High School is Hell: 5 Horror Movies The Bell Can’t Even Save You From
Back-to-school season is upon us. And for some, that means it’s time to stock up on pencils, pens, filler paper, Pee-Chee folders, and blunt-tip scissors. But for horror fans, this time of year serves as a welcome excuse to revisit some of our favorite cinematic efforts set in a scholastic locale. Whether it’s slashers unfolding on a college campus or satanic panic at an idyllic private school you seek, we’ve got you covered.
The following films are guaranteed to get you primed for back to school (whatever that may look like for you) and will also serve as a logical springboard into the Halloween season. Heck yes!
Detention
This meta-horror is noteworthy for many reasons. In addition to being a witty sendup of stalk-and-slash conventions and a gory good time, the flick also predicted our current cultural fixation with the ‘90s. The flick unfolds at Grizzly Lake High, where Principal Verge (Dane Cook) has sentenced a group of students linked to a deadly viral video to a day of detention. Through the course of paying their penance, the classmates come to the sobering realization that the world, as they know it, is poised to end. With the aid of a time machine (which is cleverly disguised as their school mascot) and their knowledge of horror movies, perhaps the classmates can stop their existence from grinding to a screeching halt. If this frenetic effort doesn’t get you ready to go back to school, I fear nothing will.
The House on Sorority Row
This slasher picture sees a group of sorority gals playing a prank on their frigid housemother, Mrs. Slater. When their attempt at humor backfires and the battle-axe turns up dead, the sisters don’t really want to cancel their graduation party, so they decide it best to stash Mrs. Slater for a beat and regroup after the festivities. Bad move, ladies. Bad move. What follows is a twisted tale of revenge that sees the mischievous tarts getting their comeuppance. The House on Sorority Row is mandatory viewing for anyone heading back to school this fall. It’s fun, silly, and full of valuable life lessons. The most important of which is: Don’t stash your dead house mother in your dirty pool while you have a rager. It’s not nice and will almost certainly lead to your untimely death.
The Faculty
This science fiction-infused horror effort is like The Breakfast Club with genre tropes. And it features a soundtrack guaranteed to put you in a ‘90s nostalgia coma. The flick follows a group of high school students from different cliques as they make the realization that their teachers have been overtaken by alien lifeforms. The Faculty plays on the innate distrust of authority most adolescents feel and weaves that into a paranoid narrative that delivers thrills and chills in equal measure. If you’re dreading the return to academia, a rewatch of The Faculty is sure to remind you that it could always be worse. Much worse.
Satan’s School for Girls
This flick is the distilled essence of ‘70s cheese. Satanic panic mounts as an all-female private school becomes a hotbed of unexplained deaths, prompting Elizabeth (Pamela Franklin) to go undercover to look into the apparent suicide of her sister. The flick features a cast of up-and-comers, including future Angels, Cheryl Ladd, and Kate Jackson. While the picture definitely looks and feels like a product of its time, it is, nonetheless, atmospheric and gets surprisingly dark on occasion. Satan’s School for Girls is sure to put you in the right headspace to tackle another school year. Just be wary of instructors with devilish good looks and hypnotic charm. Evil comes in many forms.
Urban Legend
For a while, the ‘90s were looked upon as a dead zone for genre cinema. But hindsight is 20/20, leading us to the realization that the age of Nirvana was a pretty bitchin’ time to be a horror fan. Among the noteworthy output of the era is Urban Legend. The picture unfolds on a New England college campus where a vengeful killer is offing students with aid of folklore. This 1998 slasher picture is filled with cameos from genre film royalty and features a twisty narrative that leads to an epic showdown that sees Rebecca Gayheart chewing up the scenery as Brenda, the film’s unstable antagonist.
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