Overview: Teenage kicks take a decidedly dark turn in director Douglas Grossman’s Hell High – a twisted tale of delinquency pushed to its horrifying extreme, where Class of 1984 meets I Spit on Your Grave!

When high school football hero Jon-Jon (Breaking Bad’s Christopher Cousins) quits the team, he winds up falling in with a group of outcasts led by the sadistic Dickens (played to unhinged perfection by the late Christopher Stryker).

With a willing new recruit in tow, the gang’s youthful hi jinks soon spiral into a night of abject horror when they decide to play a cruel prank on the home of their teacher Miss Storm – who, unbeknownst to the youngsters, harbors a dark and tormented past. Hell High – which was released in some international territories as Raging Fury – is a singular entry in the late ’80s horror canon, melding elements of the revenge movie with the trappings of the slasher genre to delirious effect. School’s out… forever!

Blu-ray Verdict: In truth, I had no expectations of what this movie would be like when it was kindly sent to us for review and I sat down, late one night to review it thereafter.

I figured that it would be about a high school class menaced by some sort of slasher villain, but I had no way to prepare for the gritty and just plain weird film that I would be confronted with!

Unlike the typical slasher, this film finds itself spending time with the victim - high-school science teacher Ms. Brook Storm (Maureen Mooney), who is barely keeping it together after some repressed childhood trauma.

It’s also about a former quarterback named Jon-Jon who grows sick of the game and his sinister teammates, so he falls in with the delinquents like Dickens, Queenie and Smiler.

Speaking of that childhood trauma, it opens the film for in a swamp, a man and a woman are making love when he decides to start beating her with a doll that belongs to a little girl.

The little girl watches and grabs some mud, waiting for the two to leave the swamp. As they do, she throws it in the man’s eyes and he crashes, sending the man and woman into poles which impale them as the little girl stares at the accident she’s caused.

Yes, of course, that is Ms. Storm and this murder has now become an urban legend as some believe a swamp monster is the real cause of these two killings.

As Jon-Jon becomes part of this new gang, they decide to ruin the football game by driving on the field in the middle of a play and stealing the game ball. It might seem like this movie has become a teen sex comedy at this point, but don’t worry. Soon, it will stop meandering and get even stranger!

The gang now puts on Halloween masks and pelts Ms. Storm’s home with swamp mud before the shenanigans turn into full-blown sexual assault on her. You’d think that Queenie, the lone girl in the gang, would be against this, but even she joins in, subverting the very slasher nature that you expect from this film.

Hey, but don’t take it from me how weird this movie is. Joe Bob Briggs himself did the intro to the DVD release of this film back in the day and he even featured it on his old Drive-In Theater show, too!

In fact, as both that and Joe Bobs’ commentary are included here on this Blu-ray release, I agree with everything he says about the film, for this is an amazingly original slasher that more people need to see! This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.85:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the special features of:

Brand new 2K restoration from the original camera negative approved by cinematographer Steven Fierberg
High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
Original uncompressed stereo audio
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Brand new audio commentary with director/producer/co-writer Douglas Grossman and cinematographer Steven Fierberg
Archival audio commentary with director/producer/co-writer Douglas Grossman
Archival introduction and audio commentary with film critic Joe Bob Briggs
School’s Out! – a newly-filmed interview with director/producer/co-writer Douglas Grossman
A Beautiful Nightmare – a newly-filmed interview with cinematographer Steven Fierberg
Jon-Jon’s Journey – a newly-filmed interview with actor Christopher Cousins
The More the Better – a newly-filmed interview with actress Maureen Mooney
Music is Not Sound – a newly-filmed interview with composers Rich Macar and Christopher Hyams-Hart
Back to Schools: The Locations of Hell High – a tour of the original Hell High filming sites with author/filmmaker Michael Gingold
Archival video interviews with director/producer/co-writer Douglas Grossman and co-writer Leo Evans
Deleted Scene
Alternate Opening Titles
Trailers and TV Spots
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by Ralf Krause