Michel Sargent, contributor
Three hapless grade school troublemakers in boarding school get Zero For Conduct (1933) and begin plotting their way out of continuous Sunday detentions. After finding the attic store of ammunition the whole class makes a Jolly Roger and declare surreal war with “dirty cans and smelly boots, liberty or death!”
Influenced by Zero For Conduct, the film If… (1968) finds Malcolm McDowell in a tyrant-run boarding school with the usual assortment of sadistic bullies, uncaring teachers, and touchy-feely priests. His study walls are a collage of family values pictures and war which foreshadow the impending revolution. “Death to the oppressors!”
Class Of 1984 (1984) starts out innocent enough; terribly cheesy Alice Cooper song, shot of school parking lot. Then at 2 minutes teacher Roddy McDowall closes his gun-toting briefcase and walks into a school with roaming drug-dealing punk gangs, no wall left un-graffitied, and Michael J. Fox getting licked by a tough girl. Basically A Clockwork Orange meets Three O’clock High with a disturbingly violent teacher vs punks finale.
In a distant past future, gangs have taken over sections of most cities leading the Department of Educational Defense to install experimental androids — *ahem* “battle droids” to oversee the Class of 1999 (1990). Led by a mustachioed new wave albino with a sweet rattail mullet, the machinegun-wielding cyborgucators apply corporal punishment liberally and trick rival gangs into a firefight in a “bad, fucked-up, George Jetson nightmare.”
The muck dripping from a frozen prehistoric fish causes a dog to grow large fangs, turns a dragonfly gigantified, and a professor into a Monster On The Campus (1958). The professor morphs into a “stoned” age man-monster after smoking the dragonfly blood that accidentally dripped into the bowl of his pipe. Dude…
Horror High (1974) is full of strange music, creepy arm-wrestling teachers, creepier students, and a nerdy weirdo everyone calls a “creeper.” The crazy-eyed school janitor forces said nerd to take an experimental chemical that turns him into a homicidal maniac when his tormentors are near (including a very awkward golf cleat-footed gym coach stomping).
Though the gatekeeper’s dog is not enthused, the girls swoon when a new teacher arrives in Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory (1962). The teacher, “proven innocent in a court of law” of something, is assured by the headmaster that the girl who fainted is “just coming of age” and not to worry. Actually they should probably worry about the other teacher/student liaisons, the blackmailing and the hairy monster roaming the forest.
An angry, stubborn high school tough doesn’t want psyche hypnosis from the psychologist who enjoys using hypnotherapy on teen boys to make them more agreeable to authority in I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957). The doctor uses an experimental serum to bring out primitive instincts while a plucky reporter is determined to find the truth of some recent killings. Sort of a cross between Monster On The Campus and Horror High with a touch of Werewolf in A Girl’s Dormitory (and better than all three).
Have a great summer!
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