recommended

Good concept, poorly executed.

A Brilliant Conflict

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The lovely and appealing Virginia Madsen stars here as Andrea, a young woman who wins a scholarship to a snooty prep school, which has only recently begun accepting female students. Her boyfriend Barry (James Wilder) has his misgivings about this institute of higher learning right from the start, but she tries to make a go of things. She eventually discovers that there is a sinister plot being engineered by the faculty, who are turning their students into emotionless automatons.The student film "Zombie High" is hard to completely dislike, but overall it misses the mark. An odd, awkward horror comedy, it's nothing more than a minor variation on the old "Stepford Wives" theme. Its attempts to be irreverent are sometimes amusing, but more often than not, they fall flat. It's got a few action sequences, but nothing terribly impressive. The makeup effects are basically adequate. There's an omnipresent rock soundtrack to sort of make things interesting.The performances are better than the material deserves. Also starring are Richard Cox ("Cruising") as a nice guy professor, Kay E. Kuter ('Green Acres', "The Last Starfighter"), who gives the best performance in the movie as the diabolical Dean Eisner, future film director Paul Feig ("Bridesmaids"), who has his moments as the aggressive, amorous Emerson, the extremely foxy Sherilyn Fenn, Scott Coffey ("Satisfaction") and Clare Carey ('Coach', "Waxwork").At least "Zombie High" manages some poignancy in its final act. It needs to get a demerit, though, for including one of the worst closing credits rock songs that this viewer has ever heard.Four out of 10.

This movie begins with a young 18-year old high school student named "Andrea" (Virginia Madsen) being dropped off at a prestigious prep school known as "Ettinger Academy" by her boyfriend "Barry" (James Wilder). And while Barry isn't too happy with the idea, Andrea is ecstatic at the opportunity that's been presented to her. Unfortunately, things aren't quite what they appear to be as there is definitely something odd with her fellow students. Now, although the movie title might cause some people to expect a film about brain dead sub-humans who feast upon human flesh, I should probably warn viewers that the "zombies" in this movie aren't the typical "Romero" type who have come into being due to a virus. Neither was there any black magic or voodoo involved in the creation of these "zombies". Such things weren't needed when there was something much more practical—medical science. At any rate, rather than disclose any more of the movie and risk spoiling the film for those who haven't seen it I will just say that I found it to be slightly disappointing for several reasons. First, although it had a decent cast I don't think any of the actors were given a script which worked to their advantage. Likewise, the comedy was flat and the horror was non-existent. Additionally, even though Sherilynn Fenn (as "Suzi") fit the part of a high school student I can't honestly say the same for Virginia Madsen. Put quite bluntly, she was a bit too mature for the role. That said, all things considered I rate the movie as slightly below average.

I love '80s movies. I love Horror Movies. So when I saw an old VHS copy of ZOMBIE HIGH starring Virginia Madsen I thought "Why haven't I ever seen THIS before?" I wasn't missing much. Although the title is ZOMBIE HIGH I don't think this is set at a high school. It looks like a college to me. Virginia Madesn plays Andrea who has been accepted in a fancy schmo yuppie school much to the chagrin of her local public school boyfriend. He pleads with her to switch back to the local Towny school, she refuses. When she meets the Rick Sprinfield-esque professor she's smitten with him. Surprise surprise, the Prof is smitten with her as well. But she's smart enough to know students shouldn't stoop their teachers. What she isn't aware of is that the teachers in this school are doing experiments on the brains of the students to make them obedient geniuses. (Think THE STEPFORD WIVES and DISTURBING BEHAVIOR). Andrea starts to get wise to this when the rebellious spiky haired leather jacket-wearing guy who hates the school and authority all of a sudden shows up at school in a suit spouting pure genius. As time goes by more and more friends who were fun loving seem to be listening to Classical music, dressing like they're going to church and being good little boys and girls and studying their toots off. This film had one funny scene: at a school dance the zombie-fide students are dancing robotic-ly together in box steps. A sassy funk black band playing the dance breaks into a wild song (much to the dismay of the all-white faculty) and the zombie students STILL do their slow manic box steps! Alas the film needs more jokey shots like that. It isn't funny enough to be fun and it isn't serious enough to be scary. The soundtrack...trying to sound like wanna-bes staples from the '80s like THE GO-GOS and JOURNEY is God awful. Particularly bad is the end song that is a blatant rip off of THE BEASTIE BOYS party anthem FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO PARTY. It starts off with the familiar "YEAH!....Kick It!" and launches into a song called, I kid you not, KISS MY BUTT(!) I actually went online to see which came first, this song or the BEASTIE BOYS one. Surprise surprise...The Beasties did there's first! I usually don't notice stuff like this but the editing was terrible. The movie wants to be quirky and fast paced so it has choppy MTV editing that takes you back and forth between scenes. Very annoying. If you must see a Horror Movie starring the lovely Virginia Madsen rent CANDYMAN instead.

Ohh I need to see this again! My buddy and I were reminising about bad movies that make good watching because their so bad their fun to pick on, which is how I thought to review this "movie". If you are indeed reading and maybe looking for a movie like that congratulations! You've found your pick in Zombie High!I saw this a long time ago but really remember how ridiculous it was with the zombieized students and chaotic goings ons. Although, this is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, it's worth seeing for the pure entertainment factor(and really did not bore me at all-surprisingly not boring)which is at least one good thing I can say about it. This is pure camp but it's fun and funny and I need to find it so I can watch it again. If comedic camp is your thing you've found it here.