William Graham, a paranoid schizophrenic psychopath, kills an orderly and escapes from his psychiatric hospital. Three years later at nearby St. Trinian's College, a Sociology professor is stabbed to death. The next semester, Julie Parker takes the vacant position, and the killings start again. As her students and friends are stabbed, slashed, and sliced to death left and right, Julie must stay alive long enough to figure out who is...
Alright, screw it - it's the priest. You're not going to watch this stupid movie, so I'm spoiling it. The escaped killer (who they inexplicably call "Daniel" Graham when he's back in the nut house at the end of the movie) is the priest disguised in the super fakey grey wig, pretending to be confined to a wheelchair so he can stalk his victims without arousing suspicion. How he got to be Dean of this college in three short years with no resume to speak of, I'll never figure out. But yeah, there you go. Saved you 73 stupid minutes.
Splatter University is billed as a horror-comedy, but I think that hyphenated description only came about when the distributors saw how laughably incompetent this attempted slasher movie was. It's not like they don't prepare you, though - there's a big ol' credit at the beginning that says Creative Consultant - Lloyd Kaufman. Oh boy. When the head honcho of Troma Pictures is on your credit list, you know the movie probably won't be aiming too high.
(And for the record, I like a number of Troma movies. They're often gross, stupid fun. But even the biggest Toxic Avenger fans out there would have to admit that "quality" isn't exactly "job one" when Lloyd Kaufman gets involved in a project.)
So, Splatter University. First off, I was really hoping this would take place at something like "James Platter University" and the "Jame" part of the sign would fall off, leaving, "s Platter University." Alas.
For a movie that takes place at a college, the cast sure is populated by a bunch of dummies. Not a one of these people seem like they belong in college at all, not even our protagonist, the professor. There's always lots of cheap beer on hand, lots of "let's party!" dialogue in the most absurd New Jersey "youse guys" accents, lots of attempts to get out of doing schoolwork, and lots of ridiculous hijinks and shenanigans. It's like Animal House, but without all the grace, charm, and sophistication of Bluto and the Deltas.
It doesn't help that this is an amazingly cheap, amateurish, low-rent movie. The version on Amazon Instant streaming brought to mind the old days of renting worn-out VHS tapes, as it was in the 4:3 aspect ratio, the image was soft and muddy, and the audio sounded like it was recorded in a shoebox. I can't be 100% sure that was the fault of the streaming copy and not the original source material.
The soundtrack consists of a nice, fast, rubbery, bouncy synth rhythm for the chase scenes (one of the few positives I found in SU), a bit of lame synth noodling for the normal scenes, and this one crappy pop-rock song they keep going to the well on. I guess they paid for the song and they wanted to get their money's worth out of it.
The movie must have been shot and edited by somebody's nephew with his Fisher Price Make-My-First-Horror-Movie Kit. The camerawork is pathetic, there are continuity errors galore, you can see the reflection of one of the filmmakers in a car window in several shots, and some shots are in the wrong order. For instance, we see our protagonist having drinks at her boyfriend's house, where the boyfriend miraculously pours himself a bourbon on the rocks and her a red wine out of a single bottle, with one pour. Then we see them at work with the boyfriend saying, "hey, let's go to my place for some drinks." And this isn't the only time something is out of order.
In summary, this movie is a mess. It could have been a fun mess if it had bothered to be as over-the-top as its overblown name. (With a title like Splatter University, I was hoping for guts and gore all over the place, but it was not to be.) Instead, it was just kindof a pitiful piece of garbage that never really elevated its game past the slasher basics of stabbing people and slicing their throats. Oh, and stabbing dudes in the balls sometimes.
I'm giving Splatter University an exceedingly generous one-and-a-half stars, mostly because I liked the good parts of the score and because it's not hateful - just bad. If you're a slasher completist or you like to watch bad movies with beers and buds, you might have to include this one on your list. If you demand a certain level of competency in your movies, you should skip Splatter University. Oh, wait, you were going to skip it anyway. Good deal.
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