The world’s weirdest low-budget high school horror flick. It barely seems to be set on planet Earth. Its story is simple: The brooding new kid at Central High methodically kills off the small group of preppie bullies who terrorize everyone. It’s a strange world where kids seem to run the school, with not one adult—no principal, no teachers, no parents, not even a janitor—present. Also, in a sense, the killer is the HERO of movie, as he’s the only one who stands up to the creeps. Throw in some creative kills (the empty swimming pool scene and the death-by-hearing-aid scene are truly memorable moments) and a whole pile of offbeat details such as how the bad guys regularly go hang gliding together after class, how the kids walk the halls of the school like zombies, and everything about the attempted rape scene and you’ve got yourself a true cult classic. It all adds up to a fascism metaphor. In the first scene, Robert Carradine paints a swastika on a locker. From there we get a Gestapo (the preppies) and clear representatives of persecuted classes, intellectuals, peasant farmers, and the masses who go along with the status quo. When the fascist leaders get toppled, a whole new set of problems arise as new power-hungry factions seek to imitate their old oppressors.
It may be the most intellectual movie ever made with the word “massacre” in the title. When it was first released, it bombed all-around in drive-ins across America. Four years later, it played the Thalia Theater in New York City (for an idea of how artsy this theater was, it’s the theater that Woody Allen takes Diane Keaton to see The Sorrow and The Pity in Annie Hall), where New York Times movie critic Vincent Canby saw it and then wrote a rave review. As a result, the film became a minor critical sensation for a brief time. When it got released on home video later, all of that was forgotten and it was treated like just another horror film.