Fortunately, it’s eight days before April 1st, meaning I’ve narrowly avoided having to write a faux-positive review of 1985’s April Fool’s Day. So on to the critical butchery! A girl named (I kid you not) Muffy St. John (Deborah Foreman) invites a group of her friends to spend vacation at her family’s remote island mansion. One by one, the guests are killed. Who could the murderer be? Well, Muffy seems to be acting mighty strange, there was that ferryman’s assistant who got horribly injured while trying to tie a boat to the dock, and of course Arch (Thomas F. Wilson) – a.k.a. Biff from Back to the Future – was always really nasty to Marty McFly. Cultivating mystery, however, requires that you don’t give away the major plot twist in the film’s title. Director Fred Walton bungles each and every murder, forgoing gore or nudity (traditional, and necessary, ‘80s horror movie elements) and not even bothering to show us a few of the slayings (either out of laziness or editorial incompetence). Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians is mentioned to hammer home the story’s source material, but uttering Christie’s name in the same breath as April Fool’s Day – a film best known for its terrific knife-behind-the-back VHS artwork – is almost sacrilegious. I’ve seen this film before…as an episode of The Golden Girls. And Muffy St. John, you’re no Dorothy Zbornak.
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