Where have we seen this before? Years earlier there had been a massacre at this school, and no one had been brought to book for it. Now a horror film is being made there, and of course, there are more murders. That doesn't sound so bad, but what follows is so confusing that it is almost impossible to follow. To take just one example, after leaping from a high window to evade the fiend who has just murdered her lover, a young woman ends up in a car with the bad guy miraculously behind her. The crew applaud, it's all part of the filming, then her head is hacked off, so the bad guy was real? No, because next we see her waking up in bed from a nightmare. Totally and utterly confusing; the soundtrack isn't bad, but nothing can rescue this one.

Some bad horror movies know exactly what they're after, and RETURN TO HORROR HIGH toys with an audience who thinks they know what the characters are doing and where the story's going, and why...Beginning in the present time, exterior night, as a tough yet gentle-giant-type police chief and a doting, surreptitiously perverse female officer, played by BRADY BUNCH oldest Maureen McCormick, are outside a high school where a multi-mutilation of bodies are a mysterious result from a confusing aftermath: Then cutting back to a horror flick being shot inside the school centering on a string of deaths that had occurred years before... Confused yet?Well there are plenty of head-scratching moments that all eventually add up to a much more worthwhile drive-in homage than most video rentals from the middle eighties. A young, mullet-donning George Clooney plays a primadonna pretty boy actor on the verge of stardom, and he's the first to walk off the safety of the set - into the ghostly halls of the spooky high school, a dry ice saturated locale that could have worked even if HORROR was more of a serious venture.The weakest aspect (in a movie that needs anything it can to work) is no-name leading man Brendan Hughes as the former cop who was there when it happened and now, replacing Clooney, he's the film-within-a-film's star along with an actress who makes up for him, in spades: THE DAY AFTER's subtle beauty Lori Lethin plays several people - or maybe just one?At times of utter confusion she's always fun to watch either scared to death, combating males, or being oblivious to the body count/bloodshed surrounding...Also starring former ALICE child actor turned awkward lean teen Philip McKeon with OVER THE EDGE father and son Andy Romano and Michael Kramer along with the movie's movie's pretentious director and slimy producer Scott Jacoby and Alex Rocco plus former 1950's stud Vince Edwards, RETURN TO HORROR HIGH is a cat batting a ball of colorful string, unveiling itself creatively as it's surprisingly good: enough for horror fans to not have to take it seriously enough to feel cheated of their beloved genre, and the casual viewer could very well be entertained if they'd give in and... as the saying goes... go with it. (cultfilmfreaks.com)

"Return To Horror High" has always been something that has passed me by through the years, as there have been a lot of other slashers from this era that have always interested me more, and so one day I came across this and thought oh what the hell, just give it a chance and when I did see it, I thought well it's okay, hit and miss definitely but on the whole not bad, but not all that great either.Well for starters the plot was quite interesting, where we get a film crew filming a horror movie based on the murders that happened at the same school many years ago and surprise, surprise it happens again. Plus it also has another soon to be star in the making namely George Clooney makes a small appearance in this as an actor playing a cop on the movie set and this was back in the days where he wasn't quite a star yet and still making b-movies like "Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes". Also the performances in this movie on the whole was pretty good and even the entire movie was well shot and looked really professional.This clearly aims to be a tongue in cheek nod and self aware type parody to slasher movies, along the lines of "April Fool's Day" and "Evil Laugh" which both came out during the same decade. Here we get a director aiming for more blood and nudity (in the film itself) instead of scares, storytelling and tension, which was a fun aspect of this movie and while this goes for a more slapstick and goofy approach and tries to mix it in with the horror aspect, well sadly it just doesn't quite gel together and the whole tone gets lost and ruined. Also the jumping between time-lines and certain scenes where you think you are watching someone getting killed but turns out to be a scene for the film within film just gets confusing and muddled. The most annoying thing about this though is that it just lacks the cleverness and wit that it should have had and especially given the way it's shot.All in all "Return To Horror High" is quite a fun watch in a campy way with hilarious performances, but the interesting approach and idea of mixing horror and goofiness are just wasted.

"Return to Horror High" is a decently enjoyable cheesy slasher from the time.**SPOILERS**Following a grisly murder, film-makers Josh Forbes, (Scott Jacoby) and Freddie, (Dexter Hamlet) as well as the rest of their crew, Callie Cassidy, (Lori Lethin) Donny Porter, (Eric Kramer) Sheri Haines, (Darcy DeMoss) Stephen Blake, (Brendan Hughes) and Peter, (Larry Spinak) along with producer Harry Sleerik, (Alex Rocco) rent out the abandoned school where it happened for the shooting of a horror flick. As they're involved with the production, a rumor spreads about the school being the site of a series of murders years earlier, which Chief Deyner, (Pepper Martin) and Officer Tyler, (Maureen McCormick) begin to investigate after the fact. As the film shoot goes on, they suddenly start to realize that the film is being played out for real with a homicidal lunatic on the loose. With the struggle to finish the film coinciding with the disappearing cast, the race to solve both problems is tackled on both ends.The Good News: This here was a rather fine slasher with some good parts to it. The general humor and cheese that it has which give it most of it's watchability. The film has a fair share of jokes and gags in here, and most of them actually work, giving this one a really nice level of cheese when this one really decides to let loose with it. This is mostly used in the final half when it uses this to help make it far more entertaining through it's ridiculous cheese. From there, it has a bunch of fun from the relatively fun and enjoyable different amounts of action that the film has. It even features enough blood and gore in here to make it feel like one of the usual slashers with all of the blood and gore gags within. Featuring enough severed limbs, mutilated body parts, slicing, stabbings and much more in here, there's enough blood and guts that it manages to feel like an ordinary slasher of the time period. There's even enough some good decapitation effects here that manage to get some good fun from it. The cheesy scare effects, mainly the school room with the movie-shoot head popping out, and a later gag where a supposed flashback turns out to be a film-shot sequence involving gallons of paint used as blood on the set for the shot. Mixed together with it's incredibly fun last half, with the really good chase sequences coupled with the nudity and fun, give this one the best features.The Bad News: This one here doesn't have a whole lot of flaws, but the ones are pretty big. One of the big ones is that there's a couple of real parts here that don't make any sense at all. There are way too many flashbacks, nightmares and scenes from the movie-within-the-movie to keep track. Why there's any need for it to do this is never explained, and why there's nothing to explain what the purpose is. The fact that this one really should've had one that kept the style in check and only used one rather than switching between the three, and even worse is that choosing between them is incredibly hard to do. It uses them at random to stick in plot points but trying to decide which one it actually is manages to work into a real headache at times. Another annoying thing about it though is how it constantly jumps between plots. We start out with the police investigation of the murders, then we go back to the horror film production, and then back once more to the murders the film is based on, which turns out to be the movie being made. It sounds confusing, and it is. It is just incredibly confusing to decide what's going to happen through the different plots that there's nothing at all to determine the order of what's going on in the order of the plot. This one here is really confusing and manages to get the differences along the way really hard to pick out. The mask in here is quite terrible and really looks quite cheap with the way it appears. The last flaw is the terribly aggravating series of twists at the end that just go on-and-on without accomplishing anything. It's a series of one lame twist after another, and it ends the film on a sour note. These here work against the film.The Final Verdict: A rather good cheesy entry in the slasher genre at the time, if only it would've had a more sensible plot and no confusion. Still, give this one a chance if in the mood for these kinds of films or enjoy slashers as a whole, while those who will not appreciate the cheese or prefer more serious ones should heed caution.Rated R: Violence, Nudity and Language