Rent Massacre at Central High (1976)

Breakfast Club with a Body Count - Massacre at Central High review by griggs

High school has rarely looked this grim. Massacre at Central High may dress itself up as a proto-slasher, but it’s really exploring the mechanics of violence rather than the body count. Yes, the acting is wooden and the production cheap, but the stripped-down world is oddly gripping: no adults, barely a soundtrack, just kids circling each other in a vacuum where power matters more than algebra.

That sparseness works. Knock off one tyrant and another pops up to take the crown — authoritarianism 101, acted out in lockers and corridors. With the school sealed off from any outside help, it plays like a petri dish left to rot, clumsy in parts but surprisingly effective. More importantly, the lesson isn’t just that bullies are bad, but that the system itself — the structures of power — regenerates as quickly as it’s torn down. A sharp allegory for wider society.

It’s not fun in the glossy sense — no slick thrills here — but that roughness gives it a hypnotic pull. Imagine a high-school morality play that stumbled into the slasher aisle. Not a masterpiece, but more than a trashy footnote: sharp, strange, and unsettlingly relevant.