Horror High (1973) - Movie Review

"Vernon, that is you, isn't it?"

Biology and chemistry obsessed high schooler Vernon Potts (Pat Cardi) would like nothing more than to work on his experiment, but everyone and everything just keeps getting in his way. Miss Grindstaff (Joy Hash), the English teacher, demands equal attention be paid to the subject she is teaching. Jock classmate Roger (Mike McHenry) ridicules and bullies Vernon relentlessly. Worst of all is the cat kept by Mr. Griggs (Jeff Alexander), the school janitor. That pesky animal keeps trying to have Mr. Mumps, the lab guinea pig and sole subject of Vernon's experiment, for lunch.

That all changes when Vernon discovers that his experiment has created a body altering formula. One that gives him the power to eradicate his tormentors.

Horror High is one of a baker's dozen or so films, give or take, that imprinted on me as a child. I am reasonably certain that the first time I saw it was when its TV version, titled Twisted Brain, played on KTVU's Creature Features, back when Bob Wilkins was hosting the show. I think it might also have aired as Horror High on occasion, but I'm not sure.

Revisiting the film some forty plus years later, I was surprised at just how clear my recall of the film was. There were several scenes that I had a photographic recall of and they looked and sounded no different than my memory of them. No small feat, that.

But does Horror High hold up? Well, yes and no. On the plus side... Larry Stouffer's direction is tight, focused, and on point. J.D. Feigelson's screenplay structuring is rock solid, even if its logistics are weak and in dire need of strengthening. Austin Stoker is terrific as Lieutenant Bozeman, the cop tasked with trying to find out who is slaughtering the high school staff. Also good is former child actor Pat Cardi, as Vernon Potts, in what would turn out to be the penultimate acting job of his career.

On the negative side... the film's budget is located somewhere underneath the basement and, according to its trivia page on the IMDB, it was shot in just two weeks. Which explains and, for people like me, excuses the inadequate amount of coverage in a number scenes, the limited amount of locations, and the minuscule size of the cast.

According to screenwriter J.D. Feigelson, who used the pseudonym Jack Fowler on the feature for professional reasons, after the idea for a I Was a Teenage Jekyll and Hyde style horror picture came to him, he wrote an outline and then a first draft. That first draft is what was sold and shot. No notes and no revisions, it seems. Which explains why, as I noted before, that the nuts and bolts of the story structure are solid, but a lot of dialogue and characterization would have benefited from a bit of a polishing, here and there.

Whether anybody else would deem to take this cheap and quirky piece of regional horror with any degree of seriousness is moot, to me. I am just happy that, in this instance, my fond memories proved to be well founded.