With ‘April Fool’s Day’ celebrating its 40th anniversary this month, we look back at why it’s still one of the genre’s cleverest slashers.
“April Fool’s Day!”
I don’t know about you, but those words fill me with dread. An entire day committed to pranks, fake news—R.I.P., Blumhouse Chupacabra movie that wasn’t real—and the biggest jerk you know having the time of their life. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good joke. But April 1st has evolved into that obnoxious day on the calendar when an already misinformation-filled internet becomes downright unbearable. Yet, despite the loosely capped saltshakers, the Saran Wrap over toilet seats, and the inevitable, sweater vest-clad Chad snorting over his hilarious trick of making you slap whipped cream on your face…the holiday isn’t all bad. It also happens to be the day we celebrate one of the cleverest slasher films ever made…April Fool’s Day (1986).
Directed by Fred Walton (When a Stranger Calls) and released forty years ago on March 28th, 1986, April Fool’s Day has its fair share of haters, but I assure you, this is no joke. I’m not going to jump out and yell, gotcha! I really mean it when I say that, in my not-so-humble opinion, the film remains a singular entry within the long bloodline of slasher movies that have screamed across the decades. And yes, a major contributing factor to its devoted cult following comes from that highly divisive ending that you either love or hate with the fire of a thousand suns.
WARNING: There will be spoilers, and this is one film you don’t want spoiled for you. So, if you haven’t seen it, don’t be an April fool. Go watch it and come back here when you’re done. Thank me later.
Following the success of When a Stranger Calls, director Fred Walton was brought on to do an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, entitled “An Unlocked Window”. The segment caught the eye of producer Frank Mancuso Jr. (Friday the 13th 2-5), who then asked the filmmaker to take the job of directing April Fool’s Day. Walton wasn’t exactly blowing up with opportunity at the time—he needed the money—so he obliged. It didn’t hurt that first-time writer Danilo Bach’s script was infused with a heavy dose of comedy…an element that drew the filmmaker to the story.
Said tale centers around a group of privileged college friends who embark on a trip to spend the weekend with their friend Muffy (Deborah Foreman) at her remote island mansion. Most of them live for practical jokes, promising a weekend of hijinks that they hope will have them dying laughing. But after a tragic accident leaves a man horribly injured, a dour atmosphere sets over the party. Soon, guests begin disappearing one by one. Is a killer on the loose, or is it all part of some sick joke? Kit (the great Amy Steel) and the others search for clues, discovering a shocking plot they never saw coming.
An Unconventional Slasher
In what is the first and one of my favorite scenes of April Fool’s Day, Nikki (Deborah Goodrich) speaks directly into Chaz’s (Clayton Rohner) camera. Standing on a dock, hair waving in the breeze, she gives off a shy, innocent persona. She says her parents are her best friends. That she goes to convent school. Nervously looking away or giggling through it all. Before finally, her eyes harden with a smirk, and she says, “and I fuck on a first date. April fools.” Every initial perception you had about Nikki evaporates in an instant. It’s a joke. A performance. A mask hiding who she really is. And it’s in that moment that Walton’s film says you cannot trust anything you’re about to see. You cannot believe the words of the characters, or their actions. For the next ninety minutes, the joke is on you as much as it is them.
Nikki’s prank marks the first of many elements that go directly against the grain of classic slasher conventions. Usually, the audience would be treated to a gruesome kill during the cold open. A masked killer. Sex, drugs, or some other fun that the buzzkill of a villain simply cannot allow teenagers to have. But not April Fool’s Day. Yet it still manages to deliver a similar sort of surprise. There may not be blood, or the heavy breathing of a masked madman who should really do more cardio, but Nikki’s words do catch you off guard. They shock you. What I would call a bit of fun before the games begin, if they hadn’t already.
By the time April Fool’s Day came around, the slasher genre craze had long since peaked. Audiences had grown weary of the various tropes and cliches. They were aware of the bloody formula. An awareness that Walton’s film weaponizes against them.
With April Fool’s Day, neither the director nor Bach intended to make a traditional “slasher”. Instead, the film exists as one of the earliest examples of a spoof commentary on the sub-genre…way before Scary Movie ever came around. It offers up your usual yet likable characters, from preppy dork, Harvey (Jay Baker), to shy girl, Nan (Leah Pinset), and jock, Arch (Tom Wilson). The accident on the ferry offers a reason for vengeance. Random newspaper clippings suggest motives related to car crashes and aborted babies. The film even plays on the “twin” twist, revealing that Muffy has a crazed sibling named Buffy who escaped from your standard mental institute. All things we had seen in slashers, countless times before. All used to send the audience off in any direction but the truth.
Why So Serious?
An early flashback of Muffy attempts to suggest some childhood trauma as well. In it, the birthday girl unwinds a jack-in-the-box, only for a ghoulish, rubber gremlin to pop out of it to the sound of her screams (and the laughter of adults around her). A cruel prank on a little kid? Absolutely. But, where we at first believe that event led to an unstable killer, it’s the opposite. That moment right there is when Muffy discovered her love of pranks.
See, a good prank isn’t all that different from a good kill in a slasher film. Both require setup. Both succeed through surprise. And each makes us feel a little more alive once the shock passes and we realize we’re unharmed. It isn’t real. We’re safe. That’s why so many of us are drawn to slashers as teens. At that age, life is in a bit of limbo. We’re no longer kids, but we don’t know what the future holds, either. We’re also just beginning to recognize that someday, we’ll die. That scares us. And these films, like a successful prank, juice our hormones and get the blood pumping.
Living for the moment resides right at the heart of April Fool’s Day. Many of the characters find themselves near the end of college without quite knowing what they’ll do next. During a pivotal dinner scene in which Kit’s boo, Rob (Ken Olandt), says his counselor didn’t believe he was taking his career seriously, Arch replies with a quote that still feels far too relevant today. “I mean, how can anyone be serious about anything when some moron can steal a bomb or push a button and nuke us all until our shadows glow?”
God, I hate how that feels like a conversation I just had yesterday. But that’s effective writing for you.
A Shocking Ending Unlike Any Other
April Fool’s Day plays as a “most fun you’ll have being scared” type of slasher. It’s a film that wants to have a good time with the audience. To toy with us. To wink, nod, and say “gotcha”. Watch it a few times, and you’ll notice countless hints toward the joke at hand. The entire thing is a house of mirrors, where up is down and left is right and you can never be too sure what’s coming next. Walton’s like a cheery uncle telling kids a scary story. There’s a playfulness embedded in every frame, whether it’s that stabbing on the ferry that isn’t really a stabbing, the Scooby-Doo portrait that follows you wherever you go, or Muffy’s smirk at dinner that says she’s loving it. All of it leading to what I’d argue is one of the most surprising conclusions in slasher history.
The last one’s left and on the run from who they think is a knife-wielding Buffy. Kit and Rob find themselves separated. Kit dodges a swing of the blade and pushes through a door…where she finds all her friends, very much alive and occupying themselves quietly. She turns, and Amy Steel gives a confused, bridging on furious look that matches the vibe of the audience. What. In. The. Hell? Everyone bursts out laughing, and Muffy reveals that it was all a ruse…a practice round for the murder mystery BnB she plans on opening. Personally, I’d pay to read the Yelp reviews of that place. Can you imagine?
Slasher fans feel the ending is a let-down. I get it. No one likes to be the brunt of a joke. But it isn’t a cop out in this case. It’s the punchline. The final gag in a film that’s built on them. Our expectations as slasher fans avert our eyes from the answer that was right in front of our faces all along. And the more times I watch it, the more I appreciate the clever, well-executed prank on us viewers. It’s unexpected. Shocking. And damn near perfect. Because it subverts every single expectation of the sub-genre. All of the characters who would normally die, live. There is no killer. No revenge plot. And that final image of the toy jester that winks? It’s there to say, gotcha! Hope you had fun.
And I do. Every time.
The Ultimate April Fool’s Day Joke
Walton has mourned the fact that Paramount didn’t know how to market April Fool’s Day and sold it as the prototypical slasher it wasn’t. That obviously led to both fan and box office disappointment. But I’d call it a happy accident. Believing that you’re about to see a traditional slasher film is what makes it work so well the first time. And that label has continued to allow each new generation that comes across it to experience that same surprise.
April Fool’s Day was never intended to be your average stalk and slash. Forty years later, it remains something much more than that. A unique highlight amongst slashers that isn’t quite a slasher itself. An unconventional twist on the tropes that smashes them all with both glee and admiration while paying tribute to the classics like Friday the 13th, The House on Sorority Row, and Slaughter High. A movie that gave audiences something different right when they’d begun to lose interest in the sub-genre.
The ultimate April Fool’s Day joke…and the only one worth celebrating every April 1st.
