Movies
In Honor Of Slash Rejoining Guns N’ Roses, Let’s Revisit ‘April Fool’s Day’!
In April Fool’s Day, a bunch of college friends get together for weekend of upper-crust east-coast fun on a Massachusetts island compound that Muffy St. John (Deborah Foreman) is set to inherit. How upper crust and swank is it? On a clear day you can see the Kennedy compound. Of course they take the last ferry out on Friday, ensuring that they’ll be trapped throughout the weekend. And since this is ostensibly a slasher film, most of them are ostensibly killed throughout the weekend. But it’s actually one of the strangest mainstream slashers I’ve seen. Not that any one particular moment in the film is especially shocking or bold, but rather that the movie is so consistently left of center I wonder if something like it could even be made today.
Since today is March 31st, I figured it was as good a time as any to revisit Fred Walton’s somewhat iconic 1986 film. I hadn’t seen it in well over a decade (maybe two), so I was definitely primed to check it out again. Of course I remembered exactly how it ended, but I was curious to revisit the moments leading up to that with fresh eyes – and it’s amazing how all these years (and the horror films I’ve seen during them) have changed my perspective.
Beware – pretty much everything below the jump is a spoiler. If you haven’t seen the film, it’s available to rent on iTunes (the link says $9.99, but if you actually go to iTunes it’s $3.99). You should check it out and get back with me. 
I had seen April Fool’s Day on cable as a child, and I remember having quite a bit of fun with it. Also – perhaps due to my young age – I remember actually being relieved that the whole thing turned out to be a joke. But I wasn’t entirely sure if that was the reaction I would have today. Depending on my mood I thought it could go either way. I could either feel cheated that it wasn’t “legit”, or I could applaud Walton and screenwriter Danilo Bach for getting me with their very own April Fool’s joke.
And that’s exactly what April Fool’s Day is, an elaborate joke both on the part of Muffy St. John and the filmmakers themselves, which actually makes it kind of a ballsy movie. But is it a movie with watching? I’d say yes. Why? Because it’s just “off” enough that it feels refreshing.
The film starts off with our group of soon to be slaughtered (not really) young things on the dock preparing to visit Muffy’s island. Chazz (Clayton Rohner), the epitome of the oversexed, care-free 80’s archetype (he wouldn’t feel out of place in a Savage Steve Holland movie) is videotaping an intro for the weekend. Typical hijinks and character introductions ensue, but there’s something a little different going on.
Right off the bat – with a “I f*ck on the first date” – the film’s obsession with sex is kickstarted. Since this is supposed to be a slasher movie, it’s totally appropriate. But what’s interesting about the film’s take on immature sex is how mature it actually is. Don’t get me wrong, this film actually outdoes many of its brethren when it comes to juvenile d*ck jokes and the hunt for getting laid (especially when it comes to Arch, played by BTTF’s Biff, Thomas F. Wilson). But its take on the whole thing actually seems to be more self aware than most slashers – as if we’re watching some early meta seedling being born before anybody actually knew what “post-modern” meant. The film also introduces a reasonably humane female perspective on the topic when the girls are in the kitchen discussing their first time. It’s of course designed for titillation, but it also makes some kind of stab for authenticity as well.
That stab for authenticity carries over to the characters in general. While the film deals with enjoyably broad archetypes – such as the rich young republican who is only interested in money, sex, family legacy and cigars – it also allows those archetypes to carry some actual inner turmoil, which is rare in genre films from this period. Rob (Ken Olandt) is so bummed out by his recent medical school rejection it’s hard not to feel bad for him.
At first these grace notes make little sense, and if the film continued as a straight slasher they would make probably no sense at all. But another interesting thing about April Fool’s Day is that it essentially deals with many of the same themes David Fincher’s The Game tackled over a decade later. Sure, APF’s take on this stuff is radically underdeveloped in comparison, but it’s still there – even if the film itself is unaware of it. It’s suggested that these characters, having been placed in a situation (however simulated) where they are pretty much absolutely certain they will die, will ultimately emerge from their plight with a better sense of their priorities.
One area where the film could have run into trouble (or gets into trouble, depending on your point of view) is the early introduction of atypically severe April Fool’s gags. Within the first 10 minutes a character takes a fake switchblade to the stomach. The entire house is rigged to royally piss off the guests. Sinks that spray water everywhere, exploding cigars, used heroin kits, faulty champagne glasses, whoopee cushions, unstable chairs, the list goes on. In doing so the film can’t help but plant the nugget in your head that the whole thing might be fake.
But, when you think about it, the film almost doesn’t have a choice. In terms of keeping the April Fool’s theme a constant, it’s damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. If it simply ignored the conceit the ending would feel way more like a cheat than it already does. Instead, it grabs the gag by the balls and never lets go. It even starts with bizarre flashback in Muffy’s basement where she fondly recalls a horrific jack-in-the box that probably scarred her for life (and most certainly imbued her with a pathological need to f*ck with people).
The film balances out the obviousness of its inevitable conclusion with several nice red herrings including Nan (Leah Pinsent), the psychotically virginal drama major, and Lloyd Berry’s Ferryman. And there’s a cute subplot about Muffy’s alleged twin sister, Buffy, who may have just escaped from a mental institution. Still, we know where all of this is heading and I was surprised to find that I still liked the ending.
I understand how some people may feel cheated by the conclusion but, for me, the whole thing is rendered irrepressibly entertaining by the warped psychology behind it all. Sure, Kit (Amy Steel) is super pissed off when she walks into the drawing room to find all of her friends – most of whom she thought were dead – just chilling out. But her anger doesn’t last that long at all. The film totally ignores the fact that Muffy needs to be thrown in jail (just as The Game ignores any kind of reprimand for Sean Penn’s character) for subjecting her guests to psychological torture.
Instead, she gets to deliver a perfectly unreasonable speech about how she needs to be able to pay property taxes on the place and wants to open a resort there where patrons can escape to a weekend of murder and mystery. Of course, the patrons will be aware of what they’re getting into (she points this out), a courtesy she declined her current guests, which ultimately caused Biff to sh*t his pants. Literally (it’s okay, he can laugh about it now). She explains to her guests that she needed to keep them in the dark – but why? If she’s doing a practice run to test the efficacy of her business plan, then why diverge from her proposed model so radically? Why risk everyone’s life?!
Because Muffy St. John just likes f*cking with people. That’s why. In the end, she gets what she deserves.
Except that’s fake too. But still, if you guys haven’t seen this movie – go ahead. There are far worse ways to spend your April 1st.
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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