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Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Scarecrow-88 Christopher Stryker (who died of AIDS after this film)is a troublemaker named Dickens who seeks revenge against his biology teacher, Ms Storm (Mooney) after she slaps him for being an obnoxious tool, throwing test papers in the air as a means to make her angry. Christopher Cousins is Jon-Jon, an ex-football player who lost his girl to the team's star jock, joining Dickens' bunch of misfits for the hell of it. The other members of Dickens' brood are the slutty Queenie, aware of her appetite for sex and Smiler, the overweight stooge who is often shown stuffing his face. Dickens, who spends his time often contemplating what his next prank will be, decides to first peep on Storm and then gather up some slop from the nearby swamp for an epic tribute to his biology teacher, his unpleasant feelings for her unleashed with the kind of mischief he's famous for. What commences, the four involved, bombarding Storm's home with muddy swamp goo, bouncing on her roof with Halloween masks, drives the teacher over the edge, a night of murder resulting.According to Joe Bob Briggs, the film was made in like 1985, only to be released as the slasher genre was on its' last legs, soon to stagnate until SCREAM brought a resurgence. Atypical of the genre, the four kids cause the teacher to go berserk, a psychological trauma from the past awakening the beast in the woman. For tits and violence, HELL HIGH delivers, but there isn't as much high school in the movie as you might expect. Stryker stands out from the cast as the burdensome sociopath, while the others lend support in their immoral behavior. No one, except Mooney's Ms Storm comes across sympathetically. Even Cousins, who only cares about his own hide, isn't a hero, smiling at the end when his framing of the football player works! Stone bashing to the skull, pencil to the skull, spike and fireplace poker impalements, even a throat knife slicing for good measure. Plenty of body double work during the nude scenes. Might be a sleeper for slasher fans looking for a movie that does stray from the formula at times. Most memorable scene could be when Dickens plans to rape Storm only for Queen to interrupt, showing him how to really grope a woman!

Paul Andrews Hell High starts with a young girl named Brooke Storm (Amy Beth Erenrich) playing down the local swamp (!) when two lovers (Webster Whinery & Karen Russell) unexpectedly turn up on a motorbike, the guy wants sex with the girl but she says no & in his frustration he rips Brooke's doll apart as she looks on... Jump forward '18 Years Later' & Brooke (Maureen Money) is now a biology teacher who is having a hard time with a student named Dickens (Christopher Stryker) & his gang, Queenie (Millie Prezioso), Smiler (Jason Brill) & the gangs newest recruit ex-football star Jon-Jon (Christopher Cousins). Dickens decides to play a prank on Brooke & after finding out where she lives the gang fill plastic bags with mud from the swamp & splatter Brooke's house & pour it over her head as they jump on her roof. Brooke is understandably upset & after Dickens tries to rape her she decides to take revenge on her tormentors...Co-written, co-produced & directed by Douglas Grossman & also known as Raging Fury I thought Hell High wasn't anything special. The script by Grossman & Leo Evans is your basic tale of revenge although it takes a while to get to it, you can practically fast forward the entire first 45 minutes as virtually nothing happens, after that point they play the prank on Brooke & things all of a sudden become a lot more interesting as the exploitation elements kick in. Unfortunately I found the whole thing a bit on the tame side, sure someone throwing a bag of swamp mud over you would be upsetting but would it really turn you into a cold blooded killer? Don't forget that Dickens never actually rapes her either so that cannot be used as any reason. It's certainly nowhere near as exploitative or sleazy as some other revenge films such as the terrible I Spit on Your Grave (1979) or the utterly brilliant Angel of Vengeance (1981) which is how a film like this should be done, I mean the viewer needs to feel for the female victim & understand the motivations for what she's doing for the revenge part to have any real impact. The character's are OK but you never really care for anyone which is a problem, the dialogue is functional & nothing else. It's one of those films which is OK to watch to pass the time but if your looking for something outstanding than you won't find it here. I'd imagine I'd have totally forgotten it by the middle of next week.Director Grossman does an OK job on what must have been a low budget, while it isn't going to win any awards for technical achievement it looks OK & occasionally has a nice sleazy atmosphere, it just doesn't sustain it for long enough. There are a few scenes of nudity but nothing that memorable & there's not much in the way of blood or gore either, two people are impaled on spikes, someone has their head bashed in with a rock, someone has a pencil stick in their head, someone is impaled on a poker & someone has a knife cut their throat & none of it is that graphic or shocking.Hell High (a title which makes no logical sense) is quite well made considering it's low budget roots although the music was quite good. The acting was OK but nothing special & Mooney is dull & forgettable as Brooke while lead villain Stryker died of AID's almost two years before the film was eventually released as it was shot in 1986 but not released until 1989.Hell High isn't a particularly good film but at the same time I don't think it's a particularly bad one, it's just all very average & uninspiring. There are much better revenge films out there, watch only if you've got nothing better to do.

cleartrampoline Hell High is one of your typical, bad, 80s horror films, and then again there are many things in it that are not so typical. For instance, none of the characters are likable or even sane. Usually you find at least one sane person in a slasher movie but not here. Everybody is pretty much crazy. At any rate that doesn't really matter, it still delivers good fun. I recommend renting the DVD with the Joe Bob Briggs commentary and don't even bother to watch it without the commentary, Joe Bob Briggs brings humor and fun facts into the viewing reminiscent of MST3K. His commentary really brings your enjoyment of the film up a notch by giving some where are they now comments, as well as commentary on why this film is different from the typical teen slasher. I give it a high rating based mainly on this commentary track.

Gafke This is the stupidest film I've seen since "Zombie Nightmare." A little girl with blond pigtails and a frilly pink dress (The Bad Seed, anyone?) accidentally kills a teenage biker and his girlfriend by throwing swamp mud into their faces while they are driving. The two are thrown and impaled on some conveniently placed stakes and the girl runs away, forever scarred and guilt ridden. Fast forward about 20 years and the pigtailed little cretin is now a science teacher at a local high school. Her students are unruly and disrespectful and when she slaps one arrogant jerk across the face, he vows revenge. He and his loser friends - cast an overweight nerd, a slut and a dumb jock - attack the teacher in her house one night, throwing handfuls of green swamp muck against her windows and dancing on her roof whilst wearing Halloween masks. Of course, they take the whole thing Too Far and the already mentally fragile teacher snaps, running around the rest of the movie in a silky nightie with a machete in one hand. This really isn't a typical slasher, if you want the truth. The terrorized teens all deserve what they get, displaying no morals whatsoever and basically proving themselves to be every bit as psychotic as their teacher. There are some nice touches to be found here: the killer is a woman, the slut swings both ways and the one guy with a thin moral streak is only Doing The Right Thing to save his own bright future. This film doesn't suffer from unoriginality - it suffers from painful stupidity. The script is horrible, the cast can't act worth a damn and the situations that arise are so utterly implausible that you'll be wondering if this was set in some parallel dimension where common sense doesn't exist. For example: the proper reaction upon finding your next door neighbor covered with mud and crouched in front of her broken window with a machete in her hand is NOT to force feed her some 'ludes and then leave! Good gods, who wrote this? A 5 year old with ADD?Once again, Joe Bob Briggs and his comedy commentary make this a much more bearable viewing experience. Otherwise, this is a terrible 80s slasher, filled with all of the hideous fashions of that depressing decade. A couple of graphic murders may impress gore fans, but sitting through the other 70 odd minutes just isn't worth the effort. I've seen more interesting toilet bowl stains.