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April Fool's Day
On April Fool's Day weekend, a group of college friends gather together at a secluded island mansion to celebrate their final year of school, where they soon become prey for an unseen murderer.
1986 · Directed by Fred Walton · 89 min · Horror · Mystery · Screenplay in the scene database · 18 frames
Tagline
Guess who's going to be the life of the party?
Plot
On the weekend leading up to April Fools' Day, a group of college friends, consisting of Harvey Edison, Nikki Brashares, Rob Ferris, Skip St. John, Nan Youngblood, Chaz Vyshinski, Kit Graham, and Arch Cummings, gather to celebrate spring break by spending the weekend at the island mansion of Skip's cousin and Vassar student Muffy St. John. As Muffy prepares details around the house, she finds an old jack-in-the-box and recalls receiving the toy at a childhood birthday party. Her friends, meanwhile, joke around on the pier while awaiting the ferry. En route to the island, as their antics become more boisterous, local deckhand Buck is seriously injured in a gruesome accident.
Once on the island, it turns out that Muffy has set up a variety of pranks throughout the mansion, ranging from simple gags such as a whoopee cushion and dribble glasses and exploding cigars to more complex and disturbing pranks, such as an audiotape of a baby crying in Nan's room and heroin paraphernalia in Arch's wardrobe. Despite this, the group tries to relax, until Skip goes missing, and Kit catches a glimpse of what looks like his dead body. Soon, Arch and Nan also go missing. During a search for the pair, Nikki falls into the island's well, where she finds the severed heads of Skip and Arch, along with the dead body of Nan. The remaining group members then discover that there is no way to get off the island until Monday.
One after another, members of the group either vanish or get killed, and their bodies are later found. After putting some clues together, Kit and Rob realize that everyone's earlier assumption is wrong. It also turns out that Muffy has a violently insane twin sister named Buffy, who has escaped. The "Muffy" they have been around since the morning after the first night was Buffy, pretending to be Muffy. They discover Muffy's severed head in the basement.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Written by: Danilo Bach
- Cinematography: Charles Minsky
- Edited by: Bruce Green
- Music: Charles Bernstein
- Produced by: Frank Mancuso Jr.
Cast
- Amy Steel as Kit Graham
- Ken Olandt as Rob Ferris
- Deborah Foreman as Muffy / Buffy St. John
- Deborah Goodrich as Nikki Beshears
- Clayton Rohner as Chaz Vyshinski
- Thomas F. Wilson as Arch Cummings
- Jay Baker as Harvey 'Hal' Edison
- Leah Pinsent as Nan Youngblood
- Griffin O'Neal as Skip St. John
- Tom Heaton as Constable Potter / Uncle Frank
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: YCTM, Hometown Films, Paramount Pictures
- Budget: $5,000,000
- Themes: island, murder, teen movie, slasher, april fool's day, canuxploitation, college friends
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