One of the quirkiest of all seventies-sploitation films was MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH, the finest movie ever directed by the Dutch Renee Daalder (1944–2019). Subsequent films helmed by the decidedly unprolific Daalder include POPULATION: 1 (1986), HABITAT (1997) and HYSTERIA (1997). None had the impact of MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH, which was widely imitated over the subsequent decade (in 1986’s DANGEROUSLY CLOSE and the following year’s HEATHERS), and even had a XXX version released in Italy (entitled SEXY JEANS) featuring poorly integrated hard-core inserts.
MASSACRE… admittedly didn’t begin in too auspicious a fashion, with a title conceived by producer Harold Sobel and the plot and characters filled in afterward. The film subsequently underwent heavy post-production editing by its distributors, which resulted in Daalder all-but disowning it for years. That may have had some bearing on MASSACRE becoming quite scarce in the 90s and 00s, with its sole home video appearances being via a couple of eighties-era VHS releases.
Toward the end of his life Daalder evidently changed his mind about the film’s qualities. He worked closely with Synapse Films on a digitally resorted Blu-ray edition, which was ultimately released after his death, in late 2020. Regarding that Blu-ray, it’s everything a MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH fan could hope for, although the ultra-crisp visual quality (very likely the best the film has ever looked) has the unfortunate side-effect of calling the low budget skuzziness of the project into extremely sharp relief.
Perhaps due to that low budget, the narrative is ruthlessly simple. Subplots are kept to a bare minimum, and those that do exist (such as a perfunctory romance) tend to barely register. What we get is the no-frills account of a young man named David, the new kid at the titular high school. He attempts to help out the nerdier students, but when he’s spotted romancing the girlfriend of one of the ruling bullies David nearly loses a leg in an auto shop “accident.”
What follows is an all-out war between David and the bullies, who are methodically killed in various imaginative and unpredictable ways (no guns are used). Yet when all the scumbags are dispatched the nerds, left to their own devices, prove just as selfish and amoral—and start getting killed off themselves.
That a political metaphor is evident in all this was not lost on critics like Roger Ebert and The New York Times’s Vincent Canby, whose raves helped turn the film into a cult event. Another reason for the enthusiastic reception is the excellence of the cast; included are names that should be familiar to exploitation buffs, such as Robert Carradine, Andrew Stevens, LEMORA’s Rainbeaux Smith, FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH: THE FINAL CHAPTER’s Kimberly Beck and future EIGHT IS ENOUGH regular Lani O’Grady. Not nearly as well known is the film’s star Derrel Maury, who as the alternately copacetic and homicidal David delivers the most affecting performance.
What’s missing is an adult presence. The only glimpses we get of authority figures are an off-screen shout heard during an early pool scene and some old folk glimpsed at a climactic dance. This gives the film an insular LORD OF THE FLIES feel, adding a level of surreality that helps render the low-rent production values more palatable.
One element that isn’t palatable is the theme song, an absolutely horrendous seventies-centric dirge entitled “Crossroads” by Tommy Leonetti. An ill-advised addition by the producers (who replaced what is said to be an extremely haunting synthesizer theme by composed Daalder himself), the song has the effect of not only dating the film appreciably, but also reducing it to an MST2k worthy camp-fest. That in itself isn’t such a terrible thing, but MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH could, and should, have been much more.
Vital Statistics
MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH
Evan
Director: Rene Daalder
Producer: Harold Sobel
Screenplay: Rene Daalder
Cinematography: Bertram van Munster
Editing: Harry Keramidas
Cast: Darrel Maury, Andrew Stevens, Robert Carradine, Kimberly Beck, Ray Underwood, Steve Bond, Steve Sikes, Lani O’Grady, Damon Douglas, Dennis Kort, Rainbeaux Smith, Jeffrey Winner, Thomas Logan