The Stay Awake, Nubile High School Girls in Trouble...

...from the demon ghost of a serial killer! From South Africa comes a demon/slasher film with the exploitative qualities of the slasher genre.  When in doubt, set the film in an all girls school in which every student is a babe.  Throw in some idiot hunk boyfriends, and we have a can't miss horror yarn. Mixing gratuitous shower action, gratuitous aerobic action, and gratuitous locker room action, with some gore and neat kills, we take a look at 1988's "The Stay Awake."

William James Brown (Lindsay Reardon) is executed for the assault, rape, and murder of 11 women. He taunts his executioners and vows that he will be back to carry out the will of the Prince of Darkness.  Return, he does.  An all girls school in Europe is having a stay awake to raise money (how this raises money is unclear and unimportant).  Trish (Shirley Jane Walton) is a beautiful science teacher who will chaperone this event.  As we met our girls, Samantha (Tanya Gordon), clad in a shiny tight aerobics outfit, is putting her classmates through a work-out.  During this elongated aerobic routine, the spirit of Brown enters the school.

Uh oh....four boys plan to crash the stay awake and have pre-marital sex with the girls.  This won't go well, as Brown has manifested as a monster and rips these horny invaders to shreds.  Sometimes appearing as a weird glowing eyed demon, and sometimes as a tentacled beast, Brown abducts the beauties one by one.  He is putting together a satanic harem.  As Trish realizes what is going on, she and three surviving girls begin fighting back.  With attitude, and her science knowledge, Trish begins taunting Brown.  Brown looks at Trish as a prize waiting to be won.  Can our sultry chaperone fend off the satanic spirit that has invaded the stay awake? Do the girls have any virtue left to protect?

Perhaps nothing new here, but an attractive cast and some nice kills are worth watching. Written and directed by John Bernard, "The Stay Awake" is the kind of exploitation/slasher film that never grows old.  Available on YouTube, enjoy "The Stay Awake." This is surely a more interesting picture than Hollywood's recent Christmas season films.