Being Film #14 for Hooptober 2024
Oof. There is the kernel of a great concept in Return To Horror High, taking a meta, tongue-in-cheek approach to horror and genre filmmaking cliches, but unfortunately Bill Froelich isn’t the guy to make it. There are a few measly pleasures to be had here, but for the most part this is a limp, unfunny, and not even remotely scary or creative slasher. But you do get George Clooney for about five minutes, and a fun, slightly unhinged Maureen McCormick performance, so if you ever had a thing for Marcia Brady this just might be your bag…
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Hollywood loves a good story…and so a film crew descends on an abandoned school where years before a series of gruesome murders took place to film a, well, a movie about a series of grisly murders at a school. See the difference! Except this one has George Clooney as a hot cop! And Marcia Brady as another hot cop! And weird racist moments! And squeamish 80s sexual assault masquerading as “comedy”! Soon the lines between the film, the flashbacks, and the aftermath begin to blend together in the only innovative part of this turkey of a film. No wonder Clooney died first and quick – whoops, spoiler!
Yeah…this is not a good film. In someone else’s hands this might really have soared as a small cult film, but the ambiguity of the timelines and the last-minute “twist” at the end are just tired and boring, and not helped at all by any of the actors. Clooney is indeed in this briefly as an actor playing the young cop, but in a scene that plays better now than it must have at the time he leaves the small-time budget horror film because he just landed a gig on a new TV shows that was gonna be big. Let’s just all assume this is real and instead of dying he just went off and did E.R. and the rest is history.
I’ll also hand it to Maureen McCormick who in addition to still being cute as a button (my young kid crush lives on, I guess), is kinda hilarious as the actual cop investigating the murders that occurred during the filming of the film…that’s about the killings. Got it? Don’t sweat it if you don’t – the actual Return To Horror High is easy to follow, and McCormick gets a chance to really get weird with it, and she does so with abandon.
The slasher moment are laughable: nothing inventive or particularly gory or grotesque, so even those thrills are denied us. When the killer is revealed it’s pretty much who you suspect, but the way they do it is so off-putting it’s strangely appealing? I don’t know, I’m struggling to really even remember much of this thing despite having literally just finished watching it.
Take that as a recommendation for or against. It’s up to you.
Cinema Dual 
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