Javelin throws of Missed Opportunities: Fatal Games (1984)

Fatal Games (AKA "The Killing Touch", "Olympic Nightmare") (1984)
Rating:**
Starring: Sally Kirkland, Lynn Banashek and Sean Masterson

As my curiosity killed my 99th cat, I find myself in a sense of uncertain awe from how cheesy this sports-themed 80s slasher is.

The athletes of Falcon Academy of Athletics are training to compete in the Regionals but they soon realize that the competition is the least of their worries when someone in a black track suit and hoodie is making their way through them, literally, with a javelin.

It has the makings of a cheesy classic but the lack of an engagingly solid plot meant Fatal Games (1984) is really no more than a routine workout itself as repeated patterns of these teens training, procrastinating and/or carnally exploring one another before being slayed, almost in that order, fill up the entire running time. This couldn't be all bad if these scenes were anything interesting but I wouldn't count on that. Not with the clumsy dialogue going toe-to-toe with too many character moments that builds little to nothing as a story.

Worse even is that the murders are technically routine as well since all of them were javelin kills with zero effects and horrid lighting, making most of them hard to make out. But thankfully, despite Fatal Games (1984) having missed a lot of opportunities, the film still is a cheesefest of fairly fun-tastic proportions; it did feature a fair amount of nudity with one particular scene having a bare-naked girl running around empty hallways while a javelin-wielding killer pursues. There's actually a lot of chase scenes in this flick, all of it inside the campus and no victim, not even the disabled, is excused from legging it for their lives.

A silly twist would soon come in the end, one that would have been a controversial revelation for what it is suggesting, though the weird approach done just made it less shocking and more odd, nearly to the extent that it's too hammy and comical to be taken seriously, but halfway entertaining at the least.

So concludes another run-in-the-mill sports horror. Fatal Games (1984) may hold no surprises or creativity but it still made a name for itself as a hammy guilty pleasure. Recommendable? Only to cheese fans.

Bodycount:
1 female impaled with a javelin
1 female impaled with a javelin
1 male impaled with a javelin
1 female impaled on the groin with a javelin
1 male impaled with a javelin
1 female falls unto a sports trophy, impaled
Total: 6