Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

April Fool's Day Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson March 17, 2020

I can remember browsing the aisles of my local video store and always became intrigued when I came across the VHS front cover of Paramount's April Fool's Day. The image of a skinny young woman with a long pony tail in the shape of a hangman's noose raising a champagne glass with her right hand and hiding a butcher's knife behind her back with the other hand roused my interest. In front of her are a bunch of jovial college students ready for a seemingly nonviolent party. "A female slasher film" is what I imagined. "More terrifying than Halloween, deadlier than Friday the 13th" is what the tagline reads to Jeff Roven's novelization to Danilo Bach's screenplay. Actually, April Fool's Day is more of a critique and commentary on the slasher genre than it is a gore-infested romp.

Vassar College coed Muffy St. John (Deborah Foreman) is acting as hostess to an April Fool's weekend getaway at her family's summer mansion off the coast of Hyannis. She's invited eight of her friends to stay at this palatial estate. Straitlaced Kit (Amy Steel); her serious boyfriend, Rob (Ken Olandt); jokester Arch (Thom­as F. Wilson), his pranking friend and St. John's distant cousin, Skip (Griffin O’Neal); Chaz (Clayton Rohner), the outgoing videographer; preppy Hal (Jay Baker); sexpot Nikki (Deborah Goodrich); and restless Nan (Leah King Pisent). The group's trip gets off to a dismal start when a young ferryman goes overboard and is sandwiched between the narrowboat and the pilings at the island. A speedboat takes the victim to a local hospital, his face scarred with lacerations. The friends make it to the St. John's summer home where Muffy has plans of fun and mayhem for them. Each is a victim of an innocuous practical joke: a whoopee cushion, leaking wine glass, exploding cigar, and spraying faucet. But when Skip makes a late-night trek to the boathouse, things take on a more sinister turn. His friends can't find him the next day and soon others begin to disappear. Is the island being stalked by a serial killer?

All gathered around for a candle-lit dinner.

Since Frank Mancuso Jr. had produced Friday the 13th: Parts III-V in the last four years, there was a built-in expectation that when he was also listed as a producer of April Fool's Day, this also would follow in the same vein of bloody terror on screen. But director Fred Walton wisely eschews going for a lot of gore, opting instead for "quick kills" and sharp cutaways. The St. John's estate nestled out in the woods and next to a lake kind of make it a variant of the chalets at Camp Crystal Lake. But April Fool's Day would have been more self-reflexive and successful at what it's trying to deconstruct had it consistently invoked the stylistic devices of the Friday series and other horror pictures of the era. I kept waiting for the prowling camera, subjective POV shots, and sound of the breathy killer. The Scream and Urban Legend films later lampooned these techniques but De Palma did something ingenious five years prior to April Fool's Day in the opening to Blow Out. He not only spoofs himself but also Psycho (1960), Halloween (1978), and Friday the 13th (1980) when he shows an intruder prey on a coed's dorm and attack a woman in the shower. De Palma was using the "film-within-a-film" pattern here to demonstrate a schlocky B-horror movie that his sound engineer protagonist is working on. The point is while April Fool's Day is a pretty smart and amusing horror thriller, it plays things a little too safe and could have pushed the envelope further.

In addition to a misleading marketing campaign on Paramount's part, bad reviews also diminished the success of April Fool's Day. (It grossed just under $13 million at the domestic box office.) Michael H. Price of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is one of the few critics who got what Walton and Mancuso were trying to achieve: "[Mancuso] has delivered a picture that generates profound shocks in a context of strong parodic humor, competent-to-superior acting and a well-written string of sur­prise developments. Subtle departure from formula is the clincher." The controversial ending, which I won't reveal, was frowned upon by several reviewers. The McClatchy News Service's George Williams lamented that the ending "gets my vote as the most preten­tious ever to come out of Holly­wood. You’ll never walk out of a theater with less satisfaction." There were reportedly three different endings. Deborah Goodrich discusses on this Scream Factory disc an additional thirty-minute act that was supposed to follow the denouement but that was cut in favor of a much shorter ending that was filmed after principal photography concluded.

April Fool's Day Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

April Fool's Day arrives on North American Blu-ray for the first time courtesy of Scream Factory on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50 which comes with a slipcover and new artwork by Yannick Bouchard. The Australian edition that Shock released last fall present the credits in the film's original 2.35:1 aspect ratio but the remainder of the picture is cropped to 1.78:1. Thankfully, Scream has maintained the native 2.35:1 from the opening credits through the end. The "home movie" footage shown at the very beginning (see Screenshot #20) is windowboxed and shot with a Panaflex camera equipped with a zoom lens. The print is derived from an older 2K scan but looks very clean with well-saturated colors. I didn't notice any aliasing during the daytime scenes, which was present on the DVD. Film critic Terry Lawson, then writing for the Journal (OH) Herald, observed that cinematographer Charles Minsky has shot it in "muted browns and golds instead of utilizing the standard Polaroid look." The scenes in Victo­ria, B.C. where it was filmed (same locales as Five Easy Pieces) maintain that look. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Goldstein describes the movie's lighting as "delight­fully inventive, especially the gauzy, eerily illuminated look of Muffy's sprawling manor." This description applies to the outdoor nighttime shots and DP Minsky states in a new interview on the disc that he added smoke. Scream has encoded the feature with a mean video bitrate of 36000 kbps.

The 89-minute movie receives twelve chapter selections, three less than Paramount's 2002 DVD.

April Fool's Day Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Scream supplies a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround remix (2979 kbps, 24-bit) and a DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono track (1611 kbps, 24-bit). I focused mainly on the 2.0 mix and found a variance in the dialogue levels. The pitch of spoken words fluctuates and I found myself turning the volume up more often than not. If you have similar inconsistencies on your sound system, I'd recommend switching to the 5.1 track. Nature sounds provide occasional ambience and are dispersed fairly well. Composer Charles Bernstein's score fares a little better. A light theremin introduces the main (and recurring) thematic motif. Bernstein incorporates electronic sounds and childlike melody to go with Muffy's jack-in-the-box toy. There's also suspense cues that closely mirror Harry Manfredini's scores. Varèse Sarabande released a vinyl album containing a half hour of Bernstein's score back in 1986. Twenty-nine years later, the soundtrack label put out a limited edition CD for only one month as part of its LP to CD subscription series. Remaining copies are very scarce.

The optional English SDH identify the speaker and do a good job of transcribing the dialogue.

April Fool's Day Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The front cover of Paramount DVD case had the dreaded "Widescreen Collection" banner, implying that it'd likely be a complete bare bones (which it was). Scream has recorded five new interviews:

• NEW Horror with A Twist: Fred Walton on APRIL FOOL'S DAY; Part I (23:58, 1080p) - in lieu of the director recording a commentary, Scream has filmed a recent interview with Walton. In this first part, he remembers both the American and international films he grew up watching, attending Denison University and befriending writer Steve Feke, directing his first short, The Sitter (1977), and developing that into a full feature with When a Stranger Calls (1979), his first big Hollywood splash. In English, not subtitled.

• NEW Horror with A Twist: Fred Walton on APRIL FOOL'S DAY; Part II (23:02, 1080p) - Walton picks up talking about the wrestling film, Hadley's Rebellion (1983), his first meeting with Griffin O'Neal, directing the episode, "An Unlocked Window," for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and his initial impressions of being tapped to direct April Fool's Day. The rest of the interview covers his collaboration with producer Frank Mancuso Jr., relationship with various actors, and the movie's legacy. In English, not subtitled.

• NEW Well of Lies: Deborah Goodrich Royce on APRIL FOOL'S DAY (16:32, 1080p) - Royce reminisces about her tap-dancing and theater work, appearing in some commercials, and early film work. She talks about doing the famous scene in the well, the original extended ending, and the script for a sequel she was offered. In English, not subtitled.

• NEW Looking Forward to Dessert: Clayton Rohner on APRIL FOOL'S DAY (17:15, 1080p) - Rohner has a great story about how his family inherited a house owned by Agnes Moorehead. He recall this movie's shoot, cut scenes, and what he brought to the character of Chaz. In English, not subtitled.

• NEW Bloody Unforgettable: Composer Charles Bernstein on APRIL FOOL'S DAY (26:00, 1080p) - Bernstein speaks about being an unlikely composer for horror, scoring for documentary, his partnership with Wes Craven, and his approach to scoring April Fool's Day. In English, not subtitled.

• NEW The Eye of Deception: Charles Minsky on APRIL FOOL'S DAY (17:23, 1080p) - Minsky spends the first eleven minutes talking about his craft and then only six on April Fool's Day. He touches on the technical aspects of cinematography, including which cameras he utilized on Walton's film. In English, not subtitled.

• Theatrical Trailer (1:42, upconverted to 1080p) - a full-frame original trailer for April Fool's Day that didn't appear on the DVD.

• Original TV Spots (1:35, upconverted to 1080p) - three spots culled from an old videocassette.

April Fool's Day Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I was waiting to see April Fool's Day after all these years and consider it an entertaining and funny takeoff of the slasher film that could have been bolder in its execution. Scream Factory has put together a nice Collector's Edition with an attractive transfer and inconsistent lossless audio. The label includes a handful of new interviews that offer worthwhile tidbits here and there but substantively are not of the same standard as many of their other releases. I thought that there could have been some follow-up questions asked of Fred Walton, including his last feature, The Rosary Murders (1987), and the reason why he left Hollywood shortly thereafter. It would have been better if Scream had been able to get interviews with other actors in this ensemble horror-mystery. Still, a SOLID RECOMMENDATION for April Fool's Day.