After about five minutes of rubbing his chin, Albert Simmons agreed to my solution to his Snickers Almond conundrum. I would buy one from the vending machine, dislodging his in the process. By the time we made it to the vending machine on the third floor of the hospital, we saw a little kid wearing a beanie cap walk right past us, a Snickers Almond in each hand. Albert ran over to the machine and screamed. When I caught up to him, I saw his horror. There were no more Snickers Almond bars.

— To be continued. 

Tonight’s movie Is 1984’s Fatal Games from director Michael Elliot. I picked this movie because it’s been compared to last week’s slasher movie, 1981’s Graduation Day. I have to give credit to the people behind Fatal Games. Yes, you ripped off the idea of aspiring Olympians getting slaughtered in a high school, but you also beat the odds at making a slasher movie somehow worse than 1981’s Graduation Day.

Let’s compare the posters. Graduation Day features a reflection of a shocked young woman in a mirror getting shattered with an axe. Yes, that’s intriguing. It makes you wonder who the killer is and why the killer keeps killing teens. The Fatal Games poster features the outline of the killer in some kind of hoodie and fencing mask with the Olympic hopefuls tucked inside the outline.

The killer is holding some kind of weapon. Not that we get a clear idea what that weapon is. It could be a stick for all we know.

It turns out it’s a javelin!

There are many javelin slayings in this movie. There’s one scene of a naked girl running through the school at night, begging for help before she gets impaled. Another young woman is swimming at night and gets impaled when the killer flings the javelin up from the bottom of the pool. You’d think the killer would be the young javelin thrower getting abused by the coach, but that hapless hopeful himself gets impaled early on.

I didn’t care for the coach in this one. His name is Coach Jack Webber played by Christopher Mankiewicz. Like Christopher George, he’s yelling at his athletes and being a jerk , but I got the feeling Christopher George actually wanted his athletes to succeed while Coach Webber just runs his students down because he failed as an Olympic hopeful when he was a young man. And he doesn’t get killed either. I wanted the teachers to get slaughtered in this like the campus doctor who kept pumping the athletes full of hormones.

This movie is not without a humorous moment. While training, a young gymnast named Frank (Michael O’Leary) breaks his leg. Later, while investigating the disappearance of his girlfriend at the high school in the middle of the night, he discovers the bodies of the murdered students in the lockers. If that wasn’t bad enough, the killer chases him while he’s trying to get away on crutches.You know Frank isn’t going to make it, but it’s still impressive how fast he can go on those crutches. 

Fatal Games is streaming on Tubi, but maybe turn off the TV and go for a stroll in the park tonight.

Just watch out for any flying javelins.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, episode 599, episode 642, episode 643, episode 644, and episode 645) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.