As the student-athletes from the Falcon Athletic Academy prepare for Nationals, they have to deal with overbearing coaches, a controversial steroid program, academic challenges, unsupportive parents, dating, and a killer in a track suit and hoodie impaling people with a javelin.
The killer must be the greatest javelin thrower of all time. Not since the heroes of ancient Greece have we seen javelins fly so far, with such accuracy, and such power. Impaling somebody against the wall with their feet dangling above the ground from across the room is a neat trick, as is nailing someone in the middle of a field from the top of the stadium bleachers.
Fatal Games checks all the boxes, including goofy kills (see above), pretty good kills (there's an underwater sequence that is fantastic, if a bit murky in the bootleg VHS YouTube version I watched), lots of red herrings (including a hilarious one where a character pins a beetle for his bug collection out of nowhere with no reference to this before or after), and loads of gratuitous nudity. Seriously, with all the shower, sauna, and massage room scenes these athlete characters participate in, this probably has the most nudity of any of the classic era slasher movies. So there you go.
The last act provides some decent suspense, with a protagonist on crutches searching through a dark building, unaware that he is being stalked. And everything culminates in a gonzo twist ending that is ludicrous, but fun.
The way the "final girl" discovers the identity of the killer - and all that that entails - is just plain ridiculous. But wow - the way the killer gets it in the end is fantastic. Altogether, Fatal Games is a bit on the dumb side, but still highly entertaining.
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