Zombie High (1987)

(In French, On Cable TV, June 2021) When you think about it, the best mind-bender when programming a weekend-long zombie movie marathon is to throw in a zombie film that isn’t. So it is that when the local horror channel delivered a slew of zombie movies over three days, Zombie High found itself on the schedule… despite not having much to do with zombies. The effect is frankly refreshing. Taken by itself, however, it’s not that much of a movie. Featuring a boarding school student (played by the very cute but clearly twentysomething Virginia Madsen) who discovers that the faculty of her new school is extracting the vital essence of her fellow students in order to remain forever young, it’s a film that’s not quite horrific and yet not really comic. If I correctly understand Zombie High’s production history, this is essentially an overblown film school student project that somehow snagged Madsen and a few other actors to produce something that was commercially viable in the 1980s video market. As a result, don’t necessarily expect something finely controlled — the script is maybe halfway to satisfaction, the technical credentials are rough even for the 1980s B-movie market and there are so many missed opportunities along the way that the thing becomes more frustrating than entertaining. There are a few surprises—including, why not, a car chase—but when everything is mixed together, it often feels like two or three movies thrown together. But at least Zombie High wasn’t about zombies… so that made it a bit of a surprise. Your context may feel different.