A Philly cheese slasher.
BACKGROUND
Philadelphia-based filmmaker John P. Finegan was already a successful producer of commercials and industrial films for Center City Video when he decided to make his feature directorial debut – and there was never any question what the genre of his debut feature was going to be. Finegan told Cinefantastique that he had been a fan of horror films since attending double feature Saturday matinees as a kid in the 1960s. His all-time favorite horror movie was the original The Thing (a.k.a. The Thing from Another World), a Howard Hawks production directed by Christian Nyby. So when he made his first movie, he made sure to use a Mitchell BNC 35mm camera, the same as Hawks would use.
As he was heading into production, Finegan was calling his debut movie The Portrait. He raised the $87,000 budget independently, getting contributions from family and friends, and gathered a cast and crew that agreed to work for deferred payment. Among the crew were an assistant director, a camera operator, and an editor who had recently graduated from the film program at NYU.
Unlike a lot of inexperienced filmmakers, Finegan planned his shoot out meticulously, breaking the screenplay, which he crafted with Katie Keating and Pierce J. Keating, down into almost 800 storyboards that he followed during the 26 day filming schedule.
Few viewers who have seen the finished film have ever said that Finegan delivered something great with it, but it’s good to hear that he took the project seriously and went into it prepared. Or as prepared as a first-time filmmaker can be.
His debut didn’t pave the way for Finegan to have much of a filmmaking career, but at least he was able to make (as a producer and writer; he never did direct another movie) the two other movies he told Cinefantastique he had in development.
SETTING
The movie that ended up with the title Girls School Screamers was shot almost entirely within the confines of a mansion that stood in the Chestnut Hill area of Philadelphia. In the film, that mansion is the Welles estate, formerly the home of the wealthy recluse Tyler Welles. Back in 1939, Welles’ niece Jennifer died in the home in a tragic fall and the locals believe the place is haunted by her ghost – but that doesn’t make the property any less appealing to the nuns who work at the Trinity School for Girls when Tyler Welles bequeaths his entire physical estate to the them. According to his Will, the grounds and mansion are valued at 3.5 million, and the contents of the house are worth more than $500,000. That’s not even counting his collection of art and antiques, which could fetch around $5 million in auction. Seven senior students at the school, the last group to receive the Tyler Welles Award for Academic Achievement, are tasked with spending four days cataloguing the Welles art collection before the estate goes up for auction... and as those four days go on, terrible things start to happen.
Finegan and his crew made the most of their shooting location, which gave them a whole lot of rooms to film in, and the cinematographer did a fine job capturing it on film, considering that he only had seven lights to put around the set. We get plenty of scenes of the girls hanging out in or wandering through various rooms in the mansion, and there’s also a sequence that ventures out into the swamp near the house.
The location really doesn’t look all that impressive, but it’s a fine setting for some murder and mayhem.
KILLER
This is a movie that requires some patience to get through, because the murders don’t start until we’re almost 50 minutes into the 85 minute running time. Up to that point, we’re just following the girls into and around the mansion as Finegan builds up the mystery of what happened to Jennifer in this place. A journal is found that gives the back story: In 1939, Jennifer’s parents were killed in a plane crash and the girl, a student at Trinity School for Girls who was considering joining a convent, was invited to spend the summer with an uncle she had never met before. Uncle Tyler. Despite his age, the scar on his face, and the fact that they were blood relatives, Jennifer fell for her uncle, who fell for her at the same time. It seemed like they were going to begin an intimate relationship... but whatever happened between them, it ended with her tragic death.
Finegan really wanted to get viewers invested in the mystery of what happened to Jennifer and who’s committing the murders. When the murders begin, the identity of the killer is concealed in darkness; for the first couple of kills, we only see the weapon. The things get weird. A monstrous arm grabs someone in the swamp. Cars drive without keys in the ignition and with no one at the wheel. We’re dealing with some serious supernatural forces here.
As the end credits draw near, it’s revealed that the spirit of Tyler Welles (Charles Braun) has been committing the murders, his goal being to continue his relationship with his niece... or at least her look-alike.
FINAL GIRL
Mollie O’Mara plays double duty in the movie, taking on the role of Catholic schoolgirl Jackie and, in flashbacks (and spirit form), Jennifer Welles. Jackie is the smarter, more serious and responsible one among the group of girls who have come to the Welles mansion, so it’s clear from early on that’s she’s going to be our final girl. This becomes even more obvious when she realizes she bears an eerie resemblance to Jennifer Welles, a realization that comes about when a painting that looks to be of her is discovered in the mansion’s living room. (This is why the original title was The Portrait.)
Jackie is your typical final girl, but she’s not a very interesting one – which just means that she fits right in here, as none of the characters in the movie are particularly interesting. She does get sidelined by a spirit in the climactic moments, but since that spirit looks just like her, O’Mara still got to take care of business in the end. She did a serviceable job; her Jackie and her Jennifer are both just fine. O’Mara wasn’t destined for stardom, but she got some more acting jobs after this, and apparently went on to become a playwright.
VICTIMS
As stated, none of the characters in this movie are particularly interesting. Working under the supervision of the elderly Sister Urban (Vera Gallagher), who knew Jennifer Welles back in the day, the girls who catalogue the Welles art collection alongside Jackie are Elizabeth (Sharon Christopher), Kate (Mari Butler), Karen (Beth O’Malley), Susan (Karen Krevitz), Adelle (Marcia Hinton), and Rosemary (Monica Antonucci). Some of these characters do nothing to stand out from the pack – and honestly, even after multiple viewings of the movie, there are still a couple of girls where it’d be difficult for me to tell you which one is which.
Elizabeth stands out the most because she’s the horny wild girl, the type who will suggest that the girls hold a séance so they can communicate with the spirit of Jennifer Welles. Of course, that doesn’t go well. Rosemary also stands out a little because she and Elizabeth are always butting heads. And then you have Adelle, the tough-talking non-white girl who wisely warns the others to stay away from “voodoo shit.”
Even though a lot of the movie involves these girls talking to each other, they don’t make much of an impression.
Another character who gets mixed up in the action is Jackie’s boyfriend Paul, played by Peter Cosimano, who shows up at the mansion after he does some investigating of his own and finds out about the Welles family history.
DEATHS
There is a decent body count in this one, with deaths including a meat cleaver to the mouth, a hook in the back, a drowning, a person being run over with a car, a pitchfork impalement, an eye gouging, and an electrocution that’s so intense (and the special effects makeup is so over-the-top), the burnt corpse of the victim is left looking more like a snake monster than a fried human being.
Some of the deaths were enhanced with gore effects that were shot in post-production by the distributor, but only body doubles were required for most of these moments. Monica Antonucci, the actress who played Rosemary, is reportedly the only cast member who was actually brought back to work on the enhanced violence insert shot for her death scene.
The movie begins with a scene where a young boy is dared to enter the Welles mansion and gets scared witless by the sight of a ghostly Jennifer, who has worms crawling in her melting skin. I don’t know, but I suspect this was another moment that was added by the distributor, because the girls from Trinity don’t have that sort of trouble with the spirit of Jennifer when they enter the house, and Jennifer never appears like that again.
CLICHÉS
As usual, we have plenty of clichés at work in this film. There’s the smart and responsible final girl, the tough-talking non-white girl, the wild girl, the mysterious back story that is gradually revealed as the film plays out, and the set-up of a group of young people gathering in one location and getting killed off one-by-one. The idea of the final girl getting into trouble because she happens to resemble someone the villain had a fascination with is also a cliché.
And "Let's have a séance!" scenes are a major cliché.
Behind the scenes, an independent film getting picked up by a distributor that proceeds to change the title, shoot new footage, and rework the movie also happens quite often, for better or worse.
POSTMORTEM
Finegan had a list of distributors he thought might be interested in his movie, and when The Portrait was complete, he sent out VHS copies to these potential distributors. It only took four days for him to hear back from one of them: Troma head Lloyd Kaufman gave him a call to let him know that Troma was interested in sending his movie out into the world. The deal was made, and Troma went on to turn The Portrait into Girls School Screamers before releasing it in 1986, two years after Finegan shot it.
Girls School Screamers has never been an especially popular horror movie, but you might here the title here and there, and it got some play on The Movie Channel. In fact, when drive-in critic / movie host Joe Bob Briggs presented a screening of the movie in August of 1987, he said that The Movie Channel was airing it again due to “popular demand.” So it must have gone over quite well with the viewers who subscribed to that premium cable channel.
Whatever success Girls School Screamers had paved the way for Finegan to be able to make the two movies he told Cinefantastique he wanted to make: Blades, “about a possessed lawnmower fom Hell which terrorizes residents at a posh country club,” and Skirmish, “based on the friendly war game of the same name.” Blades was released in 1988, Skirmish was retitled All’s Fair and released in 1989... and that was the last that the movie world ever heard of John P. Finegan. He never made another movie, but at least he got to make three before fading away.
Girls School Screamers isn’t great, but it has its charms, and fans of slashers and haunted house movies might get some enjoyment out of it.
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