-Celluloid Dimension’s most unapologetic section, where we share the best of the worst. Bringing bad movies the love they deserve.
Directed by Richard W. Haines
Written by Michael Cunningham, Richard W. Haines and John Elias Michalakis (as John Michaels)
Starring:
- Forbes Riley as Julie Parker (credited as Francine Forbes)
- Ric Randig as Mark Hammond
- Dick Biel as Father Janson / Daniel Grayham
- Kathy LaCommare as Cathy Hunter
- Laura Gold as Cynthia
- Ken Gerson as Tom Scavelli
Rating: 
Even by the already trashy standards of 1980s slasher films, this shoestring, gimcrack stalk-and-slash effort ranks among the trashiest examples of the genre. And I genuinely mean that as praise—because I can’t imagine the raw, lo-fi grime of Splatter University ever functioning inside a generous budget, nor do I believe its commitment to sleaze could survive the sanitizing force of a refined cinematic language. There is a peculiar harmony when a film’s anti-aesthetic crudeness aligns with its structural shortcomings—an authenticity born from ineptitude. Splatter University, shaped by the hand that once cut The Toxic Avenger, thrives not in spite of its inadequacy, but precisely because of it. A shoddy Catholic-university slasher, where sociology professors are picked off by a knife-wielding maniac. Forbes Riley, playing the replacement for the recently murdered instructor, faces a group of young misfits, campus folklore, and thorny moral predicaments in what amounts to a grainy kaleidoscope of awkward chatter—channeling youthful frustration into a cornball debate over sociopolitical anxieties, all while blood and guts decorate an otherwise routine whodunit. Even more disconcertingly, it plays like a busted PSA about abortion and teen pregnancy—but with horny priests, dumb gags and juvenile sin; like a cautionary parable stitched together from an outdated educational reel. The result is a jarring juxtaposition: lecherous clergy, tone-deaf gags, and a litany of POV kills unfold without narrative or audiovisual cohesion. There’s no logic, no structure—just the occasional jolt of suspense cutting through the sleaze. And just when you think it’s a bottom-tier slasher, it goes full anti-church psycho. By the end, it’s not just scabrous, it’s an unhinged, anticlerical tirade dressed in dollar-store gore. Trash gold. Or maybe just trash.
