Review of Return to Horror High (1987) by Steve M — 08 Jul 2008

The cast and crew of a low-budget slasher film being shot at the high school where a series of real mutilation murders took place years ago are brutally murdered one by one when the killer returns and infiltrates the production.

"Return to Horror High" is a spoof of low-budget filmmaking, as well as exploitation and slasher films. It's got some decent gore, but it's comes up short in the laughs department, provoking only a few laughs, some giggles, and a number of smiles. It probably does hold the record for the number of flash-backs, flash-forwards, and flash-sideways of any movie ever unleashed upon the general public... the narrative threads of this fillm are so tangled and confused that even in his worst cocaine-fueled fever dreams Quentin Tarantino couldn't have come up with something so disjointed.

The lack of story cohesion is what ultimately does this movie in, coupled with not one but two "surprise twist endings". As the end credits start to roll, you'll realize you have no idea whether "Return to Horror High' was about a movie-shoot based on real-life killings where more murders happened, whether is was a movie within a movie based on real-life killers but all other murders were hoaxes, whether some of the new murders were real but others weren't, whether none of what you just saw actually happened but was just taking place in the mind of the writer, and whether there's any way you can possibly get the hour-and-a-half you just wasted of you life back.

"Return to Horror High" might be suitable as part of a slasher-flick oriented Bad Movie Night, but beyond that it serves no useful purpose. (Although the friend I watched it with was tickled by the appearance of Maureen McCormick as a police officer who gets turned on by the carnage and mayhem at the murder scene... she used to play Marcia Brady on "The Brady Bunch" televison show, and he thought seeing her in this role was a hoot. I thought she was amusing, but I never saw "The Brady Bunch" television show, so part of the humor is lost on me.).

Return to Horror High.

Starring: Lori Lethin, Brendan Hughes, Richard Brestoff, Maureen McCormick, Pepper Martin, Alex Rocco, Scott Jacoby, Al Fann, Andy Romano, and George Clooney.

Director: Bill Froehlich.