"April Fool’s Day was conceived as a parody of the genre from the very beginning, hence, April Fool’s Day instead of some other holiday. I only tried to make what I thought would be a scary movie; it just didn't happen to involve any gore or any onscreen violence. I have always believed that the anticipation of violence, the threat of violence, is usually much more frightening than the act of violence itself. You can rarely beat the audience’s imagination."
January 1, 1970
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/April_Fool's_Day_(1986_film)