Class of Nuke ‘Em High is one of Troma’s best. It’s a film that captures their style and humor just as much as if it had been directed by Lloyd Kaufman himself. Which it was. But he was listed as second fiddle to Richard W. Haines. Before he was sucked into Tromaworld, Haines directed and wrote (alongside Michael Cunningham and John Elias Michalakis) Splatter University, a slasher flick.
Shot in 1981 and 1982, but not released until Troma distributed it in 1984, Splatter University tells the story of a killer stalking the halls of a university.
At Bellevue Hospital, a patient kills a doctor and steals his clothes so he can escape. Fast forward a few years, and a female professor at St. Trinian’s College (played by Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, NY), a Catholic institution, is murdered in her classroom one night. Fast forward again, and new graduate scholar Julie Parker (Forbes Riley), is hired by Father Janson (Dick Biel), as her replacement for the coming semester. More killings follow. Julie decides to investigate, putting herself in danger, since no one else, police included, seems to care that the killings are happening. So far, pretty boilerplate stuff. It’s the students at the college that are the true treat.
I haven’t heard a collection of Long Island accents this thick since I was actually out on Long Island. All the cast seems to be drawn from those environs. Keeping track of who they are is pointless, as 
they’re all playing off the same theme, that theme being ‘wiseass Italian.’ They have names like Jimbo, and Looney, and Tony, and Wolf, and we haven’t even gotten to the ladies. It’s the early 1980s and everyone is dressed half like a clown. Denise Texeira is the paragon of outlandish style, with a willow tree’s worth of red curls exploding upwards off of her head.
All the men talk shit to each other and are rude to the women, who can give as good as they get. The dialogue is inane and has nothing to do with the plot, but it’s also the only aspect of the film that feels real and isn’t done by rote. To be clear, I was laughing at and not with.
This being a slasher flick, though, the comedic exploration of Long Island youth stereotypes isn’t what viewers came for. How is the slasher stuff? Restrained. Too restrained, I believe. The low body count isn’t the problem. Plenty of great slashers have been made with less kills than in Splatter University. The problem is that word, ‘splatter,’ in the title. That word carries a lot of weight and obligation with us horror fiends. How dare one put ‘splatter’ in a movie title and not go completely off the hook with the special effects? Sure, this flick had a small budget, but fake blood doesn’t cost that much. This movie has kills and it has some blood, but not nearly enough of the latter. Rant over.
It’s the objective filmmaking stuff that hurts this movie the most. Haines and company had to rush through shooting after Mercy reduced the allowed shooting schedule from two weeks to one week. This is just speculation, but my guess is when the church found out just what kind of movie was being made on their campus, they had second thoughts. This had the bizarre effect of most action taking place in a single hallway of the school. Haines did his best, but having three-quarters of a movie take place in front of room 222 is tough work.
The editing is not that good, either, which is something viewers are not supposed to notice. It feels at times as if necessary transitioning segments were cut out of the film, or were never filmed to begin with. Characters can appear at locations with no purpose viewers were let in on. The original cut delivered in 1981 was also very short, so more footage of student life was shot. This has the effect of feeling like one is watching two different movies. The tone of these scenes is too far different from the rest of the film. The craft of filmmaking is where this movie is at its weakest, and that strains watchability.
Anonymous movies are often anonymous for obvious reasons once one sees them, and such is the case with Splatter University. It falls into the lower half of the Watchability Index, displacing Chain Gang Women at #457.