April Fool’s Day
April Fool’s Day (1986)
★ / ★★★★
A group of preppy friends (Jay Baker, Pat Barlow, Deborah Goodrich, Ken Olandt, Mike Nomad, Leah Pinsent, Clayton Rohner, Amy Steel, Thomas F. Wilson) accepted an invitation from Muffy (Deborah Foreman), their friend who was about to get a substantial inheritance, to go to an island and relax in her mansion. But it was the first day of April and everyone was simply waiting for the perfect opportunity to play a prank on each other. But when one of the friends got his face stuck between the boat and the pier, the mood turned grim. The fact that there seemed to be a serial killer on the loose turned the college students’ nice vacation into a gorefest. Written by Danilo Bach and directed by Fred Walton, “April Fool’s Day” had an interesting premise but it ultimately didn’t work because it lacked tension. We fully know the outcome would be one of two ways: The murderer was the real deal or it was all an elaborate prank. Since the material failed to generate genuine suspense and therefore distracting us from one of the possibilities, it wasn’t fun to sit through. We just couldn’t help but attempt to outsmart the film before it yelled, “Gotcha!” Nobody likes to feel tricked. The picture also made the fatal error of not differentiating its characters. All of them were white, upper-middle class who had no idea which direction to take their life after graduation. All the men had sex on their minds while the women were typical vixens as they waited for the guys to jump their bones. Not one character exhibited an iota of intelligence especially when they supposedly tried to survive. For example, two of the characters decided that they would finally leave the island after many suspicious events, to say the least, had transpired. But the key for the boat was inside the dark house. What did they decide to do? They excitedly went back inside the house, after they stumbled upon their friends’ dead bodies, in the middle of the night. They didn’t even have a weapon. Wouldn’t it have been a better idea to wait in the boat until morning arrived? At least they would have a fighting chance in daylight. The boat was surrounded by water. The only way the killer would be able to get to them was to walk along the jetty, perfectly visible from the boat’s vantage point. “April Fool’s Day” was the kind of horror picture that would have someone yelling at the screen out of frustration. The characters may have money but they have no brain. If it was trying to be campy, it shouldn’t have been afraid to go all the way. By maximizing the hyperboles, at least the audiences are made aware that it was poking fun of itself.
