Format: DVD from LaSalle Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.
When I look at a film like Student Bodies, I think there are only a couple of possible reasons it exists. The year before it was released we got Airplane!, a genius film that contains at least two jokes on screen at every moment and frequently more than that. It was perhaps natural then that Student Bodies would be released, since it appears to be Airplane!, but a horror movie instead of a disaster movie. There is clearly an attempt to make this far more of a comedy than it is a horror movie. There’s nothing like gore or even blood here. There’s a moment in the middle of the film where the producer, sitting at a desk, swears at the audience so that the film can earn an R-rating.
The idea here is exactly that, though—it’s a movie that desperately wants to be the Airplane! of horror movies. Nothing is serious, everything is played for a joke, and every character on screen is uniquely stupid in real ways. The issue is that beyond the idea of doing a spoof of slasher movies, virtually nothing here works at all.
