Unclean & Unseen! – STUDENT BODIES (1981)

Sure, it’s a mess, but when it comes to slasher satire, “Student Bodies” got there first.

In the fall of 1986, my one school chum held his stomach as he chuckled his way up to my locker. “Did you see STUDENT BODIES on TV last night?”

Unexpectedly, this ended up being a question I would ask many people in the following years. Plagued by production problems, bad box office returns, and tepid critical assessment, STUDENT BODIES nevertheless holds the distinction of being the first slasher film satire. 

Long before the SCARY MOVIE franchise would finally hit financial paydirt with the same material, STUDENT BODIES shot onto the marketplace admirably fast in the wake of the horror boom brought on by HALLOWEEN (1978) and FRIDAY THE 13th (1980). That may have been one of its problems–it was already lampooning a trashy cinematic trend that hadn’t even worn itself out yet. 

The Breather, a killer in rubber galoshes and Playtex kitchen gloves, is on the loose at Lamab High School. His body count, which is actually tallied on-screen during each kill, includes dispatching people via such unlikely weapons as Hefty bags and paper clips. Trapped in the middle of all this is Toby Badger, a sexually-repressed girl surrounded by a bunch of predictably quirky characters. Since the virginal Toby could never be the killer, any of the school’s denizens–from the soft-headed principal to the militaristic shop teacher or the double-jointed spaz of a janitor–could be the real murderer. 

Nearly a half century on, the film’s intentions may seem flimsy and transparent to most, but the film emerges victorious for one reason: it’s unendingly quotable. You’ll never look at rubber chickens, horsehead bookends, or broken KFC drumsticks the same way again.

Both ahead of its time and wildly uneven, STUDENT BODIES reminds us there was once a time when the horror genre hadn’t yet been dismantled. It also teaches us that dead men tell no tales…but they fart!

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