Review by Jonathan Weichsel, MoreHorror.com
I gave Jared Lee Masters’ film Slink a rave review over at Film Radar earlier this year. That film is a tight little thriller that manages to be funny, sexy, and creepy all at the same time. After watching Teacher’s Day, I can safely say that I am a fan of Jared Lee Master’s work. But, I do like Slink a little better.
"Teacher’s Day" is Jared Lee Masters’ take on the slasher. After a teacher is fired for connecting with one of his female students on Facebook, he murders the dean, and then goes to the house of the female student, where there is a sleepover party taking place. The rest of the film is a kind of a take on Slumber Party Massacre, where the young women are killed off one by one by the angry teacher.
Like Slink, Teachers' Day is in its heart a sexploitation film, and Jared Lee Masters has a clear vision of what he finds sexy. Throughout the film we are treated to incredibly cute high school age girls who prance around in their underwear, roll around in bed, giggle, talk dirty, and act naughty. The color scheme of the film itself, with its virginal whites and girlish pinks, gives away what Masters is going for sex-wise.
Watching cute girl after cute girl partying in her underwear has a kind of a hallucinatory effect on the male mind, but after awhile the male viewer can’t ignore the major problem with Teachers' Day, which is that there is a lot of foreplay with no payoff.
Teachers' Day is a slasher, so following the rules of that genre the payoff, or perhaps release is a better word, should come from the killing scenes, but if that were to be the case here, the killings would have to either be over-the-top violent like in The Gore-Gore Girls, or sexualized like in Blood on Black Lace. As it is, the killings lack any kind of stylization or sense of thematic purpose, which is especially glaring when compared to the very stylized and purposeful scenes of young women in their underwear.
Perhaps comparing Jared Lee Masters to Herschel Gordon Lewis and Mario Bava isn’t fair, but I really think the director has it in him to become as great as those titans of exploitation.
Teachers' Day has its sense of humor firmly intact. The hot guy who can’t get laid because he’s such an asshole is an especially funny character, and the girlish banter has a lot of charm to it. Despite any minor complaints I may have, Teachers' Day is an incredibly fun film, and enjoyable to watch. Jared Lee Masters has a real eye for beauty, and the girls are all totally hot, which is important in any Sexploitation film. Masters’ films have a unique look to them that is immediately recognizable. He is definitely a director whose career I will be following.