Student Bodies
| Student Bodies | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by |
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| Produced by | Michael Ritchie (as Allen Smithee) |
| Written by | Mickey Rose |
| Starring |
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| Music by | Gene Hobson |
| Cinematography | Robert Ebinger |
| Edited by | Kathryn Ruth Hope |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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86 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $5.2 million |
Student Bodies is a 1981 comedy horror film written and directed by Mickey Rose, with an uncredited Michael Ritchie co-directing. A spoof of slasher horror films such as Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Prom Night. Student Bodies was the first film to satirize the thriving slasher film genre. A prominent feature of the film is a body count that is superimposed onscreen whenever a death occurs.
Student Bodies is about a serial killer who stalks female students at Lamab High School, while at the same time, voyeuristically watching them. The killer calls himself "The Breather," presumably because the killer is always breathing heavily.
The Breather enjoys stalking victims over the telephone and much like Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th films, he hates seeing youngsters having sex. The Breather uses many unusual objects to kill his female victims such as a paper clip, a chalkboard eraser, and a horse-head bookend. He kills his male victims by placing them in trash bags alive.
The film itself ends with several twists: initially, it is revealed that the Principal and his elderly female assistant are working as a duo as "The Breather", even though they are shown at one point in the film in the same room as other characters when the Breather contacts the school to threaten to commit further murders. The film then goes to reveal that the entire film was a fevered dream, caused by the main character Toby being sick and consumed by overwhelming sexual repression. In a send-up of The Wizard of Oz, many characters are revealed to be much the opposite of what they appeared to be for the bulk of the film: the jock-like shop instructor is really the school's French teacher, the stuck-up would-be prom queen is actually the school nerd (who is given the crown by Toby after she wakes up, due to her kind nature), the two handicapped kids turn out to be able-bodied, and a local ROTC cadet is a hippie.
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Wikipedia