Mirror Mondays: The Past is a Foreign Country

I recently went back to my old hometown of Jacksonville, IL, to visit my mom and dad. My dad is 96 and will be 97 in just under two months. He is doing pretty well, if you ask me. But this was also my first trip back to Jacksonville since my Jackson project had taken full steam.

Jacksonville of 2026 is not the same as Jacksonville of 1986. And neither is the same as Jackson, IL, of 1986.

But if you look hard enough, you will see the similarities.

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

Jacksonville is trying very hard to improve its image. So they are rebuilding the downtown area. Bringing in new shops, restoring buildings.

But they have a long way to go. This is not really uncommon for towns of this size in Illinois. We see it in nearby Ottawa, IL. It's about the same size, same sorts of history, and there is a booming tourist trade. Same with Woodstock, IL, and Long Grove, IL. So I think Jacksonville is doing all the right things; they just need what a lot of places need. More money.

Jacksonville, IL is an old town. Established in 1825, it has some history. This also gives me a good excuse to say Jackson was established in 1827, or whenever I publish, to say it was 200 years ago. But that age is showing. Buildings that were merely old back in 1986 look positively ancient and run-down now. I found a tree I used to play around, and the bark is completely white. The places I used to hang out are gone; new ones have taken their place.  Some things are the same. A lot is different. But I will say that this newfound desire for the town to explore its own history is making my job here a lot easier. The image above provided some good research material, and I picked all of that up at my hotel.

Jacksonville of 2026 is not the same place as Jacksonville of 1986. Buildings have disappeared. Businesses have changed. Roads and commercial development have altered how people move through town. Especially in the downtown. Trees have grown or vanished. Signs, parking lots, lighting, storefronts, cars, clothing, and dozens of things tell you that you are looking at 2026. The people are different too. 

The real Jacksonville of 1986 also isn't Jackson. Jackson is deliberately a mirror.

All The World's A Stage

Jackson is like a model I am kitbashing. I have all the pieces to say the Enterprise A and D, but what I am building is something more akin to a ship from the same period as the Enterprise A, but it is really the USS Challenger. And...this is something I am actually doing, so this analogy feels really right to me, even if it might not be all that clear to you, the reader. Sorry. 

I have a stage (Central Illinois), I have the set (Sal's Pizza, Jackson Public High, MacAlister College, Oak City), and I have my supporting characters (Larina, Stephanie, Rowan, Andy); I am just missing those all-important lead characters. That's you, by the way. The people who will pick this up and move forward.

But the "kits" I bought to build this stage are all labeled "Jacksonville." And the pieces are "Leo's Pizza," "JHS," "MacMurry College," and "Elm City." I am just reassembling them. But these pieces have been in storage for 40 years, and my instructions are a combination of old, faded instructions (memory) and new instructions for the newer models I find online (the real Jacksonville of 2026).  

So...my stage looks different. It is built from memory. That is not just fine. That's good world-building.

It means I have something as a placeholder (memory) until I can get more creative with it. 

But not everything in Jackson is coming from Jacksonville, and not everything is coming from the 1980s

Renee Sylvi Jäneläinen is based on a couple of people I knew, one of the (many) Rhiannon's from my AD&D games, and the oft-mentioned but so-far-never-seen Renee of Renee's Tea Shoppe. 

I wanted to bring Renee's Tea Shop over to Jackson, but I was very recently reminded why that would not work in Jackson of 1986. First, I wanted Renee as a teenage foreign exchange student. Secondly, I was sitting in an upscale coffee shop in Jacksonville last weekend (Elm City Roastery) and telling my wife how I would have killed for a place like this 40 years ago, but it never would have worked because that is not where Jacksonville "was" back then. I mentioned the tourism above, and Elm City Roastery is exactly one of the things that make Jacksonville of 2026 work. So Renee's Tea Shoppe has to wait. 

"Strawberry Fields" as a record store, and a maybe-it-is, maybe-it-isn't head shop is based on a very real place. Penny Lane in nearby Springfield, IL. But Penny Lane was important because it was where I could get records I couldn't find in Jacksonville. And there was the appeal of going somewhere "forbidden."  

But there is also more. 

Jackson remembers things Jacksonville never experienced. It remembers the Crimson Cougar stalking the edge of town. It remembers teenagers encountering the Mochem. It remembers the Mauvaiseterre Hag. It remembers Larina Nichols walking into Paula's on a Saturday afternoon, Candy Mercer driving far too fast through town, and the Mercers' cat, "Pringles", sitting in a window watching something no one else can see.

Jackson works well as Jacksonville 86 + supernatural goings-on. But it has to be more than that. 

And I think that distinction is important. I am not trying to create a historically perfect reconstruction of Jacksonville in 1986. I am not writing a history book. I am building a place where people can play a horror game.

Don’t misunderstand me in that history is unimportant. It is the other way around: the real history is what gives Jackson some weight.  The streets need to feel right. The colleges need histories of their own. The old houses need to look like they have been standing there for generations. The downtown needs to feel like a Midwestern downtown in 1986, not like someone dropped a collection of "80s stuff" into a modern town. If I get those things right, then when I add a witch, a haunted house, or something moving through the cornfields at night, those things have something solid to stand on.

Then again, being authentic and being accurate are two different matters.

My memory can be faulty. I may have mixed up a building in my mind or conflated two stores into one, or carry a memory of 1985 as if it were timeless. Or I will come across something in Jacksonville’s actual past that I was unaware of back when I was living there and think Jackson ought to have its own take on it. At times I make changes simply because the town calls for them.

This is where the mirror is involved.

Jacksonville gives me the shapes. Memory gives me the colors. Forty years of gaming gives me the monsters hiding in the shadows. That is Jackson.

I went to Jacksonville looking for Jackson.

I didn't find it.

I found something better.

I found the place I remembered as Jackson.

I don't need a historically accurate Jacksonville, circa 1986, for Jackson. I just need a Jackson that feels like a believable Midwest town in 1986.

And then I can leave it all to you to bring it to life.

October Movie Challenge: Chopping Mall (1986)

Time to hit that other center of teen action outside of the high school in the 1980s; the mall. 

Oh. So, I decided that this year, even when I watch multiple movies on the same day, I am going to give them each their own post unless they are obviously related by theme or sequels and the like. It makes it easier for me to come back and find a particular movie if I need to. 

Chopping Mall (1986)

Ok. I'll admit it. I like this movie. It is goofy and weird. Plus, it has a strong cast, including the always-fantastic Barbara Crampton. Back in the mid-80s, that was usually enough to get me to watch a movie. Plus, it has Dick Miller in it, and he is always fun to have in a flick. As is Kelli Maroney of Night of the Comet fame. 

The premise is dirt-simple. The mall has a new security system in the form of three Daleks Killbots Protector Robots. Lightning strikes the mall, messing up the computers, and the robots go on a killing rampage. The plot is essentially the same as Jurassic Park.

It's not high art, but it is a lot of fun.

The teens/young adults are not the typical victims. I mean, they are partying in the mall after hours, but that is hardly typical horror movie bait. I mean, yeah, they are all having sex and the women walk around in various stages of undress, but again, that is really just 80s-typical. I mean, who hasn't run through a mall in their underwear, amiright?

This one also has scenes that are basically an (overt) homage to Rambo, but here it makes sense.

Filming took place in a real mall with a few shots at Roger Corman's studios.

The cast is great and above your normal horror movie fare. Of course, everyone in this cast has been in multiple horror flicks, and honestly it looks like they had a good time. I know that Barbara Crampton is a big fan of this movie. 

I watched "In Search of Darkness: A Journey into Iconic '80s Horror" prior to all of these so I could get a better idea of what to watch. Barbara Crampton talks about filming at night after the stores close and needing to wrap up before they all open. And she loves the kill where Leslie Todd's (played by Suzee Slater) head gets lasered and explodes. Note: some online sites say it was Crampton's character, "Suzie Lynn," who gets lasered; I think that's because the character's and actor's names get confused. And both are blonde. And most likely, people were not paying attention. 

There are a lot of horror movie Easter Eggs in this one too, which is a lot of fun.

Jackson, IL Connections

Jackson, IL is based on a real place, Jacksonville, IL. It has worked out great for me so far except for one little problem. Jacksonville, IL did not (and still doesn't) have a mall. So I had to invent one. It doesn't look like the one here. Though the pizza guy here may have helped me figure out who Sal was (and an old boss I had when I worked at Pizza Hut myself), there is still a lot to like about this movie.

I have always wanted to do an adventure in an old mall with zombies. Zombies. Kill-bots. About the same thing.  

NIGHT SHIFT has zombies covered, and if you want kill-bots, then Thirteen Parsecs has you covered. 

I might need to write up Lincoln Square Mall now. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 6
First Time Views: 4

October Movie Challenge: The Majorettes (1986)

Going back to 1986 again with some of the oldest-looking high school students so far.  I will say this, I am going be completely burned out on canned 80s synth-pop by November.  Though in typical 80s slasher flick fashion, we get about 5 minutes in before there is any gratuitous nudity or creepy stalkery types. This one gives us two, Harry AND his mother, Helga Schuler. Harry is a creepy Peeping Tom, and Helga is a live-in nurse who wants to kill her patient. Fun times.

The Majorettes (1986)

Someone is murdering the majorettes of a small Pennsylvania high school. For the record, I don't think my school had Majorettes. We had cheerleaders and pom-pom girls. Also, I don't know if I honestly know the difference, really. 

Anyway, the killings start right away. Our first victims are Tommy and Nicole. 

The killer wears military camouflage and a hood, stalks the girls when they are alone, and leaves their bodies in or near water. The murders appear to be part of some twisted religious ritual, with the killer believing he is cleansing the girls before they can become corrupted adults. The slasher is a surprise. 

The acting is, well, fairly terrible. But I wasn't expecting much. But seriously though, the gang is some of the worst acting I have seen in a long time. 

So it is based on a novel by John Russo, who also wrote the screenplay. It was filmed in western Pennsylvania. So maybe it would be closer to my Sunny Valley setting than Jackson or Carbon Vale.

That is, until the movie turns into a low-budget Rambo wannabe. I get it. It was the 80s. It feels like two movies that were being filmed at the same time with the same cast and then accidentally spliced together. The Slasher flick and the High School drug turf war. And in this case, the two halves don't add up to a good single movie. At all. 

Bottom line here is it doesn't matter if it is good or not; I am looking for the vibe. Majorettes by 1986 doesn't give us anything we have not already seen a 100 times. I mean, its competition is movies like Friday the 13th, Halloween, and Nightmare on Elm Street. This would have been better if it had come out in, say, 1982. 

Jackson, IL Connections

So the ending got me thinking. Cheerleaders are favored prey of these slashers. And that could be true in Jackson too, except for one thing: my head cheerleader is a witch. And the football team's co-captain is a Divine Warrior. So my kids have teeth. 

Granted, this is not terribly different than the premise of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," NIGHT SHIFT's older step-sister, and I do like subverting clichés too. The pretty blonde cheerleader does not have to be the first victim. The football player does not have to be the dumb jock who wanders off alone. They can be the people the monster should have avoided.

Stephanie would take an attack on herself personally, of course, but she would handle it. An attack on one of her cheerleaders would be something else entirely. Stephanie does not merely lead the squad. She knows those girls, watches over them, and considers their safety part of her responsibility. She is their protector. 

As she might tell the killer:

"Come after me, and I'll deal with it. Come after my girls? We are going to have a fucking problem. And by 'we,' I mean 'you.'" 

The dynamic changes when the supposed helpless victim start to throw fireballs. "Oh! You have a knife." Her hands burst into flames. "That's just adorable."

Yeah. I might need to find some other victims.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 5
First Time Views: 4

October Movie Challenge: Demons 2 (1986)

Given the disappointment of Dracula 2025 I went back to the fertile ground of Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava for the sequel to the 1985 Demons movie. "Sequel" is generous since it is essentially the same plot.

Demons 2 (1986)

Demons (1985) had a bunch of people meeting up in a theatre when a bunch of demons attacked and killed or infected them all. 

Demons 2 (1986) had a bunch of people meeting up in a high-rise when a bunch of demons attacked and killed or infected them all. This one, though, also features a 10-year-old Asia Argento. It also assumes that the events of the first movie are now known to the whole world. 

This is not a great flick. It's also not a very coherent one. There is a group of young adults investigating "the restricted zone," and people are watching it on TV, but who is filming them? Is it live? If they are doing something they are not supposed to be doing, then where are the authorities? Of course, one of them bleeds on a demon, and it comes back to life. And then one of the demons comes through the TV to attack a woman in the high rise. And is it coming through the other TVs? 

The special effects are mostly, well, hysterical. Some are remarkably effective, and others are just remarkably bad. 

The soundtrack is pretty cool ,though. 

Jackson, IL Connections

So, I never quite understood why these are "demons" and not just some sort of mutant disease. Well, I guess "Demons" fits better on a movie poster. In truth, they are more like fast zombies. In a NIGHT SHIFT game, the infections could still be in place, and it could even be demonic in nature.

I'd have to figure out what makes them demonic rather than just really ugly zombies.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 4
First Time Views: 3

October Movie Challenge: Fear No Evil (1981)

 This movie is a little outside my time frame, but it is a foundational movie for my ideas of Jackson. I used to have this poster on my wall for a while, and I later gave it to a friend. Long story short, I wanted to give him one of The Omen, but this worked. 

Fear No Evil (1981)

Andrew Williams (Stefan Arngrim), an eighteen-year-old high-schooler of some brilliance but also of a withdrawn nature. His classmates make life difficult for him, his father is afraid of him, and he has put himself at odds with everyone in his vicinity.

Likely because he is the reincarnation of Lucifer.

There are three archangels who have been reborn to stand against him, which is fortunate. Unfortunately, only two of them are aware of it.

We start the tale a few years earlier, when Father Damon (the Archangel Rafael) kills a man he is convinced is Lucifer. But evil has a way of not staying dead, especially in the movies. Lucifer comes back as Andrew, born in 1963 into a Catholic home where they will come to understand that there is something very wrong with their boy.

Fast forward to 1980, and Andrew is a senior. Columbia, Harvard, and Yale would all have him, but he has no use for college, his peers, or anything else, for that matter. His father has turned to drink and abuse; he thinks Andrew is evil and has no better way to deal with it. Honestly, his father is a huge jerk from the word go. 

Then there is Margaret, the sister of Father Damon. She sees the signs of Lucifer’s return and is under the impression she and her late brother were two of the archangels meant to put a stop to it. The third is Julie, an Andrew classmate who is quite unaware of her true self. It is a bit convoluted, to be honest.

On top of that, you have zombies, a haunted island fortress, demonic transformations, a Passion play gone horribly awry, some punk rock, resurrection, glowing crosses, and Lucifer about in full dramatic makeup like a methed-up Dr. Frank N Furter. And more special effects that an Earth, Wind and Fire video.  It is not exactly subtle.

Frank LaLoggia, who would go on to do Lady in White, wrote and directed this as his first feature. For a low-budget affair, it is wildly ambitious. LaLoggia has no intention of making a run-of-the-mill Antichrist picture; he wants a religious epic, a Gothic tale, a story of teenage rebellion and a horror film all in one. He did not always succeed. Though I prefer a film to overreach and fail rather than phone it in and call it a day.

Stefan Arngrim gives a performance as Andrew that is cold and still. He says little and looks at people with a good deal of contempt and resentment. In the early going, he is more sympathetic than those around him. His mother loves him but can do nothing to shield him; his father torments him out of fear; his classmates do what they can to torment him. They have already made up their minds he is a monster before he has even taken to his supernatural side. 

LaLoggia puts together a fine soundtrack from the Boomtown Rats, the Ramones, Patti Smith, the Sex Pistols and the like that lends the school scenes an energy at odds with the solemnity of the religious fare. You get the sense of a film made at the crossroads of old religious fears and new ones concerning punk and social mores, with the Satanic Panic on the horizon.

And in the final act, any pretense of restraint is dropped entirely. 

The special effects are as wonderfully cheap as they are effective. LaLoggia may have had certain visions for some scenes, but the film does not have the funds to realize them; instead, you are left with smoke, colored lighting, and some rather frantic editing, all delivered with complete sincerity. You know what? it still works.

I saw this when it was new, yet very little of the plot has stuck with me over the years. I could put my finger on the Satanic horror vibe and Andrew, but nothing about the high-school play or the reincarnated archangels, nor how odd things get in the final act. Perhaps because Fear No Evil is less a movie in the conventional sense and more like four horror movies in a trench coat. It is part *The Omen*, part Catholic nightmare, part low-budget epic, and part high-school supernatural drama. To say it lacks focus is an understatement.

I would be hard-pressed to call it a great movie, or even a good one. But still it was a fun one. 

Jackson, IL Connections

So Darren Vale is pretty much my homage to Andrew Williams and Fear No Evil. No. He is Andrew with the serial numbers filed off. Like I have said before, sometimes embracing the cliché is the way to go. 

Now this movie also has archangels, something I have not used in Jackson even though they are something that would work fine in any NIGHT SHIFT game. Honestly, I have not given them a thought really. I don't think they belong, to be honest. Jackson is hometown horror where the responsibility of fighting the forces of darkness belongs to ordinary people. Well...normal people and some supernatural people. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 3
First Time Views: 2

Urban Fantasy Fridays: The Unexplained (2009)

 AH! It is October again. My favorite time of the year. Last year, on my Fantasy Fridays, I spent some time with urban fantasy games and, in particular, with the idea of using games as a sort of life-path development for my various characters. I actually did a few characters, but I only posted one, my witch, Larina. 

Something very interesting happened while I was doing that. I grabbed a couple of Pathfinder characters and was doing the same experiment on them. I remember sitting in my car one night, waiting for my oldest to get off work, and I began writing a bit on what those two characters would have been like as teens. Then I took it a step (ok, a big step) further and thought: what would they have been like as teens in high school, not in a fantasy world, but in an American high school, specifically in the Midwest.

Those two Pathfinder characters became Stephanie and Faye. I resurrected a bunch of other ideas, and by December of 2025, I had a very good idea about what my town of Jackson, IL, was starting to look like. It has been my obsession ever since, and here I am nearly a year and several thousand words later. If you go through those posts, you can see the ideas that eventually took shape as the Jackson I am talking about now. 

With this collection of Urban Fantasy Fridays, I want to explore other games in my collection that do similar, but not quite the same, things as NIGHT SHIFT does for my Jackson setting/Night World. I am committed to Jackson as a NIGHT SHIFT Night World, no other game fits it quite so well. But, I do want to see what these other experiences give me. I want to make sure I am capturing not only what makes NIGHT SHIFT special, but what makes Jackson so special to me.  For the Fridays in October I am going to pull some Urban Fantasy/Horror RPGs from my shelves and see how they work for me. Some are older games, others are newer but obscure, but all approach the "modern magical world" from different points of view, and all can teach me something.

Last year I went in order, more or less, of life span development. This year I am generally going in order of involvement with the supernatural. From least to most. For example, today's game, The Unexplained, largely deals with normal people dealing with abnormal things. In the last game, Night Life, the characters are the "abnormal things."

So lets get to it!

The Unexplained

by Bradford Younie, 
2009 Carnivore Games, 298 pages.

I talked about the FUDGE game, The Unexplained, way back in 2010. Or, more to the point, I talked about its sister game, Now Playing. Back then, I described it like this: if The Unexplained is the reality, then Now Playing is the TV series based on it. Both are FUDGE games and use FUDGE dice. They are 100% compatible with each other and both top my list as my favorite FUDGE games to date.

While I am looking at this game for possible ideas, I do want to point out that it is, by itself, a perfectly wonderful game. I have not looked at it in detail for over 15 years, and I am surprised at how playable it still is. 

Character creation is easy using a simple point-buy system. I was able to generate NINE characters in under an hour. Likely, I would have been faster, but I was trying to maximize the differences in my characters. 

The Unexplained posits that the characters are part of an organization dedicated to hunting supernatural monsters. Now, the nature of my Jackson kids kinda precludes this. That is fine; it is not a requirement of this game, merely a feature they are adding. 

The Foundation for Paranormal Investigation

The FPI is an in-game conceit that allows the players to get their characters together. It is part "You characters meet in a tavern" and part "You have been recruited by S.A.V.E. or A.R.T.E.M.I.S. or the FBI or SCP or whatever alphabet organization the characters need to join. 

That said, there are some really good ideas for putting together an organization like this and using it in a game. Maybe I'll revisit them someday, but right now I don't need them. My characters meet because they are all in the same school. 

But if this is your thing, then The Unexplained is worth picking up for these ideas. The underlying system is FUDGE, but really, as I showed already, replace the words with numbers, and you can play this almost as if it were Unisystem.

My Jackson Kids

Character creation was so fast and easy that, instead of doing one or two of my Jackson kids. I stated them all. Well. Most of them.  Plus the Character Concept Questionnaire I used from Now Playing was also a huge help. 

I won't add all of them here, but I will give two examples. My witch, Larina, and the reluctant ally, Vera. Why? Vera Rook is becoming a LOT of fun over here. She is just a great frenemy who adds some tension to the group. Plus, she irritates Stephanie and Larina, and that is always fun.

Larina Stephanie Nichols

Profession: The Scholar* (I am using the Professions more like archetypes)
Paranormal Society: Jackson Public High School
RankAge: 16 
Income: Good
Luck: 3
Size: Medium/0

Attributes
Brawn: Mediocre
Agility: Fair
Stamina: Fair
Reasoning: Superb
Perception: Good
Will: Fair

Gifts
Attractive
Single Minded (Magic)

Faults
Curious
Obsession: Magic
Quick-Tempered

Psychic Abilities
Mental Psi: Psychometry (Fair), Telepathy (Fair)
Physical Psi: Telekinesis (Fair)

Skills
Astrology (Fair), Athletics (Mediocre), Concentrate (Good), Computers (Fair), Decipher Script (Fair), Drive (Mediocre), Gather Information (Good), Language, Greek (Poor), Language, Latin (Poor), Mythology (Good), Occult (Great), Parapsychology (Fair), Research (Good), Ritual, Wicca (Fair), Search (Good)

Vera Diane Rook

Profession: The Reluctant Ally* (I am using the Professions more like archetypes)
Paranormal Society: Jackson Public High School
RankAge: 16 
Income: Great
Luck: 3
Size: Medium/0

Attributes
Brawn: Fair
Agility: Fair
Stamina: Fair
Reasoning: Good
Perception: Great
Will: Fair

Gifts
Attractive
Increased Income
Patron: Rook Family

Faults
Blunt and Tactless

Psychic Abilities
Mental Psi: Psychometry (Good)

Skills
Astrology (Good), Bluff (Fair), Cryptozoology (Fair), Drive (Good), Gather Information (Fair), Ghost Hunting (Fair), Intimidate (Good), Occult (Fair), Persuade (Good), Religions (Good), Research (Fair), Ritual, Wicca (Fair), Sense Motive (Good)

This run is where we learn that Vera's family is Jewish. She is a witch yes, but her religion is Jewish. Much like Larina's religion is Wicca. Vera is a bit of a lapsed Jew, but I think I want to work more of it into her character later on. 

The images, as it turns out, are from the day after Larina's 16th birthday. Her birthday was on a Friday, and this would have been the next Saturday. 

Remember, with all these "Poors" and "Fairs," they are still just kids.

Though looking at the art of these two, they seem to be less Larina "Nix" and Vera "Raven" of Jackson and more Larina "Creepy" and Vera "Shadow" of Carbon Vale. 

-- 

The Unexplained is a lot of fun. I have never really connected with FUDGE, but this game makes me want to try it again.

Links

• PDF from DriveThruRPG
• Carnivore Games
• Sheets
• Facebook
• Willow & Tara stats

October Movie Challenge: Slaughter High (1986)

Let's get into this properly now.

I am going to spend this year's October Horror Movie Challenge with a couple of themes in mind. The first is movies from 1985 to 1986 and movies featuring high schools and small towns.  There is some overlap between these two themes, so I am going to start with those. I am actually a little surprised by how many I haven't seen.

Slaughter High (1985)

Pretty much in the center of my Venn diagram is 1985's Slaughter High. Now I was sure I saw this back then; I mean, it has Caroline Munro in it, and I tried to catch anything she was in.  But I have no memory of this one. I mean, there is nothing special about it, to be honest; it is a fairly predictable flick but that doesn't not make it fun. Plus, there are some good ideas here. Though I wonder, are they predictable or did I see this and just forgot it? It does have an old abandoned high school, like my Jackson setting, but in my defense, I actually stole that idea from my own hometown.

The film starts in 1976, but the bulk takes place later on in 1986 during the high school class reunion. 

The idea of a class reunion to bring all the school bullies is a fun one. Too bad the acting is fairly terrible. 

Marty is the local geeky kid who gets picked on. So ten years after the accident on April Fools' Day that disfigures him, he gets all his former bullies to a fake high school reunion where he kills them off one by one. 

Sadly, Simon Scuddamore, who played Marty the slasher, died of a drug overdose shortly after filming.

One note. I am watching this on Tubi, where I am planning to watch a lot of these movies, and it is so dark it is hard to see anything at all in some scenes. Not sure if it is Tubi, the copy they have, or if that is how the movie was. I know it is not my TV, at least.

Jackson, IL Connections

I am also going to try, where possible, to talk about what I can use from these movies for my Jackson, IL Night World for NIGHT SHIFT. Failing that, NIGHT SHIFT, Thirteen Parsecs, and/or Advanced Witches & Warlocks. For AW&W in particular, it will be more of a tonal thing; these are the things in the media around 1985-86 that might have influenced me. 

Slaughter High at least gives me some ideas for class reunions, not necessarily for the current group of characters (and my much-talked-about NPCs), but maybe for the Class of 1976 back for their 10th reunion. This shows that the horrors of this town keep happening over and over again. In truth I kind of like that idea. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 2
First Time Views: 2