In April
Fool’s Day, Muffy St. John (???), played by Deborah Foreman, invites some
of her college pals to her quiet, secluded lake house. The diverse group of
friends all meet on a ferry, as they have to take the vessel to meet Muffy at the
lake house.
The ferry takes off and all of Muffy’s
friends are generally juvenile and goofing off on the boat (spoiler alert –
April Fool’s Day is bigger than Christmas in this movie’s universe and everyone
LOVES a good prank). Once the ferry gets to the lake house dock, a grisly
accident befalls one of the boat’s deckhands and he’s quickly rushed off to the
mainland because HISFACEHASBEENCRUSHED. The accident puts the friends on edge
for obvious reasons, but also because their pranks were partly to blame. After
meeting up with Muffy in the house, however, everyone begins to have a good
time and the accident on the boat is all but forgotten.
But then one of the friends goes missing
and both tension and fear arise. Is the injured deckhand back for revenge on
the goofy friends? Muffy starts to act awfully strange as well. The weekend
soon becomes a nightmare as everyone struggles to survive and solve the
mystery.
April Fool’s Day is a weird flick, but
it’s surprisingly fun in its first half. Some of the pranks throughout the film
are genuinely inventive. Plus, Thomas F. “Biff Tannen” Wilson is in the film as Muffy's friend Archie.
Like I said, the film has some oddities.
It’s mostly plot points, but acting and writing are to blame as well. At one
point, Chaz (Clayton Rohner), a character that occasionally films things and
has a hot girlfriend, tells a complete stranger (the deckhand) that his “Hostess
Twinkie is hanging out.” When the guy looks down at his crotch, Chaz kisses him
on the cheek and walks away.
The film is kind of like a more sophisticated
Friday the 13th film in a
way. Same setting (lake house), same scenario (horny group of young people getting
picked off by a vengeful killer). The production values seem better than what
the F13 series was producing around
the same time (1986) and the acting is somewhat better as well. Producer Frank
Mancuso Jr. also produced a lot of the F13
films, so the similarities have an obvious explanation.
As I mentioned, the film is fun in its
first half, but becomes decently creepy and dark when a twist of sorts is
revealed. As I alluded to, it’s also implied that the deckhand is responsible
for the creepy goings-on at the lake house, but that doesn’t really make sense
since HISFACEHASBEENCRUSHED. This is just me talking, but if my head is
borderline destroyed and I’ve been taken to the hospital, the last thing I’d
want to do is leave said hospital for revenge.
In conclusion, the film is a good one
due to its tone and goofy ‘80s-ness, but just barely, as the story and elements of
the writing are pretty oddball.
Side note: Occasionally the EH Team and our crew will find/come up with drinking rules for movies, and this one really lends itself to a drinking game. See below.
April Fool’s Day Drinking
Game
One
drink every time someone says “Muffy” or a derivative
One
drink every time someone gets pranked
One
drink every time Archie pops his collar
One
drink every time Rob indicates that he’s unhappy or mad
Two
drinks every time a fly is mentioned
Two
drinks every time a knife is thrown into the ground
Finish
your drink at the big toast about midway through the film
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