April: Pranks Gone Wrong
This month, we’ll get to watch other people’s pranks go wrong. And, lucky us, there are a whopping FIVE Thursdays in April, meaning we get an extra week of this month’s theme... hopefully our luck doesn’t run out.
Have you ever planned an elaborate April Fool’s Day prank only to have everything go terribly wrong, resulting in the accidental murder of your friend that you had to try and cover up so you wouldn’t end up spending the rest of your life in prison and you’re still on the run, under a fake name, hoping against hope that your past never catches up to you?
Me neither.
But this month, we’ll get to watch other people’s pranks go wrong. And, lucky us, there are a whopping FIVE Thursdays in April, meaning we get an extra week of this month’s theme... hopefully our luck doesn’t run out.
First up, on April Fools herself, we’ll be watching the 1986 classic, “April Fool’s Day.” A group of college students celebrating a bacchanalian Spring Break fête at their wealthy friend’s island estate discover Muffy (St. John, nonetheless) has a passion for pranks. But when party-goers start turning up dead, one has to wonder, does Muffy also have a penchant for murder.... or is there someone else on the island? Directed by Fred Walton, this one got a perfectly middling 52% on Rotten Tomatoes.
April 8th brings us together to scare Julie. In “Let’s Scare Julie,” the antagonists (presumably) have clearly never watched any sort of scary movie, and they’ve decided to pull pranks on a reclusive girl (I bet she’d be pretty if she just took off those glasses, am I right?) who lives in an allegedly haunted house. Going against the entirety of horror-film-survivalist canon, these idiots will probably all be taken out, one by one, in gruesome ways. This 2019 film by director Jud Cremata earned a 45% on Rotten Tomatoes.
On April 15th, we’ll celebrate Tax Day by watching “Hell Night.” This 1981 classic slasher film by director Tom DeSimone got a 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. The Google blurb for this one is short and sweet - presumably, we’ll watch some Sorority and Fraternity pledges be systematically slaughtered in a haunted house. And here I thought Hell Week referred to semester finals’ weeks.... what a nerd.
“Brotherhood” on April 22 will shed some light on another version of Greek Week - pledge initiations. When the tasks go against your moral compass, who do you stay loyal to: your fraternity brothers, to whom you swore an undying oath of faithfulness for four drunken years of undergrad, or.... your eternal soul? We’ll find out in this 2010 film directed by Will Canon that received a surprising 83% on Rotten Tomatoes (our highest rated film for the month).
And finally, we’ll finish out these pranks-gone-wrong with one that scored a whopping 32% on Rotten Tomatoes (hey, we’ve watched worse, and we’re still here, right): “Scare Campaign” on April 29th. A prank TV show who has enjoyed five seasons of success with audiences suddenly finds themselves up against a web series competitor. I don’t know anything else about this movie, but I’m going to take a stab at it and guess the web series is probably showing real murders and torture, and the prank TV show just doesn’t have the guts (have they been spilled?) to up their ante. Directed by Cameron Caines and Colin Caines, this movie was released in 2016.
Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash