Paramount Pictures, 1981
starring: Kristen Riter, Matthew Goldsby, Joe Flood and Joe Talarowski
written and directed by: Mickey Rose

the plot: At Lamab High School, a crazed maniac calling himself The Breather is terrorizing students. His targets: teenage girls and boys who dare to engage in premarital sex. Caught in the middle of it all are Toby (Riter) and her boyfriend, Hardy (Goldsby), a chaste young couple who stand by helplessly as their friends are dispatched with a variety of bizarre murder implements, from paper clips and produce items to novelty bookends and erasers. There are just as many suspects as there are victims, from Mr. Dumpkin (Flood), the creepy shop teacher fixated on making bookends shaped like horse heads, to Principal Peters (Talarowski), who takes an unhealthy interest in the sex lives of his students. As Toby tries to determine the identity of The Breather, she finds herself a target of the killer’s mad plans.

why it’s good: The slasher genre was still relatively young in 1981 and nowhere near as played out as it would get by the late ’80s, but the usual conventions—promiscuous teenagers, weird adults and killers wielding unusual weapons—were ingrained enough in moviegoers’ minds to result in “Student Bodies,” a spot-on spoof with low-budget charm to spare. Much of the credit should go to writer/director Mickey Rose, who worked with Woody Allen for a number of years and co-wrote Allen’s 1971 film “Bananas.” “Student Bodies” is full of the kind of visual puns and outré non sequiturs that made “Airplane!” and other spoof-flicks so great.  It’s funny, but it sure is weird. The ongoing preoccupation with horse head bookends becomes increasingly hilarious and the constant asides to the audience (including a random appearance by a stuffy studio operative who swears at the audience just to get an R-rating) make it seem like Rose and company are willing to throw just about any joke. Weirdest of all is The Stick, the freakishly lanky actor who plays Malvert, a mentally deficient janitor. He’s all elbows and knees, with a bucktoothed grin and glasses so thick it’s a wonder they don’t weigh down his head. The Stick is the film’s central enigma, a freaky-looking dude who wandered across movie screens in the 1980s never to be seen again. The same can be said of not only the rest of the cast but a good number of cheap-o ’80s horror flicks that flitted through theaters only to languish (or thrive as cult classics) on home video. There’s been plenty of horror spoofs since, and while they make all the right references, none of them really capture the feel of long-forgotten trash cinema like “Student Bodies.”

why you should own it: Legend Films released “Student Bodies” on DVD for the first time earlier this year, and one would think a movie with such a devoted cult following would have a few special features. Sadly, the DVD is bereft of any interviews with The Stick or retrospectives from Richard Belzer. Considering all the random tchotchkes that get thrown into DVD packages these days, they could’ve at least included a horse head bookend.