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Student Bodies (1981)
Rate:
2
Viewed:
2/15
2/15:
Credited as the first horror spoof film (Uh...Young Frankenstein, anyone?), Student Bodies fails to live
up to it.
The first twenty minutes or so, things seem to go well with clever spoofs. Afterwards, it starts to operate on
fumes, running low on jokes, usually repeating them ad nauseam only to dispense with them altogether.
Then, out of the blue, there's a "fuck you" public service announcement of why they wouldn't go so far enough to achieve an
'R' rating which is ingenious although the movie ironically received it.
From there on to the end, Student Bodies transitions from a comedy to a lame horror movie while losing me for good. The
multitude of product placements such as Dr. Pepper and Coors have made it worse as well.
Meanwhile, I started to be interested in this double-jointed, stork-looking actor who played Malvert the janitor. What an
oddity of a specimen. The actor's name was Patrick Varnell who went by "The Stick." He was 6' 3" tall and weighed a little
over 100 pounds. With only one movie to his credit, he died of a heart attack at the age of 48 in 1989.
After Patrick Varnell's death which wasn't widely known, people frantically searched for any information on him only
to be disappointed to find out he had long passed away. One movie director offered $1,000 for his whereabouts, and
another wanted to hire him to provide comedy for a wedding.
All in all, here's a free lesson: if you write a comedy script but find yourself running out jokes very early, it's not
ready to be published.