Overview
April Fool's Day is a 1986 American black comedy mystery slasher film directed by Fred Walton, produced by Frank Mancuso Jr., and starring Thomas F. Wilson, Deborah Foreman, Griffin O'Neal, Amy Steel, Ken Olandt, Deborah Goodrich, and Leah Pinsent. The plot follows a group of college students vacationing during April Fool's Day weekend on an island estate, which is infiltrated by an unknown assailant.
Filmed in British Columbia in 1985, April Fool's Day was released in late March 1986 through Paramount Pictures in conjunction with the April 1 holiday. It received varied responses from film critics, with some commending it for its non-gratuitous violence and plot twists, while others lambasted it for its surprise ending.
A remake of the film was released direct-to-video in 2008.
Plot
On the weekend leading up to April Fools' Day, a group of college friends, consisting of Harvey, Nikki, Rob, Skip, Nan, Chaz, Kit, and Arch, gather to celebrate spring break by spending the weekend at the island mansion of Skip's cousin, Vassar student Muffy St. John. As Muffy prepares details around the house, she finds an old jack-in-the-box and recalls receiving the toy at a childhood birthday party. Her friends, meanwhile, joke around on the pier while awaiting the ferry. En route to the island, as their antics become more boisterous, local deckhand Buck is seriously injured in a gruesome accident.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).