I Guess We Got Some of the Parts Mixed Up

There is a prevalent opinion that slashers besmirch the reputation of the horror genre and are an embarrassment to those involved.  Maniacs and Monsters vehemently disagrees.  We are slasher movie fans.  Black Christmas (1974) and Halloween (1978), the two films credited with kicking off the slasher subgenre, are among our favourite films of any category.  That’s not to say we don’t recognize the deluge of lousy slasher films out there.  Slashers are popular with filmmakers and studios for good reason.  They can be produced on the cheap with minimal effort.  Everyone is familiar with the basic template:  Isolate a group of teenagers and have them killed off one by one.  Working with little more than that outline, your Maniacs and Monsters hosts made numerous movies in our youth.  You can have the killer known from the onset or have it a mystery.  You can reveal the killer’s motivations or have them remain an enigma.  If you hope for sequels, you probably want a surviving final girl.  But, by only following that simple formula, you’ll have yourself a slasher film.  What you almost certainly won’t have is a good slasher film.  Distinguishing your slasher from the hundreds that came before and the hundreds that will follow requires more effort and more creativity.  A spark of originality is needed to stand out in an industry besieged with cookie-cutter clones.  Originality comes with more risk, but if you fail, at least you can fail spectacularly.  One such spectacular failure that holds a place in my heart is Return to Horror High.

In 1982, so the story goes, a string of grisly murders at the local high school rocked the small, sleepy town of Crippen.  Crippen High School has been closed ever since (where the local kids now attend high school is never addressed).  Five years later, a small production company uses the high school as the location of their film shoot.  The low-budget film is based on the original killings.  The director hopes to depict the incident accurately with subtlety and emotion.  The producer expects an over-the-top slasher complete with gore and nudity.  The writer is being pulled in both directions regardless of his preferences.  To keep costs low, the cast and crew live in the school during filming.  Several people involved in the original incident, notably the school principal, the custodian, and a young cop on the scene, have been brought in as consultants and/or to portray themselves.  Oh, and of course, the original killer was neither caught nor even identified.  It doesn’t take a film school degree to guess where this is headed.

By 1987, when Return to Horror High was released, giving your slasher a unique spin was no easy task.  Slasher films had flooded the market, and some big names in the genre were well-established.  Director/writer Bill Froehlich, along with writers Mark Lisson, Dana Escalante, and Greg H. Sims, went with a nonlinear storytelling technique.  The plot is told to the police via flashback by the lone survivor, writer Arthur Lyman (Richard Brestoff).  Having your film not follow a linear timeline can be quite effective, but you should be careful not to confuse the audience.  Froehlich et al. set out to intentionally misdirect the viewers as much as possible.  The police investigation is not just a framing device at the beginning and end of the film.  The film cuts back to Police Chief Deyner (Pepper Martin) and his team numerous times as they attempt to make sense of what has occurred.  In addition, there are references to the original murders, scenes from the film-within-the-film, dream sequences, and red herrings aplenty.  Since some cast members portray an actor, they appear as both the actor and the roles they portray in the movie shoots.  Leading lady Callie Cassidy, portrayed by leading lady Lori Lethin, has multiple parts in the movie in different wigs as a cost-cutting measure.  The cast themselves often mistake movie magic gore for ‘real’ gore and vice versa.  The film turns back and forth upon itself, blurring the lines between all the different narratives.  Almost every transition from one narrative to another is intended to confuse.  It is amusing and occasionally clever but becomes repetitive.  Unfortunately, the writers were not adept enough to keep all these plates spinning for the film’s duration.  The myriad of tangled storylines does not come together cohesively and sometimes contradicts.  The layers of twist endings make less sense the more you think about them.  It would have been a grand achievement if they had pulled it off.  Unfortunately, they missed the mark.

Where Return to Horror High recovers some of its potential glory is in a couple of stellar casting choices.  Alex Rocco was a small-time gangster incarcerated for trashing a diner and assaulting its owner.  After serving his prison sentence, Rocco took acting lessons from Leonard Nimoy and landed the role of Moe Greene in The Godfather (1972).   In Return to Horror High, Rocco portrays producer Harry Sleerik.  Harry epitomizes all the tropes of the sleazy producer.  He cuts corners at every opportunity.  It is his decision to cancel the hotel rooms, forcing the cast and crew to stay in the abandoned high school.  He conveniently fails to sign contracts, and his secretary forgets to send people their cheques.  Harry is a schmoozer, telling everyone what they want to hear while talking about them behind their backs.  He has his assistant rounding up “local bimbos” for his enjoyment.  He insists the picture be as bloody and exploitative as possible to increase ticket sales.  When Lethin, as Callie, balks at a scene she finds demeaning to women, Harry responds, “If they keep seeing them, I’ll keep making them.”  Later, attempting to placate Callie, he directs writer Arthur to include something “poignant, redeeming” in which “two girls talk about love, marriage, babies…and set it in the locker room shower so they’re naked.”  Rocco gives the character everything he has and seems to enjoy the role.  With his gravelly voice and maybe a hint of mobster attitude, he completely sells Harry as someone who can’t imagine a world that doesn’t function as he thinks.  Rocco’s Harry is a complete scumbag, and yet you find yourself almost liking him.  That is thanks to Alex Rocco’s performance.

Another performance that is nowhere near as engaging as Alex Rocco’s, but I feel obligated to mention, is that of George Clooney.  Clooney had already appeared in reoccurring roles on E/R (no, not ER, that would come later) and The Facts of Life, but his career was still getting started.  Return to Horror High was not his only low-budget horror movie role.  A few years prior, he appeared in Grizzly II: Revenge, and the following year, he would have a lead role in Return of the Killer Tomatoes.  Clooney does not look back at any of his horror roles fondly and moved on to greener pastures when the opportunity arose.  He doesn’t embarrass himself in Return to Horror High, but he isn’t in it long enough to do so.  Foreshadowing his own career path, Clooney plays actor Oliver.  Oliver is the lead in the film in progress at the high school, but when he gets a call from his agent, he ditches the production for a chance in a television series.  He is not very gracious about it.  Unfortunately for Oliver, he never makes it out of the school.  He is the first murder victim, and because everyone knows he bailed on them, his absence goes unnoticed.

While Clooney isn’t particularly memorable in his role, the same cannot be said of Maureen McCormick.  Having portrayed Marcia Brady for five years on The Brady Bunch and in several spinoff shows and TV movies, McCormick was, and is, an icon of 70s television and the crush of many a teenage boy from that era.  McCormick plays Officer Tyler, one of the first on the scene of the second Crippen High School massacre.  It is Officer Tyler who has been organizing the search for bodies, whole or in pieces, and having them laid out covered in bloody sheets in the parking lot.  She is also responsible for getting Chief Deyner up to speed when he arrives.  I can’t imagine what direction McCormick received for her role, but she is hilarious.  Each time the action cuts back to her and Chief Deyner, her character seems increasingly ditzy and unhinged for no discernible reason.  You start to wonder if, somehow, she is the killer.  In the opening scene, she is the very professional, tough cop, responding to every direction from the chief with a crisp, “Yes, sir!”  The next time you see her, she is absent-mindedly making slurping noises with a takeout cup while the witness recounts his story.  Then, she starts acting erratically.  Inappropriately thrusting her chest uncomfortably close to the chief, she makes alluring faces at him.  She becomes covered in blood.  As she tells it, she slipped, fell, and slid down a blood-soaked hallway.  But she seems turned on by the blood and rubs it into her chest as she explains her present state to Chief Deyner.  From somewhere, she obtains a huge chilidog and proceeds to eat it while they are studying a mutilated corpse, dripping chili all down Chief Deyner’s jacket in the process.  Her hair becomes increasingly dishevelled, and she casually unbuttons the top button on her police uniform.  She mimics the faces of the corpses and is pretty excited to be part of a shootout.  I don’t know how or why McCormick ended up in Return to Horror High, but I am so grateful she did.  It is her performance, above all else, that makes the film worth watching.

Return to Horror High is a confused mess.  Even the title of the film is bewildering.  There is a film titled Horror High (1973), but Return to Horror High is not its sequel.  Return to Horror High seems only a reference to returning to the scene of the original murders, which never occur in any film.  Nevertheless, it is an enjoyable mess.  You can see what they were trying to accomplish, and it is hard to fault anyone for the attempt to try something unique.  Despite Harry’s best attempts, the gore quotient is very low, and the low-budget film location will be near and dear to those of us who grew up on slasher films.  You won’t leave the film thinking it a flawed masterpiece.  But, with some good performances, especially from Maureen McCormick, you’ll have a few laughs.  And that is what I need from a so-bad-it’s-good film.

Return to Horror High (1987) Directed by Bill Froehlich; Written by Bill Froehlich, Mark Lisson, Dana Escalante & Greg H. Sims; Starring Lori Lethin, Brendan Hughes, Alex Rocco, Scott Jacoby, Andy Romano, Pepper Martin, & Maureen McCormick; Available on DVD from IMAGE Entertainment.

This is my contribution to The Sixth So Bad It’s Good Blogathon.  Please check out some of the other contributors by clicking on the image below.  My thanks to Rebecca at Taking Up Room for including my non-linear ramblings on a non-linear subject.