Horror Fest Day Two: Return to Horror High

After some very demented children and a haunted house, we returned to find people ready for some hot horror action, which I was happy to provide. We warmed up with The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror V, which remains a fan favorite with The Shinning, Time and Punishment, and Nightmare Cafeteria, but then it was time for some horror action. Or so we thought.

Return to Horror High thinks it's a very clever movie, with its myriad flashbacks and flashforwards, but instead the movie is a heaping hunk of crap disguised as a horror comedy. The promise of George Clooney and Maureen McCormack were dashed after Clooney is killed thereabouts eight minutes into the film, and McCormack only appears during the frame story that has so many plot holes it rivals the movie within a movie for logic gaffes.

Oh right, the story: well, when we jump in, police are investigating a mass killing at Crippen High School, where a low budget film crew was working on a movie based on some actual mass killings at the same school in 1982. Except that this supposedly "abandoned" high school looks like it's ready for classes the next morning. At one point, the writer (the only survivor of the second wave of killings) mentions that the movie was mostly night shoots in a dark school, except that almost all of the movie takes place during the day and outside of the school. Really.

The whole film is classy, finding excuses to get almost every female on camera naked at least once, and then packing every small part with outlandish stereotypes (like the black janitor who wants to make "pussy films" and brags about his ten inch penis) and occasionally kills people in giant litter boxes or by propeller (don't ask). Alex Rocco (voice of Roger Meyers Jr on The Simpsons) appears as the sleazy producer, except that compared to some of these slimeballs, he looks pretty harmless.

I could spend more time telling you how awful this movie is, but to be honest, it just isn't worth it. Return to Horror High is the kind of movie that could only be a product of the mid-to-late eighties, the type that promises skeletal cheerleaders only to renege on it at every opportunity, and the sort of film that gets rereleased on dvd because it has a (now) huge star in it that barely registers as a cameo. Damn, what a terrible movie...