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Released by: Jef Films/Subtance
Released on: 12/2/2003
Director: Stephen Carpenter, Jeffrey Obrow
Cast: Laura Lapinski, Stephen Sachs, David Snow, Pamela Holland, Kay Beth, Jimmy Betz, Dennis Ely
Year: 1981
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The Movie:
Laura Lapinski plays Joanne, a college student who is staying on for a few weeks in the dorm to, along with a few other students, get it cleared out so that it can be renovated and rebuilt. Joanne kisses her boyfriend goodbye and sets about organizing the team of students to get as much work done as they can as they're under a tight deadline.
Soon after all the students are cleared out, Joanne is left with only three accomplices - Craig (Stephen Sachs), Brian (David Snow) and Patty (Pamela Holland). Originally Debbie was going to help out, but her parents show up to take her home when a relative takes ill. Or at least, that's what the other kids think. In reality Debbie (Daphne Zuniga of Spaceballs) and her parents have been beaten to death with a spiked baseball bat. There's also a local janitor type wandering around the premises as well. With everyone else gone, the dorm is nice and empty and without anyone around to turn on the lights, it's quite dark as well.
Anyway, as our motley crew sets about their tasks, Joanne arranges for a local scrap dealer to buy some of the desks that they're clearing out of the dorm. He takes a shining to Joanne and flirts with her a bit, but she leaves the scene and heads back to safety only to find out that one of the weirder students, John Hemmit (Woody Roll), hasn't vacated the premises as instructed and appears to be running around causing problems.
Eventually the handyman ends up dead, killed by having the back of his head drilled into by his own power drill and the kids being to suspect that Hemmit is the one behind the killings. They call the police in hopes that they'll be able to stop him, but things or course go wrong and don't end up as planned.
Also known as The Dorm That Dripped Blood and Death Dorm (both of which are better names), Pranks has a couple of good kill scenes in it but very little actual suspense. The ending is rather unpredictable and grim which makes it interesting but it's kind of hard to care about the characters as they're never really developed much.
Overall if you're a slasher fan you'll probably enjoy the movie for what it is, but if you're looking for serious horror, real honest scares and intriguing ideas, you can sure do a lot better.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The fullframe presentation has obviously come from a VHS tape of some sort. It's very difficult to tell what's happening in some of the darker scenes. Part of this may be due to the original lighting used when shooting the film but most of it is because this transfer is crap. It's fuzzy, way too soft looking in most scenes, and devoid of almost all color. I'm not sure if the fullframe presentation is correct or not but compositions don't seem to be too affected if there was any cropping. Too bad the overall visual quality is lousy.
The Dolby Digital soundtrack is presented in English as it was recorded. Background hiss is constant and everything sounds rather flat and muddy. Dialogue is audible and rarely overshadowed by the music, but it's hardly remarkable and is, in fact, barely adequate.
This release is barebones.
The Final Word:
Pranks isn't a great movie but it's an entertaining little slasher with some good kill scenes that work in its favor, though the dubious quality of this release leaves a lot to be desired in the audio/video departments. All in all, it's a pretty crappy release and the film deserves better.