Le Marécage maudit

"Hell High" follows a group of teenagers who decide to torment their domineering biology teacher by pulling a prank on her at her home late one night. Unfortunately for them, she is already disturbed from a double-murder she unwittingly caused as a child, and the teens are in for more than they bargained.

This late-'80s horror flick is an offbeat and unusual combination of teen exploitation with a heavy-handed revenge plot, as well as a few slasher-esque elements mixed in for good measure. The film opens with a bizarre and fairly disturbing scene in which the antagonist teacher, as a young girl, causes a horrific motorcycle accident that claims two lives in the bog behind her family home. This no doubt sets the tone for a slasher film, but "Hell High" instead opts to take the revenge horror route, predating similarly-themed films such as "Teaching Mrs. Tingle."

The teenagers in this film are, for the most part, very unlikable, which poses a bit of a problem from an audience perspective when they find themselves being hacked and slashed. While the biology teacher is not exactly an emblem of geniality, the teenagers and their actions grow progressively more twisted as the film goes on, which leaves the viewer in a conundrum as it's difficult to find allegiance to either here.

Despite this, the film is quite aptly made for a low-budget affair, with glossy cinematography and atmospheric locations, mainly the rural house where the majority of the film unfolds. Things ramp up to a breakneck pace in the last twenty minutes, leaving the picture feeling slightly backloaded, but there is a decent amount of suspense that precedes this, which prevents it from being a slog in the first three quarters. It also benefits from having a cynical and fitting conclusion.

Overall, "Hell High" is a fairly well-made horror film that leans more into teen revenge tropes than anything else. While the suggestive title may lead one to believe they are in for a school-set slasher, the film bucks those expectations quite swiftly. Though it has its share of structural issues, it is an offbeat and different film from many of its peers, and for that, it's worth watching. 6/10.

*Kinda* slasher directed by Douglas Grossman. Seven year-old Brooke likes to play with her dolls in an abandoned shack off a cycling path near her home. When a teenaged couple arrive on their motorcycle to make-out in the shack Brooke hides and watches. The teenaged girl decides she doesn't want sex, and in frustration her boyfriend pulls the head off one of Brooke's dolls (this guy is hardcore). As the couple argue and get back on the motorcycle to leave, Brooke emerges from hiding, looks at the damage to her doll, and decides to go outside and fling mud in the face of the boy steering the motorcycle. The bike crashes and the couple are thrown off and impaled on metal railings, killing them both. Eighteen years later Brook is a science teacher at the local high school and the unexplained deaths of the couple 18 years before have become local legend. When Brooke humiliates high school bad-boy Dickens in front of class, he decides to pay her back and recruits three others to help him. The next night they don Halloween masks and attack Brooke's home, terrorising her inside. What they don't know is that the deaths Brooke caused as a young girl have left her traumatised, causing her to majorly flip out and turn the tables on her tormentors one by one.

Although this was filmed 1986, money running out plus other unspecified delays meant it wasn't released until 1989. By then the slasher was starting to be overtaken by other types of horror. Also, by the time it was released the top-billed actor, 27 year-old Christopher Stryker (Dickens), had been dead for two years from AIDS. The movie underperformed and was largely forgotten for many years. For most of the remaining cast this was their only onscreen credit (with the notable exceptions of soap-queen-to-be Maureen Mooney as grown-up Brooke, and Christopher Cousins as one the of the gang).

The film inverts the slasher trope; instead of a masked killer hunting down a group of innocent teens, it's the teens who are masked (and *far* from innocent), hunted by a killer whose identity isn't hidden in any way. It also makes the moral aspect murkier, with it being debateable how many - if any of the victims - deserve what happens to them. The performances are okay and the obligatory 80s synth score is fine. The film also ticks the boxes for the expected topless nudity. Pacing-wise it's slow after the initial two motorcycle deaths, and does tend to drag until things kick into gear in the third act. And like a lot of these movies if you start to pull at the plot it starts to unravel. You just have to go with it. But it's a fun piece of nostalgia. 6.5/10.

A little known, low-budget horror flick, Hell High actually has more in common with the vengeance exploitation films of the '70's than with the teen slashers that were so popular during its time.

When trouble making teens decide to terrorize their teacher, they go over board with some murderous consequences!

With a compelling story, moody atmosphere, and a good cast, Hell High (which has little to do with its title) is a horror film that manages to over come the limitations of its low budget. Even still, the film is pretty well made for a B horror flick. The music score and filming locations aren't bad either.

The cast of unknowns is pretty good. Maureen Mooney does a good turn as the tormented teacher. Christopher Cousins isn't half bad as a reluctant teen assailant. Best of all though is the late Christopher Stryker (who died of AIDS before the film could be released). He makes for a great teen bad boy and a surprisingly merciless villain! Stryker could have easily went on to bigger films.

Criticize it for what you will, but Hell High is one of the better 'lost' horror flicks of its day. It's 80's horror that takes a refreshing break from the slasher film conventions.

*** out of ****

Four outcast high schoolers in the Northeast play a prank on their biology teacher at her home on the weekend, but the fun turns into murderous trouble.

"Hell High" was shot in 1985, copyrighted in 1986, but not released until 1989. It's also known as "Raging Fury" and "Real Trouble," which are more accurate titles. I was thinking it was a slasher, but it's really high school thriller/horror meshing the milieu of "Carrie" (1976) and "Christine" (1983) with the revenge exploitation of "I Spit on Your Grave" (1978). It only cost $188,000, but seems more polished than "I Spit," which cost $650,000.

The flick effectively takes you back to the high school days and the various cliques and types, such as the troublemaking leader of the outcasts, the hot girl that hangs with the misfit dudes, the goofy guy, the quarterback and his cheerleading babe, as well as the guy who's an inbetweener (Christopher Cousins). The agitator, played by Christopher Stryker, died of AIDs at the age of 27 before the movie was released.

It's relatively serious, but there's a little camp, e.g. The football coach. The best thing is you don't know where it's going. Don't expect a typical 80's slasher.

On the female front, Millie Prezioso is interesting as Queenie while Maureen Mooney plays the biology teacher and Kathryn Rossetter the girls' coach. The brunette girlfriend of the quarterback is worth a mention, Mink (Victoria Andahazy). As usual with this genre, there's a bit of harmless nudity.

The movie runs 1 hour, 24 minutes, and was shot in Westchester, Bronx, which is just a couple miles east of The Bronx Zoo with the high school interiors done in Scarsdale, New York, which is located eight miles north of The Bronx.

GRADE: B-

But that's what i did. We were at the mall, having just come from my orthodontic appointment, and I was supposed to go back to school. However, once the title "Hell High" caught our eye, we had to see it. I remember a goofily inane, low-budget horror movie that featured a scene of a beautiful teacher becoming vocally aroused just taking a shower (because when women soap up their breasts, they are helplessly turned on.) And that's almost all I remember. But I guess I fared better than a friend who, a few years previous, had seen Revenge of the Nerds with his little, old grandmother. And, thinking on it now, I saw Clash of the Titans when I was like eight or something with my grandfather. A chaste shot of a woman leaving a bath was pretty exciting then. Later on, at dinner, my sister yelled out that I had told her there was a "tushie" in the movie. I was mortified. I could hardly deny I had said it, after all, as her knowledge of said tushie was proof enough. A shadow fell over my grandfather's face and not another word was said for a long time. A horrible memory.