SanEat
A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."
Griff Lees
Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
Ella-May O'Brien
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
Coventry
In the early 1980s, making a teen slasher movie solely intended for distribution via cable television was either a very courageous undertaking or a very ignorant one. If you ask me, it was a very ignorant one because 80s slashers could only distinguish themselves from the massive competition in two areas, namely the depiction of nasty gore (various & ingenious methods for killing dumb teenagers) and explicit sleaze (beauties showering or having premarital sex moments before getting killed). Being a TV-movie, "Deadly Lessons" couldn't feature any of these two sub-genre trademarks and the consequences are irreversible now. Today, practically all contemporary slasher movies have received fancy DVD-releases and often enjoy massive cult reputations even though many of them downright suck, whereas "Deadly Lessons" is entirely forgotten and obscure. Numerous TV thrillers and horror movies from the 70s decade are still around and popular, however, but that's because they often benefited from an exceptionally great screenplay or a uniquely suspenseful atmosphere. Apart from being blood-free and sleaze-free, "Deadly Lessons" also has the bad luck of being very mundane, dullish and unremarkable from all possible viewpoints. The setting, pacing, story and denouement are standard slasher material. It's not worse, but certainly not any better than the rest of the 80s slashers, but at least all the others showcased gruesome murders and gratuitous nudity. In an exclusive all-girls boarding school, one of the students is found drowned in a lake. It looks like an unfortunate accident, but police detective Kemper immediately suspects that she was murdered. He's quickly proven right, as more girls are turning up dead while fear and hysteria are taking over the daily life at school. Prime suspects include the handsome but bizarre stable boy, the obligatory old & creepy janitor, the eccentric French teacher and maybe even the sophisticated but uptight school principal Mrs. Wade. The climax is implausible and far-fetched, but I'm not deducting any points for that since it was also a typical slasher trademark in the eighties. If you have too much free time on your hands, "Deadly Lessons" might still be worth seeking out in case you like horror curiosities, or to see a few stars in their earliest roles, like Bill Paxton, Ally Sheedy and Nancy Cartwright (yes, she who does Bart Simpson's voice)
idontneedyourjunk
A girl goes to boarding school, where the girls start getting murdered, and all the male staff are suspects. Quite possibly the biggest anti-climatic ending I've ever seen in a horror/whodunnit movie.Bill plays a stablehand who is supposed to be the love interest with the main actress (according to the script), but their interaction consists of hanging out for about 10 minutes talking while Bill brushes down the horses, sharing one kiss, then they part forever.Actors include: Donna Reed, famous for the Donna Reed Show (if you didn't watch TV in the 50s, you probably don't know it) Ally Sheedy, (most famous from The Breakfast Club) who played a serial killer in the highly-recommended sitcom Psych and was most recently in X-Men: Apocalypse.Larry Wilcox, who co-starred in CHiPS, he also plays a cop in this movie Nancy Cartwright, who became famous for voicing many, many cartoons, including Chuckie from Rugrats, and Bart from The Simpsons TLDR; silly movie. give it a miss.
cultfilmfreaksdotcom
There's a hint of cinematic exploitation in this made for TV movie about a boarding school full of pretty rich girls stalked by a phantom killer. Enter Diane Franklin as the new girl, taking everything in with a naïve, vulnerable expression and meeting each character along with the audience. There's Ally Sheedy as a rich girl and a host of others, including Bart Simpson's voice Nancy Cartwright, most getting picked off by a mysterious killer within the Southern plantation style campus.The mystery aspect works good – it's hard to tell who the culprit might be. Perhaps Bill Paxton as a seemingly kindhearted horse-trainer or the classy French teacher. Our only hope in stopping the killings, which occur mostly off screen (if you don't jot down each victim's names you'll forget who dies or lives), is Larry Wilcox as a local plainclothes investigator with a chip on his shoulder and a particular dislike for pompous school owner Donna Reed.An intriguing body count premise where the spoiled beauties, like in any horror film template, are put through the ringer. And the "who done it" finale turns out somewhat creative.For More Reviews: www.cultfilmfreak.com
mancalleddog1
It's great to see at least a few posts on this good little t.v. slasher. I still pull out my old VHS of the NBC premiere just to see what television was like especially considering the current, sad state of the tube now where commercial blurbs are at the bottom, top and sides of squashed, mashed and castrated film & program credits and huge bylines slapped across the screen to remind you of what you are watching! Well, I can't really add to what's been said about this film except that it got some great play time on TBS in the late '80s and in an interview shortly before she died, Donna Reed lambasted the film as 'very cheap and on the sleazy side'! Nothing of the sort, I actually double featured this with Wes Craven's Scream for a couple of friends of mine and they really got into it. When will tele-flicks like this get their due?
