Splatter University

Year releasted: 1984

by Keith Phipps
January 12th, 2005

Also Known As:
Campus Killings

Tagline:
"Earn a higher degree in terror... Where the school colors are blood red."

Plot:
Upon taking up her new post on the faculty of a Catholic university, sociology professor Francine Forbes discovers two disturbing facts: 1) The student body seems to consist exclusively of beer-swilling, pot-smoking, sexually promiscuous cretins. 2) Someone has decided to start killing the cretins. Laughing off reports that her new classroom has been "jinxed" by a brutal murder that took place there in a previous semester, Forbes tries to draw her students out with discussions of contemporary issues like abortion, much to the chagrin of wheelchair-bound priest Dick Biel—who, being confined to a wheelchair and all, couldn't possibly be the killer.

Key scenes:
A co-ed agonizes over telling her Neanderthal boyfriend that she's pregnant, and ponders the possibility of abortion, but her dilemmas are cut short when she takes a knife to the back at a drive-in. As the bodies pile up, classes continues as normal, thanks to a policy which suggests that Splatter University's founders didn't limit their unusual powers of insight to the school's name.

Can easily be distinguished by:
Director Richard W. Haines—who continued to express his twin interests in violence and education with 1986's Class Of Nuke 'Em High—develops a directorial trademark here, cutting to close-ups during murder scenes to lovingly capture the details of his killer's knife-work.

Sign that it was made in 1984:

High-haired co-eds chain-smoke on a football field where the announcer's booth bears a crude graffito of Van Halen's "VH" logo.

Timeless message:
To avoid dying, don't hang around with the wrong crowd. Or at least steer clear of priests who pretend to be paralyzed, have hidden porn stashes, and conceal knives in crucifixes.

Memorable quotes:
After Forbes announces the latest murder, a student sarcastically retorts, "Are you going to postpone the papers, or are they due today?"

(Available on DVD from Elite Entertainment.)