Massacre at Central High was shot in Los Angeles and Malibu over a three-week period in early 1976, all with non-union actors. Many of the outdoor driving scenes including the car explosion were shot at L.A.'s Griffith Park, a frequent film location most famously immortalized in Rebel without a Cause (1955), while the library death scene was shot at Hollywood High School.

Director Rene Daalder was brought on to write and direct the project on the recommendation of director Russ Meyer, who had enlisted him to write the unproduced film Hollywood Tower in 1984. An accomplished technical director with an affinity for music-related projects, he went on to design the legendary "My Way" sequence with Sid Vicious in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980). He has since focused mainly on computer animation and virtual reality creation, though he occasionally directed additional features including Here Is Always Somewhere Else (a 2007 documentary about '70s conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader who vanished at sea), Population: 1 (a 1986 sci-fi musical starring The Screamers), Habitat (a 1997 futuristic fantasy with Balthazar Getty), and Hysteria (a hallucinatory 1998 thriller with Patrick McGoohan and Amanda Plummer).

Derrel Maury was originally cast in the supporting role of ill-fated Rodney, but the part was switched with actor Rex Sikes, who recalled the script as being "corny in places" and noted that the director "was fun to work with. I can't say I understood his vision for this movie, maybe none of us did, but we did what we had to get it done." This also entailed an unusually physical fight scene during which Andrew Stevens accidentally broke Sikes' nose, which remained untreated for the rest of the shoot.

The memorable exploding locker scene was accomplished using a real stuntman tethered to a harness and pulleys which yanked him away from the blast. However, the gas pressure was turned up too high and blew out the lights on the set, an unplanned effect which remains in the finished film.

The film was intended to be a violent, commercial project which, according to uncredited co-producer Bill Lange, was the first film after The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) to use the word "Massacre" in its title.

The premiere of Massacre at Central High was held in August, 1976 at the long-gone Pacific Theater on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Initially released in September, 1976 beginning in New York, Massacre at Central High failed to make a substantial box office impact during its run throughout that year. A subsequent critical reappraisal by Vincent Canby reignited interest in the film, though it had also found a champion during its original play dates in Roger Ebert, who proclaimed it one of his Top 10 Films of the year. A subsequent analysis of the film in Danny Peary's influential Cult Films book and its follow-up, A Guide for the Film Fanatic, ensured its reputation outside of the die-hard horror community.

In Europe the film enjoyed a wide and surprisingly colorful distribution history. In some countries, most notably Italy, it was even reissued under the title Sexy Jeans with several softcore sex "inserts" added using body doubles for the actors-even Robert Carradine. This version is now extremely difficult to see and does not currently exist in an English-language edition.

Despite its cult reputation, Massacre at Central High has been notoriously difficult to see on home video. In the UK it was briefly issued under the title Blackboard Massacre and for several years was the only country to offer a DVD release. In America, it was only on videotape once for an extremely brief period in the early 1980s.

by Nathaniel Thompson

Sources:
Cult Movies, Danny Peary
Internet Movie Database
Horror Yearbook, Interview with Rex Sikes