When I saw that Jess Franco had made a slasher-type flick, I was keen to see it. After all, a US genre done by a European sleaze maestro should at least be more entertaining than the typical American slasher. At least, there'll probably be more violence and nudity.
My hopes that this would be better than the average US flick of similar genre were crushed in only about the first ten minutes. The movie opens with convoluted, tedious scenes that try to set up the movie's central premise, but they are so badly done they only bore and confuse.
The movie's set in a girls' boarding school - such a generic location for Eurosleaze - and has something to do with the nephew of the owner being released from an asylum, and taunting a recent arrival, who thinks she keeps seeing him here and there.
These scenes are repetitive and boring.
Then of course there's the killings, which are violent but unrealistic and impossible to take seriously.
With one exception. Yes, there is a scene of actual animal death in this movie, in which a snake is hacked in half. When I first tried to watch this movie years ago, I quit after that scene, thoroughly repulsed. This time I knew to expect it, and covered my eyes during that disgusting, unnecessary spectacle.
Not only shouldn't it have been done on obvious moral grounds, it also adds nothing to the movie - in fact gorehounds might reflect that it only makes all the death scenes in the movie look even more fake by comparison.
The ending of the movie reveals it is more of a giallo than a slasher, with a twist that may have been a surprise if anything leading up to it had made sense or been involving in the least. I'm just glad it's over.
My hopes that this would be better than the average US flick of similar genre were crushed in only about the first ten minutes. The movie opens with convoluted, tedious scenes that try to set up the movie's central premise, but they are so badly done they only bore and confuse.
The movie's set in a girls' boarding school - such a generic location for Eurosleaze - and has something to do with the nephew of the owner being released from an asylum, and taunting a recent arrival, who thinks she keeps seeing him here and there.
These scenes are repetitive and boring.
Then of course there's the killings, which are violent but unrealistic and impossible to take seriously.
With one exception. Yes, there is a scene of actual animal death in this movie, in which a snake is hacked in half. When I first tried to watch this movie years ago, I quit after that scene, thoroughly repulsed. This time I knew to expect it, and covered my eyes during that disgusting, unnecessary spectacle.
Not only shouldn't it have been done on obvious moral grounds, it also adds nothing to the movie - in fact gorehounds might reflect that it only makes all the death scenes in the movie look even more fake by comparison.
The ending of the movie reveals it is more of a giallo than a slasher, with a twist that may have been a surprise if anything leading up to it had made sense or been involving in the least. I'm just glad it's over.