Night School

Night School is a 1981 horror-mystery set in Boston, where a helmeted killer dressed in black leather isbeheading women and disposing of the heads in nearby water. Detective Judd Austin is assigned to the case, and as more victims turn up, the investigation centres on a group of students who attended the same evening anthropology classes at Wendell College. Their professor, Vincent Millett, is an expert on headhunting cultures, and his close links to the dead women, along with the ritual manner of the killings, draw suspicion towards him and those around him, including his assistant Eleanor Adjai.

The film was directed by Ken Hughes, the seventh of the seven features he made, arriving after Sextette. Leonard Mann plays Lieutenant Judd Austin, with Rachel Ward as Eleanor Adjai, Drew Snyder as Vincent Millett and Joseph R. Sicari, Nicholas Cairis and Karen MacDonald among the supporting cast. Ruth Avergon wrote the screenplay and produced alongside Larry Babb, and the picture was made by Lorimar with Paramount involved in its distribution.

Night School runs eighty-eight minutes and took about one million dollars worldwide. It has a rating of 5.7 out of 10 on IMDb from roughly 3,700 votes, and the same 5.7 on TMDB, based on a much smaller sample of around eighty votes.