Rish Outfield's reviews
Unpleasant military sister comes back to town at the end of the schoolyear to investigate her little sister's death running at a track meet (hey, it made me laugh). At the same time as her arrival, other members of the track team begin to die violent deaths at the gloved hands of someone with a stopwatch. Who is the killer? And who will be next to go?
I didn't enjoy this film as much as tyranist did. It seemed to be a pretty straightforward campus slasher film, with the omnipresent killer always managing to remove any trace of his victims so no one ever suspects foul play. There were a ton of red herring suspects, and the one we were most supposed to suspect never seemed guilty to me. I figured out who the killer was only five minutes before it was revealed, so that was nice. The ending, though, was truly chilling, and took me by surprise. In fact, I'd say the last ten minutes of this film were great, enough to raise the whole movie to above average status.
Wait a minute, was that Vanna White?
I'd Recommend It To: '80s campus slasher hounds.
Note: Finally, I believe we've covered the last of Randy's Scream 2 mentions.

The tyranist's thoughts
I've seen too many early '80s slashers to really ever look forward to another one. Still, every once in a while one comes along that is just original enough and has better than average dialogue and death effects to make me think there is still more out there for me to discover.
Graduation Day stands out not because it takes horror in a new direction or because it can be said to be the least bit influential on the films that followed it but because it manages to be entertaining even in situations where I've seen it all before. The premise here is really nothing new and the deaths aren't truly exceptional. There are even points in the film that are downright bad. But through it all, this movie kept me glued. I was having a good time watching it. The high school atmosphere actually felt like high school and the killer was obviously trying to do things at least a little creatively. We could have done without the fencing mask, but really, it didn't detract.
The acting and dialogue don't stand out much, the twist ending is interesting even if it makes the movie longer than it felt like it should have been. There are some effective scares and creative weapons, but really, nothing is so exceptional that I can categorically pin the success of the movie on it. Check this one out. It is much better than the school slashers that you've probably seen anyway.