Horror High

Considering the budget, I have to say this movie really succeeded. It had some great seat-jumper moments far above what I hoped to see in a film of this caliber. The chemistry test scene was utterly delicious. The acting was really very good -- you could tell everyone was serious about making this movie even though they really had no business doing that. The pace was good, the story was sound, the makeups and costumes were good (especially with what had to be a buck-ninety-eight effects bankroll), most of the camera work and stuff was pretty good. And so it actually worked! Unexpected in a movie that dares to take "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" into the recess yard.

While very low-budget, this is still a pretty enjoyable simple horror film. A gawky, geeky high school student gets bullied by his teachers and classmates. He gets revenge.

How he gets revenge is foreshadowed by the fact that the movie begins during an English class in which the teacher has finished showing the first half of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde movie. Twisted Brain is itself a sort of Jekyll and Hyde remake. The student accidentally handed in a biology report instead of his paper on Stevenson, and the teacher gives him an F on the Stevenson report, and chops his biology paper up with her paper cutter. Those old paper cutters are like machetes! Turns out the student was working on a potion to change the physical strength of living creatures. After his guinea pig kills the janitor's cat, the janitor forces him to drink the potion for some reason, and there's conveniently a barrel of acid in the lab....

Meanwhile, he finds he's less shy in his normal form and starts warming up to a girl he had a crush on. Like Jekyll, the potion also starts trying to change him even when he hasn't drunk it.

I watched it on one of the DVDs in Rhino's Horrible Horrors Vol. 1 box set. It's not horrible, just cheap. Apart from the gore scenes, it almost feels like a Saturday morning TV movie. It's too bad there's not a commentary track.

Interesting coincidence between myself and many of the reviewers who were scared by this movie; we were all 11 or younger when we saw it, and it was always on late night t.v.! There are two reasons for this; irresponsible parents letting us watch t.v. alone that late, and irresponsible t.v. stations showing violence this graphic, even late at night. The movie, shot on dark 16 mm, depicts scenes of fingers graphically sliced off by paper cutters, teenage students savagely beaten by psychotic janitors, a janitor who gets dissolved by acid, graphic shots of a sadistic coach being shredded by the lead character wearing cleats, and much, much more. There is a curious reality to these scenes, lent to it by the matter-of-fact grittiness and low-budget camerawork; they are shot with a definite leaning toward sadism, and it is curious this was allowed on network t.v. even late at night in the mid-seventies. Everyone in this movie, save for a few characters, is sadistic. The lead character suffers a particularly brutal death, as his angelic girlfriend watches, helpless to save him. The end. Not a view of the world you want your ten year-old kid watching. (Though today's ten year-olds are completing their collection of serial-killer trading cards.)

I saw this again years later, and rather than being scared, was simply depressed by the mean-spiritedness of the film and actually annoyed at the picked-on "sympathetic" lead character; had this kid ever heard of changing schools? Of course this is the kind of setting where there is only one high school in a hundred miles.

The acting is unbelievably bad, save for the title actor, and Austin Stoker, who acts as if he's in a better movie than he is as the police detective. One gets the feeling that he had some control over which scenes he appeared in (his character follows up after the sickening scenes of violence, but does not appear in them), and that he must have known at some point that this movie wasn't going to propel his career upwards. It's interesting how many actors (excluding Stoker) in this film never made another one, including the lead. One wonders why? Three out of ten stars.

Scrawny, but good-natured Vernon(PAT CARDI, in a memorable performance) is a science-minded high school nerd, and an unassuming human target for cruelty who's belittled and abused by nearly everyone he knows(moronic jock schoolmates, choleric teachers, the psycho janitor, etc.). He concocts and ingests a substance which renders him a Jeckyll/Hyde type beast, the more powerful and assertive(and certainly more dangerous)persona emerging sporadically to become the "normal" Vernon's savage avenger. A sharp and suspicious investigator has his eye on Vernon, as does the school beauty queen(because the prettiest girl in school is always in love with the skinny, picked-on science geek. She knows he's gonna be rich some day...)

This bouncy little Crown International Pictures wonder was a perennial staple on late-night creature feature shows during the 70s and 80s, and those of a certain bracket remember it fondly. Folks today should get a kick out of its funky retro panache, and they may be surprised by the potent violence in some scenes(nicely punctuated by jarring heavy-reverb guitar thrums).

An all time great...of sorts. 7/10.

I am so pleased to see so many people have seen this movie....of course...late night on Elvira or Grimsley. My sister and I used to laugh hysterically at this. I mean with a name like Vernon Potts..you're going to get picked on! We used to say lines from this movie...we knew it word for word!

So now we are in the DVD age and I am looking to replace the really bad and really old VHS copy I made from one of our late night viewings! I need to add this one to my collection.

But on to the film......Everything about it shows the start of teen horror flicks. These guys pioneered the "outcast teenager". This is Carrie, Prom Night......all the horror flicks of the eighties.

I especially like the drawn out interogation of Vernon by the detective. The delays in response, as if they are reading from cue cards, is hysterical.

I really am pleased, like the rest of you, to know that I am not the only one who watched this movie and remembered it all these years.