Night School (1981) Directed by Ken Hughes
A very interesting case, in which a grim Americanized giallo plays like an intelligent thesis in criminology. Leonard Mann plays Lt. Judd Astin investigating some gruesome homicides in Boston committed by a biker killer equipped with only a sharpened Kukri, with which he decapitates his victims. The targets of the unknown decapitator are a group of young girls attending night school. Ken Hughes helms his last film with consummate artfulness – his swan song to cinema resembles a daunting graduation exam – and his applied methodology induces us to believe that the practice is Hitchcockian but the theory Langian. It is not a whodunit crafted with industriousness and originality – discovering the perpetrator of the crimes is not that difficult – but the cop procedural is consistently gripping as it is more a cryptic study of the genesis of the criminal motive than of the actual murderer. Among the prime suspects for Lt. Judd Astin’s detective eye are one of the night school students Eleanor Adjai (Rachel Ward in her film debut), Vincent Millet (Drew Snyder) an anthropology professor and committed philanderer, and an oddball peeping Tom named Gary.
Night School’s wit is uncommonly superlative for a thriller of these exploitative proportions – it’s still a slasher after all – and Ken Hughes wastes not a single neuron of the cerebral psychosexual musing embedded in the sturdy screenplay, which is unerringly suspenseful. Perhaps therein lies the rationale for Night School’s inclusion in the infamous Video Nasties list, it is a scabrous crime thriller willing to pry into the most contentious matters of human sexuality, it doesn’t rely on graphic violence as a provocative discourse, for that it relies on the audacity of its subject matter. Slick and serious as few are, and a sneering finale worthy of standing as the most ridiculously unanticipated gag in slasher filmmaking.