School may be out, but Horror High is in!

You think you had it bad in high school? What you experienced is a cake walk compared to what hapless Vernon Potts (Pat Cardi) experiences on a daily basis. Played with authentic nerd brilliance, Cardi's Vernon is the heart, and soon-to-be twisted soul, of Horror High (AKA Twisted Brain). Left alone by his widower/travelling salesman father to practically raise himself, Vernon spends most of his time in the school's biology lab working on a not-so-clearly defined experiment with a guinea pig named Mr. Mumps. When he's not in the lab, Vernon is viciously bullied by a jock d-bag named Roger (Mike McHenry), mocked by his Phys. Ed. instructor Coach McCall (genuine Dallas Cowboy John Niland) and given some Mommie Dearest-type discipline by the hard-ass English teacher Miss Grindstaff (Joy Hash). Just when things can't get any worse, the school's drunk janitor makes poor Vernon drink a beaker of fluid that looks like it was used to dye Easter eggs. The fluid is the key to Vernon's experiment. Needless to say, things go horribly wrong as Vernon's monstrous alter-ego scratches names off of his enemies list.

Filmed on-the-cheap in Texas, this seedy 70s variation on the Jekyll and Hyde story is one earth-toned slice of midnight cheese. You know you're in for a good time when the movie opens with cinematic history's most maudlin theme song. It makes the lyrics from You Light Up My Life sound like they were swiped from Leonard Cohen's notebook. The audience is then treated to a parade of teens riding Schwinn bikes while dressed in the standard issue Earth shoes, Huck-a-Poo shirts and bell bottoms fresh off the rack from Two Guys department store. The mood is so groovy that you can almost smell the Hai Karate. What follows after the credits is an 80 minute smorgasbord of sophomoric bullying, authentic acne, stilted dialogue, bad lighting, bizarre moustache twitching, severed fingers, a severed mannequin head, mutant rodents, human and animal skeletons, smokey acid vats, huge sideburns, pestle beatings, macrame, football cleat stomping and a transformed monster man who looks like a mash-up of Randall "Tex" Cobb and Andy Robinson's Scorpio killer from Dirty Harry (post beat down).

If all that wasn't enough, b-movie badass Austin (Assault on Precinct 13) Stoker shows up as badass police detective determined to get to the bottom of the bizarre business going down. How badass is Stoker's cop? He's so badass that he's introduced with a music cue that's so funky it sounds like Billy Preston's Slaughter score if it had be written by Boo Radley. But that's not all! "Mean" Joe Greene, fresh from his iconic Coke commercial, turns up during the film's climax as a shotgun-wielding police patrolman.

If you're a cheesy movie aficionado, you owe it to yourself to pick up the uncut, restored 35th Anniversary Special Edition DVD of Horror High from Code Red. It's a fun, laugh riot horror flick and the disc has a heaping helping of cool extras. Pick it up today and your mood ring will be all aglow.

Do You Dare Look into The Hypnotic Eye?

We open on a gorgeous, young blonde, dressed in a nightgown walking into frame. A bath towel is draped around her neck and she holds a bottle of shampoo. The odd thing is that she's not coming from or going to the bathroom. She stops in the middle of her apartment, pops the bottle cap and proceeds to lather her hair. A few seconds later she turns on the gas stove range. Instead of putting the kettle on for a spot of tea, she dips her head in the flame and turns herself into a human torch.

That's the first scene of 1960s The Hypnotic Eye - and brother, if that doesn't grab you by the boo-boo, I don't know what will. Written by William Read Woodfield, a professional Hollywood photographer and part-time magician/entertainer, and his wife Gitta, The Hypnotic Eye is the story of super square Detective Sergeant Steve Kennedy (Joe Partridge), his cute-as-a-button girlfriend Marcia (Marcia Henderson) and French hypnotist "The Great Desmond" (Jacques Bergerac). Kennedy's investigating a recent rash of self-mutilations performed by good-looking young women, the latest victim being Marcia's friend Dodie (Merry Andrews). In what should be glaringly obvious to our hero, the heavily-accented hypnotist and his assistant/lover Justine (Allison Hayes of Attack of the 50ft. Woman fame) are behind these terrible crimes.

In addition to being a fun horror/mystery movie, The Hypnotic Eye is also a prime example of gimmick horror. Taking a page (or stealing a page) out of the great William Castle's book, the Woodfields and director George Blair concocted "HypnoMagic" a state-of-the-art film making process in which the viewing audience would be hypnotized during the middle of the movie. During that sequence of the movie, the only thing the audience will be compelled to do is giggle. But The Hypnotic Eye is not an Ed Wood movie. In fact, with some casting changes, a script polish and little more money, this movie probably could have been a classic contender. Blair's direction is competent, the cast is game, the story is good and the effects work is downright scary and gory. Add in lots of cigarette smoking, poorly performed jazz, a doctor who sounds like he should be pitching pennies in an alley, a criminal psychologist who likes to walk around in his robe showing off his man boobs, "The King of the Beatniks" performing his howlingly awful poem "Confessions of a B-Movie Addict" and, of course, one hypnotic eye, and you've got the ingredients for the perfect midnight movie.

If you miss the days of Saturday afternoon UHF monster movie shows or were too young to experience them, pick up a copy of The Hypnotic Eye, available for the first time ever on DVD from the Warner Archives Collection.