repressed refuse.: Return to Horror High (1987)

You can't fault them for trying. After the box office success of Horror High (1982), it only made sense for them to go for a sequel, re-uniting some of the original cast and bringing along some fresh new faces (such as a very young and talented George Clooney) for the ride. The gang heads back to Crippen High, five years removed from the murders of '82, as the killer begins to strike again...

Oh, wait. You can go ahead and forget all of that. You know why? Because there never was a fucking Horror High. Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen, you are proud watchers of the world's first and only Sequel to a Movie That Doesn't Exist. It's a Hollywood wet dream: you already know the story, you already know the cast, you already know the killer...

Except, you know, you don't. But rather than waste precious screen time on that, Return just assumes you do, plowing through every moment where a plot could've been extrapolated and instead just running ahead with the blood and tits, character development or dramatic tension be damned. What we're left with is a trainwreck; essentially, Return to Horror High is some sort of blending of Scream and The Blair Witch Project, only it's directed by Tommy Wiseau and stars the kids from Cabin in the Woods who didn't figure out that there was something fishy going on. The result of this film is a tryhard postmodern mess, with box art scarier than anything the movie itself could've conjured up (except maybe the Cloonmeister's role, trademark twinkling smile included).

The bulk of the mess comes from the fact that there are, by my count, roughly three to four plots going on at any one time (a la anything Stephen King), with very little hint as to which scene comes from which plot until it's over with and we've moved on to the next scene. There's, of course, the original Crippen High murders, but there's also the current murders, the police cleanup of said murders, and the part Return likes to focus on a little too much: the filmmakers, making a film about the original Crippen High murders, who are the victims of the current slayings in a twist that absolutely nobody saw coming.

Well, except maybe the guy in the back here.

A much bigger problem, though, is the fact that the film likes to kill off its cast a little too quickly; foregoing the standard Twenty Minutes With Jerks that most slasher flicks love to subject their audiences to, Return plows straight ahead into its first death at about the ten minute mark. The victim, thankfully, being George Clooney, playing (wait for it)...an actor, leaving the movie because he has better things to do with his time.

His role just screams, "I'm outta here."

Furthermore, the characters that Return kills off for the first hour or so are completely inconsequential to the plot. They'll be brought in for a scene, we'll follow them afterward, and oh, surprise, they meet their end. I know it's a lot to ask of my slasher movie, but some sort of attachment to a character would be really nice before running them through a turbine or something like that. The deaths aren't even enjoyable on a visceral, gruesome level because of this; it's hard to smile or laugh as a character meets their end when you're trying hard to remember if they've even been named.

As far as clever lines go, well...Return fails at being a "horror comedy" there, too. There's an overly long bit about a black janitor bragging about how he'll use his newfound movie cameo as a springboard for a pornographic career. There's seriously bad line about a "schlong" being a "schlort". And then there's the line, "Nobody hits one of the Trolls!", which comes out of nowhere, has absolutely nothing to do with anything before or after it, and, arguably, is the movie's high water mark.

Aspiring filmmakers, take note: when this goober delivers the best line of your movie and you didn't even write it, you have seriously fucked up.

Ostensibly, something resembling a plot begins to form around the hour mark, but by then you're too bored with the film and the characters to bother giving a shit. There's a chase scene, a shootout, some deaths, a couple lines self-referencing being in a movie that I guess were supposed to be funny, but honestly there's just not much to write home about. Return to Horror High fails not really by being a bad film, but by being a completely mediocre one--a sin, truly, far graver than badness. As the trailer reminds us: "Return to Horror High--it's ass cream!"