 Hello and welcome to today's edition of Frightfully Forgotten Horror Movies. But before we get started, what are we drinking? Bob Light. You have two men in your life here. You're like, Bob, you're trying to shave, you're all drunk. Today we are featuring 1981's Night School. Night School was directed by Ken Hughes. He did Casino Royale, the original one with Peter Sellers. And he did Chitty Chitty Bang Bang too, just to mention another one. Leonard Mann is in this, and he was in Flowers in the Attic. Rachel Ward plays the main female lead in this. Drew Snyder is in this. He was in Fire Starter. Commando. Don't bother my friend, he's dead tired. Let off some steam, Bennett. Night School starts off in this playground. One of the teachers, Ann, is kind of seeing all the kids off to make sure they get picked up properly by their parents. The last kid is let off, and Ann is just kind of on this merry-go-round. This weird motorcycle person shows up, kind of like in Nightmare Beach. Right, yeah. Got the helmet on and the leather suit starts turning this carousel while she's on it. With this curved knife, she's got to dodge it. He's spinning this carousel and finally, ding! They find the body first. A couple of yards over, they find the head, and the head is in this bucket of water. That's a lot like this case that came up last week, too. It's actually the second murder. The main detective, Jud, talks to Ann's boss, and she doesn't know Ann too well, but she does know that she's been attending Night School at the college. Then Jud goes to the college, he walks in on this lecture by Professor Millett. He's giving a lecture on anthropology and he's showing all these slides of pictures he took on a trip to, like, Africa. The lecture's over and the professor instantly starts to give Jud shit, like, what are you doing interrupting my lectures? Like, he didn't interrupt nothing, he just slid in quietly. He didn't say anything to stood in the back. So he talks to Professor Millett and his assistant, Eleanor. They didn't know her too well, but they didn't say, well, Kim knew her pretty well and Kim's kind of packing up and he starts talking to Kim. He said, well, I didn't know Ann too well either, but, you know, she did have his boyfriend she was always talking about. I can't suspect he was probably having an affair with her, maybe an older man. After school, Eleanor, who is the assistant to Millett, goes to, like, the local diner. She starts talking to the waitress, like, oh, I heard lots of things about Professor Millett. He gets around a lot. He's a bit of a hound dog, that guy. But I wouldn't turn him away either. She leaves the diner and the bus boy there, who's kind of been watching her the whole time, leaves. He just abandons his ship and he starts following her home. Played out great where he's always kind of, like, whenever she stops to look by her shoulder, he peeks into the shadows. Eventually he follows her right home. So Eleanor gets in the shower, of course. You see everything of course, but she can kind of faintly hear someone, like, ringing the doorbell and trying to get into the apartment. Somebody actually is in the apartment. In the bathroom. Yeah, and just moves the curtain over and it's Professor Millett. And she's really happy to see him so happy that they end up getting into the shower together. With a bunch of paint or something. Some bowl of fruit or something. Some sig-ritual in the tub. Like, we see a shot of this aquarium tank. This person gets out and she takes her scuba gear off and it's Kim. That curved knife, that kookery knife. Dragging it against the chain link fence. He comes, like, out of that locker. Like, starts slashing at her. I like how she leaves that blood trail along all the nice white tiles. There's people looking in the aquarium, watching the, you know, the sea turtles and stuff. And there's the head that kind of comes down, slowly and bobs down. Meanwhile, back at the diner, Eleanor has come back. Professor Millett follows her in and we learned that Eleanor is pregnant. For three months already. Yeah, exactly. So she's been keeping it kind of a secret. Oh, that's why you've been acting so crazy. That night, the diner is closing up. The waitresses, she was tasked with, you know, putting the chairs in the tables. And somebody barges in and starts chasing her down and throwing the chairs around. Chases her into the kitchen downstairs and outside. The killer's all right in front of her outside after, like, super quick. The diner opens up that morning and those two fucking construction workers come in. Oh, come on. Let's get some coffee here. They're all demanding. The guy just opened, he just walked in the door. They're like behind him. Like, let him turn on the lights first. Yeah, he's like, I only got two hands here, guys. Come on. Can we get some hot food here? Come on, come on. So I got some stew for you. You want some stew? That's good. So I pour some stew to start eating it. And the one guy's like, I want this, all his hair. But they keep eating. The other guy's like, oh, yeah. This is real good. Because of the hair, Chef, like, pours out that giant pot of stew into another pot to see what the hell is in it. Oh, there's nothing. He goes to pull the bung out of the sink. And as the water's draining, he sees the waitress's head show. I love that shot. Detective Judd and his partner, Taj, they've been suspecting Gary, the guy that followed Eleanor home. Taj starts to kind of stake him out. Judd goes back to Professor Millett's house to kind of get more clues and to ask more questions. Nobody's there. He just kind of barges in. He walks in. Like some asshole. Like you can't do that. He sees a bunch of like anthropology books on the table of like all those ritual head hunters in like, you know, South America, Africa. And there's all these skulls and everything. Yeah. And that's where we're going to end it because there's a lot more that happens with the characters and there's a lot more that happens with the investigation. And there's a few more kills, too. And a few more twists and turns. One of the best things about this movie is the dynamic between all the characters. Yeah. And how they all work and weave together and there's all these different relationships they have, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. They're quite deep, right? Yeah, yeah. And the really fleshed-out plot of the main side characters feed in perfectly to the story. Like the Dean, right? Yeah. One of the girls is seduced by Millet. She complains to the Dean. And then the Dean brings her to her apartment and then fucking seduces her, too. Yeah. Like, you bitch! Which is like, yeah, I love that kind of like dynamic. It's like, well, this poor girl is being taken advantage of no matter where she turns, right? Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of subject matter in this movie that the movie deals with. Right, yeah. It's more than just a slasher. Exactly. It's a very smart movie. And one of them is like how power corrupts, right? Power in high places. The way they start off the movie, you think that it's kind of a commentary on how women are being suppressed by men a bit? Because Millet's taking advantage of all the girls. Yeah. But then when you find out that the Dean, who is a woman, is doing the same thing, it's kind of like saying, ah, it's not just a man-woman thing. It's a human nature. People are either, they're just bad. You don't need to be a woman or a man. You're bad either way. Because women are being killed and being beheaded, the cops naturally suspect a man. They're like, oh yeah, well, he's the killer. It must be him. He's a pervert. Yeah, they suspect that poor Gary, too, right? Because he's maybe a little weird and he's eccentric. And there's a double standard there because these guys really aren't doing their job properly. They just naturally come to a conclusion, right? The culture clash, too, in this. These headhunting rituals in different countries. Somebody in North America that's interpreting their own way, their own methods on this, right? Which isn't seen the same way by outsiders. Right, yeah. Which is cool. Being done over there is okay, but you bring it over here and, yeah, I know, you're a criminal. Exactly, it's not right. Another great thing about this movie is the kills. They're awesome. And it's not because they're like super gory. It's because, like, first of all, they're kind of fun and inventive. But you don't actually see any beheadings, which is neat. You just always see them. Yeah. But that's it. Then it cuts and later on you see the aftermath. You see the head in the aquarium or whatever. And that effect of that head looks great. Exactly. That's all you need, you know? Yeah. You don't need a lot of gore and blood to get the effect across. And the way that they build the tension, too, is really neat because, you know, that first kill, she's on that merry-go-round thing and he's spinning her. Right. And the knife is kind of getting close. Yeah, it's pretty tense. The acting is really good in this movie, too. With the exception of the actor who plays Jot, he's kind of not so great. It's kind of like, it's a little cheesy. And even the way they develop his character, he kind of sucks as a detective. He makes all this effort to go down to someone's house and get into their house to question them and ask them two things in his leave. Yeah, he's like, okay, that's all right. Don't you want to do more digging in here? Don't you want to ask more questions? Especially when you suspect somebody, right? Yeah, exactly. One thing that really helps this movie, too, is the score. Yeah. And it's done by Brad Fidel, who did The Terminator. Yeah. And a few other movies we've covered over the years, right? That's right, yeah. As soon as someone's being stopped, that synth score comes into... Yeah. It's like, hmm, that sounds a lot like The Terminator Chasey. Yeah, The Tunnel Chase, yeah. Yeah. This movie does have kind of a neat twist at the end. Kind of two. Yeah, two twists, in fact, if you want to really count them. Night School is like a really good mix between 80 Slasher and Murder Mystery, who done it. I think it takes both things and meshes them together very well. It does, yeah. And it flips the whole dynamic, right? The whole male-female dynamic right on its head. Yeah, which is nice. On its head. Yeah. Yeah. And until next time, keep drinking. Well, it's not worth losing your head over. You got it.