant, nostalgic-sounding theme that feels very appropriate for looking back to one's birthday as a kid, alluding to that more innocent mindset. But, when the jack-in-the-box pops up and scares young Muffy, the music ends on a sinister note, suggesting that all may not be well. During the montage where everyone is coming across the bizarre pranks hidden in their rooms, Bernstein employs this very subtle sound that's akin to the plucking of the strings, which highlights the sly, mischievous nature of these jokes. And finally, the music for the chase sequences during the third act, while maybe not awesome, work well enough. 

Soundtrack-wise, in addition to Three Dog Night's Mama Told Me (Not To Come), there's this ridiculous song, written by Bernstein and performed by Jerry Whitman, called Too Bad You're Crazy, which plays over the ending credits. While it totally kills the eerie feel the actual score left off with, it's such a zany and wacky song, with lyrics like, "Too bad you're crazy/Too bad you're loony as hell/So long, it coulda been swell/Together," and, "Too bad you're wacko/How sad your marbles are gone/We could be dancing till dawn/But you're too weird for words," and sung in this equally kooky voice, that you can't help but love it. They even put it on the main menu for the Scream Factory Blu-Ray, which I infinitely prefer to their putting that damn Silver Shamrock jingle on the menu for their Halloween III Blu-Ray (seriously, whoever did that is just a dick).

It may not be the slasher flick that everybody expected it to be, but that doesn't mean that April Fool's Day has no merit whatsoever. Far from it, in fact. It's very well-made on all counts, with a great sense of style, cinematography, and editing; the characters and performances are better than you tend to get with these kinds of movies; the setting is just as gorgeous as it is spooky at times; the movie has a nice sense of humor about it, and often satirizes slasher conventions; there are some instances of fine makeup effects; the music score is eerily memorable; and the twist is definitely unique, as well as clever, for what was expected of these kinds of movies at the time. Still, there are some clunky lines and they're also not always recited in the best way, the ending feels tacked on, and while the twist is clever, you can poke holes into it, especially when you look back at the movie in retrospect. Still, overall, it's an entertaining film, and definitely worthy of the cult following it's managed to accumulate over the years.