Horror High
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson provides the basis for Horror High (1973). As if audience members might not pick up on this, the film opens in an English classroom where the teacher, Miss Grindstaff (Joy Hash), shows the 1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The folding screen at the front of the classroom isn't pictured, but Spencer Tracy's background voice is unmistakeable.
Horror High cost $67,000 and took two weeks to film on location in Dallas and Irving, Texas. It tells the story of a picked upon science nerd, Vernon Potts (Pat Cardi), his biological experiments with his guinea pig, Mr. Mumps, the animal's transformation into a vicious, though small, monster, and Vernon's drinking of the transformative potion enabling him to strike back at his tormentors.
Miss Grindstaff, in her forties, what used to be called a spinster, looks like a (much nicer) teacher I had in first grade: cats eye glasses, narrow face. She pounces on Vernon every time he's leaving class, chastising his work performances on tests and papers. In his intellectual fog, he hands in notes on his biology project instead of the Jekyll and Hyde paper. After she upbraids him, she slices his biology papers into fragments with a large and exquisitely sharp paper cutter on her desk. She loves slicing paper with this thing, even uses it during test periods. Were I a student in her class, I would find this distracting.
A janitor, Mr. Griggs, also bullies Vernon who often stays after school hours to work on his Mr. Mumps project. Griggs looks like he spends his day hours sleeping on a sidewalk. His animus towards Vernon, though unclear, fits with the general feeling in the school that this eyeglasses-wearing social reject should be treated badly at all times. The physical education teacher, Coach McCall (proud of his ability to defeat any challenger at arm wrestling) is also an asshole. He offers a deal with Vernon whereby his student can be excused from p.e. classes (so he can work in the biology lab) as long as he tutors football star Roger Davis, a popular dickhead whose only name for Vernon is "Creeper."
Robin Jones (redhead Rosie Holotik, who resembles Dakota Fanning), Roger's girlfriend, likes Vernon though her motive may have something to do with her own need for tutoring. Nevertheless, she's nice to him, turning away from Roger after the jock gets arrested and held in jail temporarily as a suspect in the murders of Miss Grindstaff and the truly creepy janitor, Griggs. Robin doesn't know
that her new love interest (or rebound), Vernon, has on a few occasions ingested a transformative blue potion, turning him into a homicidal maniac.
The janitor gets it first, head dunked into a sulfuric acid vat (good thing to have around in a high school). Miss Grindstaff loses some of her fingers and her head to the paper cutter's downward strokes. Coach McCall also dies, pounded to a pulp by Vernon, whose Mr. Hyde drink bestows the kind of super-strength and exceptional agility that could earn him an A in physical education class.
Roger gets the shit and life beaten out of him; this, on the same night Vernon received his first kiss from a girl, the lovely Robin. Vernon dies a virgin with seven or eight police bullets in his body.
High school-related massacres had a different tone in movies prior to 1999 and Columbine High.
Horror High has enough entertainment value to make it worth watching. Pat Cardi as Vernon is pretty good. Larry N. Stouffer, the director, indulges in many creative camera angles and movements. I've sat through worse, including some big budget movies even more ridiculous than Horror High. Mike Nichols' Wolf (1994) starring Jack Nicholson as a lycanthrope comes to mind.
Vic Neptune
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