A serial killer with his signature heavy breathing proceeds to systematically kill the students and teachers of Lamab high school.A serial killer with his signature heavy breathing proceeds to systematically kill the students and teachers of Lamab high school.A serial killer with his signature heavy breathing proceeds to systematically kill the students and teachers of Lamab high school.
IMDb RATING
5.4/10
5K
YOUR RATING
Matthew Goldsby
- Hardy
- (as Matt Goldsby)
Jerry Belson
- The Breather
- (as Richard Brando)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe segment in the middle of the movie where an announcer, who is stated as being an 'executive producer', addresses the audience and says an expletive ('f**k you') was just added so the production could guarantee 'Student Bodies' an 'R' rating from the MPAA (the Motion Picture Association of America) since at the time the use of that word meant an automatic "R" rating. The dialogue here mentions how R-rated films at the box-office gross more money. Limited use of the "F" word would go into the "PG-13" category instead when that rating was created in July of 1984 which is the rating that this movie would likely received had it existed when it was released.
- GoofsWhen Toby is on the gurney with the corpse, the dead boy's eyes move. Later his arm moves.
- Quotes
Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, in order to achieve an "R" rating today, a motion picture must contain full frontal nudity, graphic violence, or an explicit reference to the sex act. Since this film has none of those, and since research has proven that R-rated films are by far the most popular with the moviegoing public, the producers of this motion picture have asked me to take this opportunity to say "Fuck you."
[the MPAA R-rating logo appears on the screen]
- Crazy creditsBefore the opening credits there's a note that reads "This motion picture is based on an actual incident. Last year 26 horror films were released... None of them lost money."
- Alternate versionsSome cuts open with the following on-screen title: "This motion picture is based on an actual incident. Last year 26 horror films were released...None of them lost money."
- ConnectionsFeatured in Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (2006)
- SoundtracksWhen the Saints Go Marching In
(uncredited)
Traditional
Performed by Lamab High School Marching Band
Review
Featured review
"Funerals get me hot!"
Part of me thinks that, if the ever-reputable Criterion Collection can put out a 2-disc special edition of crap like "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas," they certainly could throw a bone to a sharp-witted parody like "Student Bodies," which nails the genre better than the 3 "Scream"s (which eventually went down the route of self-parody anyway) and the 4 (and counting) "Scary Movie"s. So why, then, has this cover-all-bases send-up been relegated to a word-of-mouth cult item since its 1981 release? Distributor Paramount, which hit paydirt with "Friday the 13th" the year before (and its sequels in the years following), likely saw "Bodies" as an opportunity to take a satirical jab at a genre that really only "began" with the breakout success of John Carpenter's "Halloween" (1978). The result? A film so ahead of its time that the audience didn't know what to make of it--relatively goreless and sex-free (our killer offs his teen victims BEFORE they get a chance to score), "Student Bodies" approaches an "Airplane!"-style level of pull-all-stops humor (albeit on a shoestring budget) that remains surprisingly tasteful, even in the midst of cracks about necrophilia and a farting corpse. The opening 15 minutes alone stuffs in references to "Halloween," "When a Stranger Calls," "The Prowler," and even Dario Argento's gialli (our killer's gloved hands figure heavily into the plot); the filmmakers superimpose a helpful "body count" tally plus other deliciously obvious mistakes the characters make (a door kept unlocked, for instance). I only have one major complaint about the film: even at a scant 86 minutes, it goes on for too long, halting to a crawl during a prom sequence that unwisely tries to build some suspense to accompany the humor (though I will give the climax credit for successfully managing to lampoon "Carrie," "Psycho," and even "The Tenant"). That being said, "Student Bodies" is a fine, funny horror lampoon, even more resonant in the fact that, despite its early placement in the slasher pantheon, it still manages to nail all the clichés that have afflicted the genre ever since.
helpful•83
- Jonny_Numb
- Jul 12, 2008
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