Review of Demolition High (1996) by Shane V — 06 May 2010

When terrorists hijack a high school in the sleepy little town of Mayfield, new guy Lenny Slater somehow finds himself in a position to take down these bad dudes & thwart their evil plot.

It really is as terrible as it sounds, as hard as that is to believe. It sort of plays out like a "Die Hard Jr." flick in it's execution; one unlikely hero taking down a group of terrorists from the inside. But while it is reminiscent of Mr. McClane's first adventure, a comparison is akin to a house kitten against a jungle tiger. The acting isn't quite as bad as you'd think (in most aspects, anyway), and the action is somewhat entertaining. But everything else is painfully amateurish in the worst way. It seems to pay homage to the classic actioners of the 80's whilst showing us the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel of the 90's. The opening credits are done over the fires of a burning military base (?) while a metal-esque soundtrack sounds in the background. That should pretty much tell you what kind of movie this is.

While on the surface, the plot seems somewhat solid. But if you peel away the thin layer of explanatory dialogue, you'll find it makes no sense at all. The villains are deliciously-stereotypical greedy murderer-types that retain a good part of our focus for most of the film. Jeff Kober's performance as lead-villain Luther is subtle & simple, yet strong when it needs to be. Though Melissa Brasselle as Luther's lover Tanya seems to only serve as eyecandy, in which she succeeds. Alan Thicke, playing Lenny's father & the police chief, acts as though he was just caught wandering around the set & asked to say a few lines. In other words, the man couldn't phone in this role harder if he were in space. Corey Haim, rest his soul, wasn't too bad in the acting department. He gave us a nice relatable character despite the ridiculous circumstances he finds himself in.

But what really keeps the film down, even worse than the plot, is the script. It sounds like a 10-year-old's 80's wet dream. Wet dream because it's so campy it's actually watchable. 80's because half of the lines are of the tag-variety. And 10-year-old's because it's all written so poorly. It noticeably inhibits our cast with such little character focus. I would say it's so bad it isn't even funny, but it actually is at a few brief moments in that groaning sort of way. Matching the awful script is the oh-so-poor cinematography & effects. They give us no atmosphere, and the 'explosion' scenes are unfathomably awful. Overall the acting, action, and silly-stupid script are enough to get us through the 84 minutes for better or for worse, but everything else is just plain bad no matter how you look at it. It's one of those cheesy/crappy action films that just watch just to be entertained by the cheesy crappiness. How this garnered a sequel, I will never know. "Demolition High" slides into 2.5 buzzsaws out of 10.