GHOUL SCHOOL

With a name like GHOUL SCHOOL, one would hardly expect Timothy O'Rawe's debut feature to be a thought provoking yet alone scintillating experience in zombie horror. At the tail end of a decade distinguished by the deliriously energetic EVIL DEAD films, the grisly RE-ANIMATOR and the frankly messy DEMONS, this (likewise) liberal extension of the zombie mythos (including zombies, or 'ghouls' that can fire guns) combines hideous fashion, retarded humour and a negligent attitude to quality control.

When criminals break into a basement, they unleash an infectious substance that transforms students from the school above into fanged fiends. Travelling through pipes, the contamination breaches the water system and gives firstly the swimming team and then those doing basketball practise (including a young Kevin Dillon, of THE BLOB and PLATOON 'fame') an appetite for human flesh. Trapped in the building after home time, horror geek Jeff (Scott Gordon) and his friend Steve (William Friedman) race through the infested corridors to alert a practising rock band called the 'Blood-Sucking Ghouls', and the survivors barricade themselves in the auditorium…

Ghastly music and forced humour aren't strangers to zombie films (i.e. the first two instalments of the expanding RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD series), but GHOUL SCHOOL jettisons even the bland slickness concurrent with late eighties horror. Without studio backing to lift it even into a more palatable professionalism, it wallows in its own badness and batters the viewer with childish humour, wretched camerawork and a feeling of outright scabbiness in its production design and easy-rip torso and limb effects. In line with DEMONS (directed by Lamberto Bava), the epic quality of Romero's work is eschewed in favour of messy chase scenes, with creatures that can run and wave their arms about, to the score of ear-splitting heavy metal in a missed shot at 'visceral terror.' Truly, GHOUL SCHOOL is an education in badness - a badness that is inexcusable.

Numerous sources are pillaged, and the 'zombies-wandering-the-corridors' notion makes one yearn for the polished and economical PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1987, John Carpenter). Indeed, the scene in which Jeff and Steve dispatch a creature with a combination of teamwork and an ability to turn surrounding objects into weapons (i.e. a fire extinguisher) reminds us how good Carpenter could be and just how dismal this 'effort' is, if work put into a film of this calibre can be deemed worthy of the verb. As Jeff, Scott Gordon cranks his nerdiness to the limit, complete with thick-rimmed glasses and comically drooping bottom lip, but lacks the comic gusto of a Jeffrey Combs or Bruce Campbell. That the latter two based their careers on such an approach not only cheapens their own (initially sterling) efforts, but also resigns Scott Gordon, GHOUL SCHOOL - and just about everyone responsible for this wreck - to the cinematic slagheap.

Review by Matthew Sanderson