“April Fool’s Day” (1986) is a pretty good slasher movie if you’re in that zone with the filmmakers where you’re not taking things too seriously. The timing must’ve been good: The genre boom had peaked, almost every holiday had been slasher-ized, and now the number had come up for April 1. Probably no one in the cinema expected anything super smart.
So the fact that it’s not totally dumb is rather refreshing.
Fool me once, shame on you
It is kinda dumb, granted. Though we’re not meant to think too hard about this, the action takes place over a few days, but it’s broadly April Fool’s Day the whole time – I think from Friday, April 1 through Sunday, April 3. Over a weekend, a group of soon-to-graduate college friends gathers at the island cabin of Deborah Foreman’s Muffy.
“April Fool’s Day” (1986)
Director: Fred Walton
Writer: Danilo Bach
Stars: Deborah Foreman, Clayton Rohner, Tom Wilson
It seems to be in the North (it was shot in British Columbia), since nothing screams “South.” But it must be in the South because characters jump into the water and don’t mention it being freezing cold.
For the briefest moment, writer Danilo Bach (“Beverly Hills Cop”) riffs on Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None” (1939; adapted to film in 1945). Muffy has invited these people to an island where the ferry won’t return for a couple days. Someone is out to get them for past misdeeds in the form of cruel April Fool’s pranks; for instance, a character finds a tape player of baby sounds in her room. It turns out she had gotten an abortion.
Much of the film seems improvised rather than scripted, though. Not in a bad way, as we absorb a genuine group dynamic. Chaz (Clayton Rohner) and Arch (Tom Wilson, “Back to the Future’s” Biff) horse around like old pals, and “Friday the 13th Part II” fans might enjoy seeing Amy Steel as Kit. There’s some talk about career plans, and – since this is a slasher film – the main preoccupation of all the guys and two-thirds of the gals is sex.
Since April Fool’s is the theme, you might expect laughs. Something tickled my funny bone about Biff flipping out of a chair with back legs that telescope down when the sitter leans back. Mostly it’s a horror movie, although director Fred Walton doesn’t achieve much of a mood. To its credit, “April Fool’s Day” has one of the most classic twist endings from the slasher boom.
Fool me twice, shame on me (Spoilers)
(SPOILERS FOLLOW.)
That said, the machinations that get us to the point where Muffy reveals that all of these “killings” have been an April Fool’s prank are ludicrous. And we have to overlook the fact that the punchline lands on April 3. No one in the real world, no matter how drunk or juvenile, continues their pranking past April 1; everyone agrees it’s not sporting.
The way it worked was this: A few people were in on it with Muffy, but most were not. Each time a prank victim was about to be “killed,” off screen they were let in on the joke by Muffy, who somehow convinced them to continue to “play dead” in order to fool the remaining targets.
In the end, we realize that everyone truly believed that their friend’s face had indeed been ravaged by a boat-dock collision, and they were left to a miserable few days of thinking about that, when in fact the friend was perfectly OK. Granted, no one seems too worked up about it, but still, they do think their lives are in peril. At some point, it should cease to be funny that you’re terrifying your friends on a feel-good weekend.
Muffy’s reason for all this, in addition to the holiday antics, is to test-run the idea of turning her cabin into a murder-mystery resort. Since everyone is fooled, she deems it a success. The test-run explanation makes it illogical, though, because in practice people will attend the resort because they’ll already know what they are in for.
Containing the events to a single day, and not requiring that everyone agree to the gag as it goes along, would’ve made more sense. Maybe those adjustments are made in the inevitable Aughts remake, which is (inevitably) rated much lower on IMDb.
(END OF SPOILERS.)
“April Fool’s Day” shouldn’t be anyone’s first slasher film. But if you’ve waded this far into the holiday-horror weeds – past Halloween, Christmas and Valentine’s Day — you might as well enjoy the chuckles. Intentional and otherwise.