Hell High
* * ½
We are introduced to a jerk-off troublemaker named Dickins who throws biology papers in the air after his exhausted teacher, Ms. Storm, asks the prick to file them once he has taken the tests from the other students. He’s part of a group of rejects, misfits who accept their unpopular reputations in school with pride and live it up much to the chagrin of the faculty and other students who find them obnoxious and burdensome. To disrupt and cause anarchy seem to be their mantra, and soon an ex-football player (who loses his girl to the star jock after quitting the team) is “commissioned” to join them.
Jon-Jon has a bright future but is not exactly the kind who normally associates with Dickens kind of crowd, a bunch of loud, abrasive teens who yearn to raise hell while he has folks who expect great things out of him. Yet Jon-Jon decides to hang with them and this slasher film documents the repercussions. Dickens is obsessed with biology teacher Ms. Storm, particularly after seeing her bathe while peeping through her home window. Storm, because of his antics with frog dissection test papers, slapped Dickens, a vow of revenge towards her as a result.
Also part of this gang is Queenie, who is aware of her appetite for sex and doesn’t hide her interest in Jon-Jon, and Smiler as the typical always-eating “fat stooge” who is seen often cramming his mouth with food, generally acting an ass of himself for comic effect. I might have laughed at such a character when I was a teenager, but now an overweight goof causes me to cringe—it’s a stereotype that bothers me.
But, moving on, slashers—and the giallo thrillers of the late 60s/early 70s—often feature (well, most of the time, they do) a psychosis which derives from a form of psychological trauma of the past, and HELL HIGH is no different. Mentioning that, a lot of films from the slasher genre establish an event which is curious because it doesn’t seem to relate to the rest of the story afterward, only to become an important factor in why characters are murdered, in an especially vicious fashion.
Normally, though, something sets off the murders, someone—in this movie’s case, Dickens—contributes to what starts the slaughter. Dickens, the type of cretin who contemplates new ways to raise a ruckus or torment people, has the perfect plan to get even with Force (an incident he started) and that is to gather up bags of swamp slop, climb up on her house’s roof, to stomp their feet, making noise, commencing in splattering the watery mud on her windows. This leads to reawakened trauma for Storm who, as a little girl, accidentally caused a couple to crash on a motorcycle (through the use of swamp mud) which threw them off, impaling on spikes sticking out of the ground.
The plot complications, while interesting compared to the usual slasher movie, become more and more absurd. At first a prank, Dickens, who just doesn’t know when to quit, returns to Storm’s home to ravage her (Storm is given a sedative by the girl’s sports coach), and this decision leads to the voluntary flight out of a window, plan for a frame-up, and eventually death.
The killer is no mystery in the movie, the violence is savage, and the body count small (those who were responsible for mischief which caused Storm to take the flight I previously wrote get what’s coming to them). You could do worse than this movie, but I didn’t think anything spectacular sets this apart from most of the slasher movies made in prior years.
By ’89 HELL HIGH was made during the dying period when the slasher genre was about to stagnate until SCREAM brought a resurgence (and tamer, flashier approach to the genre, instead of regular folks, you have nothing but purty girls and boys, a great deal of them from Aaron Spelling/Dawson Creek type teeny-bopper television, getting killed off-screen) which might explain why the movie isn’t on the tongues of die hard fans.
I think the movie has enough to appeal to those looking for tits and violence, but HELL HIGH, to me anyway, is probably a non-entity for a reason, it doesn’t have a lot of surprises to stand out of the pack. The murders include a stone face bashing, a pencil to the skull, butcher knife to the shoulder, fireplace poker impalement, and blade to the throat. A ton of body double work for the nude scenes regarding the female leads.
The film does enter LAST HOUSE OF THE LEFT territory when Dickens gets on top of Storm, under the influence of the sedative(given to her by the volleyball girls coach as a means to quiet her), Halloween mask half way on his face, contemplating the pervert activities he has in store for her, Queenie “showing him how to really grope a woman.” It is really strange and depraved without any actual sexual contact or nudity—somehow, it still has bite because of the characters, their warped moral decay. And how to set up the football star, the scared group needing a fall guy for their own benefit. There is an unneeded but decent “motorcycle exploding into parked car” stunt included for good measure.
Stryker, a victim of the AIDS epidemic, stands out from the cast as the beyond-help sociopath, Dickens, with no redeeming value whatsoever. Mooney isn’t too shabby either as the teacher who unleashes the beast (particularly when she picks up the stone, pounding a face in multiple times) after being pushed over the edge. Christopher Cousins’ role as Jon-Jon is amusing in that he’s not really a hero because he really only cares about saving his own skin or protecting his own interests. It’s about his future, yet he participates in activities with Stryker, such as peeping on teach and playing the prank on the poor woman; the events that transpire are of his own making—why would he associate with Stryker to begin with? Millie Prezioso is Queenie, her most memorable scene, for my money, when she sits on top of practically comatose Storm to perform for Stryker, with Brill hilarious as Smiler, becoming unglued while waiting for Cousins to get the star quarterback's jersey as a framing device.
We are introduced to a jerk-off troublemaker named Dickins who throws biology papers in the air after his exhausted teacher, Ms. Storm, asks the prick to file them once he has taken the tests from the other students. He’s part of a group of rejects, misfits who accept their unpopular reputations in school with pride and live it up much to the chagrin of the faculty and other students who find them obnoxious and burdensome. To disrupt and cause anarchy seem to be their mantra, and soon an ex-football player (who loses his girl to the star jock after quitting the team) is “commissioned” to join them.
Jon-Jon has a bright future but is not exactly the kind who normally associates with Dickens kind of crowd, a bunch of loud, abrasive teens who yearn to raise hell while he has folks who expect great things out of him. Yet Jon-Jon decides to hang with them and this slasher film documents the repercussions. Dickens is obsessed with biology teacher Ms. Storm, particularly after seeing her bathe while peeping through her home window. Storm, because of his antics with frog dissection test papers, slapped Dickens, a vow of revenge towards her as a result.
Also part of this gang is Queenie, who is aware of her appetite for sex and doesn’t hide her interest in Jon-Jon, and Smiler as the typical always-eating “fat stooge” who is seen often cramming his mouth with food, generally acting an ass of himself for comic effect. I might have laughed at such a character when I was a teenager, but now an overweight goof causes me to cringe—it’s a stereotype that bothers me.
But, moving on, slashers—and the giallo thrillers of the late 60s/early 70s—often feature (well, most of the time, they do) a psychosis which derives from a form of psychological trauma of the past, and HELL HIGH is no different. Mentioning that, a lot of films from the slasher genre establish an event which is curious because it doesn’t seem to relate to the rest of the story afterward, only to become an important factor in why characters are murdered, in an especially vicious fashion.
Normally, though, something sets off the murders, someone—in this movie’s case, Dickens—contributes to what starts the slaughter. Dickens, the type of cretin who contemplates new ways to raise a ruckus or torment people, has the perfect plan to get even with Force (an incident he started) and that is to gather up bags of swamp slop, climb up on her house’s roof, to stomp their feet, making noise, commencing in splattering the watery mud on her windows. This leads to reawakened trauma for Storm who, as a little girl, accidentally caused a couple to crash on a motorcycle (through the use of swamp mud) which threw them off, impaling on spikes sticking out of the ground.
The plot complications, while interesting compared to the usual slasher movie, become more and more absurd. At first a prank, Dickens, who just doesn’t know when to quit, returns to Storm’s home to ravage her (Storm is given a sedative by the girl’s sports coach), and this decision leads to the voluntary flight out of a window, plan for a frame-up, and eventually death.
The killer is no mystery in the movie, the violence is savage, and the body count small (those who were responsible for mischief which caused Storm to take the flight I previously wrote get what’s coming to them). You could do worse than this movie, but I didn’t think anything spectacular sets this apart from most of the slasher movies made in prior years.
By ’89 HELL HIGH was made during the dying period when the slasher genre was about to stagnate until SCREAM brought a resurgence (and tamer, flashier approach to the genre, instead of regular folks, you have nothing but purty girls and boys, a great deal of them from Aaron Spelling/Dawson Creek type teeny-bopper television, getting killed off-screen) which might explain why the movie isn’t on the tongues of die hard fans.
I think the movie has enough to appeal to those looking for tits and violence, but HELL HIGH, to me anyway, is probably a non-entity for a reason, it doesn’t have a lot of surprises to stand out of the pack. The murders include a stone face bashing, a pencil to the skull, butcher knife to the shoulder, fireplace poker impalement, and blade to the throat. A ton of body double work for the nude scenes regarding the female leads.
The film does enter LAST HOUSE OF THE LEFT territory when Dickens gets on top of Storm, under the influence of the sedative(given to her by the volleyball girls coach as a means to quiet her), Halloween mask half way on his face, contemplating the pervert activities he has in store for her, Queenie “showing him how to really grope a woman.” It is really strange and depraved without any actual sexual contact or nudity—somehow, it still has bite because of the characters, their warped moral decay. And how to set up the football star, the scared group needing a fall guy for their own benefit. There is an unneeded but decent “motorcycle exploding into parked car” stunt included for good measure.
Stryker, a victim of the AIDS epidemic, stands out from the cast as the beyond-help sociopath, Dickens, with no redeeming value whatsoever. Mooney isn’t too shabby either as the teacher who unleashes the beast (particularly when she picks up the stone, pounding a face in multiple times) after being pushed over the edge. Christopher Cousins’ role as Jon-Jon is amusing in that he’s not really a hero because he really only cares about saving his own skin or protecting his own interests. It’s about his future, yet he participates in activities with Stryker, such as peeping on teach and playing the prank on the poor woman; the events that transpire are of his own making—why would he associate with Stryker to begin with? Millie Prezioso is Queenie, her most memorable scene, for my money, when she sits on top of practically comatose Storm to perform for Stryker, with Brill hilarious as Smiler, becoming unglued while waiting for Cousins to get the star quarterback's jersey as a framing device.
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