Return to Horror High (1987)

Return to Horror High is one I've been looking at on video store shelves since way back when we used to rent VHS movies from Turtles Records and Tapes. Its cover was certainly eye-catching, with that skeletal cheerleader and goofy little "cheer" tag-line. Naturally, back when I was a kid, there's no way I could have rented such a thing. And now, thanks to Netflix Instant Queue, I don't have to.


Horror High's Jr. Varsity basketball team always appreciated the pep squad's enthusiasm.

The first thing anybody will tell you about Return to Horror High is that it's George Clooney's first movie.  Well, it is, but it's not much of one.  He plays Oliver, a small-time horror film actor that leaves the movie he's shooting when he gets a leading role in a television drama that's sure to be a hit. Clooney himself, of course, left behind horror movies like this, Grizzly 2, and Return Of The Killer Tomatoes to find great success on television.  This amusing bit of art imitating life (albeit before the fact) resonates better with today's audience than it would have with 1987's audiences. Of course, Oliver manages to get murdered on the way off of the set while George went on to star in the worst Batman movie ever committed to film.  It's hard to say who really came off the better.

"You say it's about doctors and I'd be perfect for the part? I dunno... "

You see, five years ago a massacre took place at Crippen High (home of the Trolls, apparently) and the killer was never found. Now a low-rent production company is making a slasher-style movie of the incident using the actual abandoned school as the primary location.  And wouldn't you know it?  The killing starts up again. 

The reason Return to Horror High has such a cliched and oh-so-typical plot is that it's a comedy - a satire of the legit slasher copycat movies of the day and their equally thin premises.  The interplay between the writer and director of the film-within-the-film and the sleazy producer (played by the guy who was Moe Greene in The Godfather) tells the story best, as the former pair are striving for subtlety and an honest portrayal of the true events, and the producer just wants "tits and blood."

Even with the satirical nature of the movie, RtHH holds up its end of the bargain as a horror whodunit pretty well. The movie does a good job of setting up red herrings and of blurring the line of reality that separates flashbacks of the original killings and scenes being shot for the movie-within-the-movie. It keeps you on your toes and guessing.  And when someone is offed, you get all the blood (lots of blood) and gore you would want out of a real horror film.

The comedic elements work, too, for the most part.  It's especially entertaining to see Maureen "Marcia Brady" McCormmick as a cop stepping around and over the body-bagged remnants (parts, really) of numerous victims as she and the detective on the case try to piece together what happened. It's hard to describe, but the movie's pretty danged funny.  It's like a gory Airplane!, or at least Top Secret! or something.

Marcia's all grown up and busting the bad guys in the new TV movie, "A Very Brady Homicide."

Return to Horror High is an overlooked gem from the heyday of slasher horror.  It has a handful of familiar faces, good special effects (including a funny exploding prosthetic that the producer character was dying to see put into the movie), some funny moments, a half-decent mystery, and a bit of knowing commentary on the horror genre that was ahead of its time. And it all comes together in an ending that is equal parts horrific and zany.  Kinda like Clooney's Batman movie.