TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Sam Panico When horror movies have socially maladjusted kids getting abused by popular football players while showing how attractive girls can still fall for them, they're playing directly to their demographic. How many fright fans felt the same way or endured the same stings and arrows as the hero of this film?Everybody beats the crap of Vernon. His fellow students hate him. His teachers despise him. Even the janitor. His only friend is Robin (Rosie Holotik, Nurse Charlotte from Don't Look in the Basement), who is dating the main football player who abuses him. And his other friend, the mouse known as Mr. Mumps? Well, he's taking a mind-altering potion that Vernon's developed that makes the little fella super violent. In fact, it makes him so brutal that it kills the janitor's cat, who flips out and smashes the little fellow and forces Vernon to drink his own potion.Pat Cardi, the actor who played Vernon, was a busy child star, playing in over 100 TV shows and appearing as a young chimp in Battle for the Planet of the Apes. He grew up to create and found MovieFone, which in the pre-internet days was how people discovered what films were playing in theaters.Austin Stoker (Assault on Precinct 13, Abby) plays the detective who comes into the school once Vernon starts killing. The murder scenes form a proto-slasher vibe while the music is crazy, with primal power chords accentuating big moments (think the guitar sound from the Torso trailer). It also features Pittsburgh Steelers star "Mean" Joe Greene in a small role. If you live here in the Steel City, you need no introduction to Mean Joe. If you live elsewhere, he's the player who threw a jersey to the kid in the Coca-Cola commercial. He's also in The Black Six, one of the first all-black biker films, along with other NFL names like Gene Washington, Mercury Morris, Lem Barney, Willie Lanier and Carl Eller.At heart, this is a Jekyll & Hyde story (it's Carrie before Carrie, too) but told as if it were a 1950's teen monster movie refilmed through a 1970's doom-laden lens. Its script comes from Jack Fowler, who is really J.D. Feigelson, writer of Wes Craven's Chiller and Dark Night of the Scarecrow.The film - also known as The Twisted Brain - was shot in Texas and released by Crown International in March of 1974 to the drive-in circuit. It really picked up its cult cache thanks to frequent TV airings. Code Red put out an uncut version on blu-ray in 2009, following a Rhino release of the TV version of the film. They're both rather hard to get now, but worth seeking out. I found myself really liking this film, despite its budget and relative silliness at times

Leofwine_draca HORROR HIGH is a very cheap, cheesy, and inadequate horror feature from the team at Crown International Pictures. It's a film that doesn't have a great deal going for it, aside from the relatively unusual (for the time) high school setting, something that would of course become ubiquitous with the advent of the slasher genre and '80s horror in general.The annoying Pat Cardi plays a usual high school nerd type character who finds himself bullied and put upon by his peers and superiors. Inevitably he injects himself with a super-serum that turns him into a monster of kinds, and he then goes on a killing spree. Basically it's a Jekyll & Hyde story with an American high school setting.The quality of the print I watched on Talking Pictures TV was truly horrendous, which I suppose does add to the grindhouse experience. HORROR HIGH is quite substandard, with slapdash kill scenes and overacting throughout making it hard to watch at times. The make-up for the monster is truly pathetic. The only thing of interest is seeing Austin Stoker, the cop from ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, playing...you guessed it, a cop. A somewhat unconnected sequel, RETURN TO HORROR HIGH, followed in 1987.

BA_Harrison High school nerd Vernon Potts (Pat Cardi) spends every spare minute of his day in the school lab trying to perfect his formula for enhancing his guinea pig's physiology; when the rodent finally mutates and kills the janitor's cat, the moggie's furious owner forces Vernon to drink his own potion, causing the usually meek student to become an uncontrollable monster driven to settle the score with anyone who has ever made his life a misery.Vernon's chemical concoction might be a scientific revelation, but the formula for this film is nowhere near as ground-breaking, following in the well-trodden footsteps of numerous Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde rip-offs; but even though the film is predictable stuff, there is still plenty of fun to be had from this contemporary take on the Robert Louis Stevenson classic.The cast is surprisingly good, Cardi impressing as the affable biology buff, scrumptious redhead Rosie Holotik (as caring classmate Robin Jones) making for an appealing love interest, and Austin Stoker putting in a decent turn as Lieutenant Bozeman, the cop tasked with solving all the murders at the school. A reasonable helping of gore also adds to the enjoyment factor, gruesome highlights including a bloody face-melt, a corpse in an acid vat, Vernon's nasty English teacher losing her fingers under a guillotine blade, and the school's coach being trampled to death by Vernon wearing spiked running shoes. The film ends on a suitably tragic note, Vernon gunned down by the police in front of a horrified Robin.

stones78 The teaser plot about a high school student getting revenge on others who pick on him intrigued me enough to check this film out, even though I expected slight disappointment, and that's what I got, but the film had some good parts as well. Horror High puts the low in low budget, as I read that the budget was only $67,000, and that's even low for 1973 standards. It begins with a very cheesy song, and I almost expected the Partridge Family to be the performers, but it kept my interest anyway as young Vernon, the chemistry geek, gets bullied and teased because he wears David Byrne style glasses and is thin. Sounds like a good reason to me, doesn't it? Soon after, we meet Mr. Mumps, a guinea pig who's about to become a meal for the janitor's cat; even the janitor(Jeff Alexander)picks on Vernon. Since Vernon's a chemistry whiz, he mixes up some potion, and becomes a monster in the tired Jekyll and Hyde routine's that been beaten to death over the years. Without going into much detail, those who mocked Vernon are killed by him in goofy ways, like metal cleats stomping the much larger and stronger gym teacher to death in what is a facepalm moment. The meaner Vernon looks like a cross between Teen Wolf and a guy with motor oil splashed on his body. Pat Cardi did a fine job playing the tortured student with what he was given, and for some weird reason, there's some NFL players scattered throughout the film, like Mean Joe Greene(who actually kills Vernon, he plays a cop), Craig Morton, Calvin Hill, and John Niland, who has some scenes as the doomed gym teacher; that's probably what I'll remember most about Horror High, or the odd placement of music and sounds. I thought Paul Kent, who's not even mentioned in the credits for some reason on IMDb, had a few nice scenes as Vernon's dad, and even shares a phone call with his son, yet he's basically ignored during the latter half of the film, and I thought the writers missed a good chance of them meeting and the father potentially helping his son during the ordeal, but it never happened. I would say only watch this film if you have to, but please don't go out of your way to view it.