Furia incontrollata

"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.

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.

In the opening scene, a little girl, Brooke Storm, unintentionally causes the death of a young couple. We then jump ahead 18 years, and Brooke is now a biology teacher. She still lives in the same house near the swamp where the young couple died.

Dickens, one of her students, is a real troublemaker. Along with three of his friends, Jon-Jon, Queenie and Smiler, they decide to play a prank on Brooke. Off course, things get out of hand and the prank goes horribly wrong.

Although labelled as a slasher, 'Hell High' is not a slasher in the true sense. It is more of a vengeance movie. For a slasher, the film is also oddly paced, and - apart from the young couple in the beginning - there are no deaths until the final act. The first two acts pretty much plays like a thriller. In fact, come to think of it, this isn't really a horror. Psychological horror, maybe, but if you watch 'Hell High' thinking it is a slasher in the vain of classic 80's slashers, you're mistaken.

Only time will tell whether I'm going to remember this film by its title. At first I thought students were going to be killed at High School, hence the reference to Hell High, but not a single killing occurs at the school...

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, but I can't tell from the credits if she's Victoria Andahazy (Mink) or Karen Russell (teen girl). 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-

(* out of *****) The Blockbuster Video Guide gave this movie three stars -- I'm thinking everyone involved in the Blockbuster franchise must have undergone mentally-corruptive radiation treatments in the '70s. Boy, is this movie stupid! It's your typical cruel prank/revenge/slasher plot, except it looks even cheaper and bored me even more than usual. Some mean (and over-aged) high school kids throw rocks at their mean teacher's house and then sexually molest her, so she jumps out the window. Well, of course she's not dead, and of course there's a traumatic incident from her childhood (she `accidentally' threw a bucktful of mud onto two libidinous motorists, causing them to fly off the bike and impale themselves on wooden stakes in a scene that I assume was supposed to be shocking, but, instead, had me laughing for a good five minutes), and, next thing you know, she's hopping mad and homicidal. Character motivations are weak and absurd, at best, and the plotting is almost transparent in this sick turkey. I loved the scene where the former football star and his friends drive a car onto the field in the middle of a game and intercept a pass while cheesy, triumphant music swells -- were we supposed to feel uplifted here and like this guy or something because he's not quite as cruel and sadistic as the other guy, he's just too much of a coward and a doofus to not go along with him? It stars -- well, really, who cares?

Lowlight: Oh dear, so much to choose from.... There's the tacky scene where the teacher's out cold and undressed on her bed and the slutty girl's showing her dopey ex-boyfriend how to properly touch a woman. But, no, let's just stick with the opening scene where the kid throws the mud at the bikers and they lose control and somehow land on those sharp wooden stakes. I'm sure there are even `better' scenes, but I'd have to rent the movie and watch it again to refresh my memory, and I'm just not ready to do that.