Review of Hell High

Hell High (1987)
1/10
Dismal
31 July 2004
This is the stupidest film I've seen since "Zombie Nightmare."

A little girl with blond pigtails and a frilly pink dress (The Bad Seed, anyone?) accidentally kills a teenage biker and his girlfriend by throwing swamp mud into their faces while they are driving. The two are thrown and impaled on some conveniently placed stakes and the girl runs away, forever scarred and guilt ridden. Fast forward about 20 years and the pigtailed little cretin is now a science teacher at a local high school. Her students are unruly and disrespectful and when she slaps one arrogant jerk across the face, he vows revenge. He and his loser friends - cast an overweight nerd, a slut and a dumb jock - attack the teacher in her house one night, throwing handfuls of green swamp muck against her windows and dancing on her roof whilst wearing Halloween masks. Of course, they take the whole thing Too Far and the already mentally fragile teacher snaps, running around the rest of the movie in a silky nightie with a machete in one hand.

This really isn't a typical slasher, if you want the truth. The terrorized teens all deserve what they get, displaying no morals whatsoever and basically proving themselves to be every bit as psychotic as their teacher. There are some nice touches to be found here: the killer is a woman, the slut swings both ways and the one guy with a thin moral streak is only Doing The Right Thing to save his own bright future. This film doesn't suffer from unoriginality - it suffers from painful stupidity. The script is horrible, the cast can't act worth a damn and the situations that arise are so utterly implausible that you'll be wondering if this was set in some parallel dimension where common sense doesn't exist. For example: the proper reaction upon finding your next door neighbor covered with mud and crouched in front of her broken window with a machete in her hand is NOT to force feed her some 'ludes and then leave! Good gods, who wrote this? A 5 year old with ADD?

Once again, Joe Bob Briggs and his comedy commentary make this a much more bearable viewing experience. Otherwise, this is a terrible 80s slasher, filled with all of the hideous fashions of that depressing decade. A couple of graphic murders may impress gore fans, but sitting through the other 70 odd minutes just isn't worth the effort. I've seen more interesting toilet bowl stains.
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