Here at CDSOB, we’ll take it any way we can get it. Today Casey Holmes takes us to school in our Friday Feature, Massacre at Central High. Published November 7, 2025.
Massacre at Central High (1976)
It wasn’t always so easy.
Before algorithms on social media, before YouTube recommendations, before the term “google” unified what it meant to search on the internet, you had to take it any way you could find it. Flyers handed out on real paper, word of mouth, webrings. Older cousins that you always looked up to. Your girlfriend from high school’s older sister who passed it down the line. Your coolest friend and his extended universe of ultra cool friends that were always unspeakably tapped in. You picked it up via cultural osmosis until the day you realized that you had agency and could join in on the journey yourself.
Shortly after high school I would pile into a car with my friends and frequent the Broadway Theatre in Pitman, New Jersey where the perpetually wonderful Exhumed Films would regularly screen on Friday nights. The first time I saw Massacre at Central High was October 17, 2003 playing third as part of a triple feature (that also included Maniac and Nightmare (in a Damaged Brain) and it was a film that left a lingering sense that I had found something. David is the new kid at school and has ties to the bully elite who run the school with authoritarian violence. Witnessing the level of barbarism at play, David realizes that he wants no part of it. After a notorious incident of skinny dipping, the trio in power decide to take matters into their own hands and crush David beneath a car. Once David returns to town after his recovery, a string of mysterious accidents begins to plague the trio and ultimately upsets the balance of power at this otherwise picturesque California school.
Written and directed by Rene Daalder, this 1976 slasher flick has a very strong feeling of early punk subversion (it was even released the same week as the Ramones self-titled debut album). This tale of street justice is messy, angry, devoid of any kind of adult supervision, and speaks to a power balance of class dynamics in an almost thoughtful way. It’s over-the-top bloody, campy, riddled with crass nudity, and a lot of fun. The movie has often been compared to Heathers from 1988 and for good reason. Massacre at Central High doesn’t come close to the refined satire that Heathers did so well, but writer Daniel Waters admits that he had seen a review of the movie in a book about cult movies and may have found something of his own through cultural osmosis.
The last time I was at the Broadway Theater in Pitman was March of 2005 for a “Versus” triple feature (1971’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein, Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, and The Werewolf vs. Vampire Woman). They don’t screen campy movies on film anymore, but I will never forget the incredible value in that Friday night ritual. I’m amazed I could stay up so late, so often.
Some time later I picked up a copy of Massacre at Central High on VHS on eBay for about $50. I had to get a money order, put it in an envelope, and let faith take the wheel. I watched it every chance I got. In 2022 it was, once again, impossible to find so I ordered a newly remastered blu-ray steelbook from Diabolik DVD. I basically paid the same price for it twice in a 20 year span.
As of the time of this writing the movie is streaming, in full, on YouTube. It wasn’t always so easy. 3.5 out of 5 sacs of blood.
—Casey Holmes