Nostalgia Kinky

While its title suggests a goofball Grade-Z horror film, Zombie High (1987) is in reality an extremely smart and savvy look at the disturbing conservative-streak that swept through America’s youth in the Reagan-ruled eighties. Featuring a wonderful cast, including the always dazzling Virginia Madsen and a pre-Twin Peaks Sherilyn Fenn, Zombie High is one of the most surprisingly topical and resonate horror-satires from the eighties and has always deserved a much larger audience.

Young Middle-class liberal Andrea has been given the seemingly golden-opportunity of being one of the first female attendees at a posh, previously all-male boarding school, Ettinger Academy. Andrea’s initial excitement turns to dread when she notices a robotic conformity sweeping over her fellow students, including her once free-thinking and freewheeling friends.

Zombie High was one of the sole credits from theatrical director Ron Link. The late Link (who passed away in 1999) was in his mid-forties when he shot his ambitious low-budget film, which has more in common with Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Stepford Wives rather than Night of the Living Dead or Zombie. Link’s direction is hampered by his budgetary limitations, but Zombie High still stands as an impressive first-feature, and it’s a shame he didn’t direct a film again.

Zombie High was the brainchild of troubled USC film school graduate Aziz Ghazal, an aspiring filmmaker who committed suicide in 1993 after murdering his wife and daughter. Ghazal wrote the savvy script for Zombie High while he was a student at USC and he produced the film along with Elliot Kastner. Even though Ghazal’s life ended with a horrific tragedy, his script (which featured some additional pre-production input from television writer Tim Doyle and relative novice Elizabeth Passarelli) has a real spark to it and shows him as a talented man with a real flair for topical humor and clever dialogue.

While it is now so incredibly clear that Virginia Madsen was one of the great American actors to come out of the eighties, when she shot Zombie High she still had almost two decades to go before her skills were properly recognized (via a much-deserved Oscar nomination for Sideways). It was mostly Madsen’s stunning looks that were focused on in 1987, but she was always much more than a pretty face, and she gives one of her best early performances as the young liberal looking to keep her spirit and sanity in Zombie High. Her work as Andrea is incredibly strong and stands among the best genre performances of the period, and is certainly the equal to her more popular performance five years down the road in Bernard Rose’ Candyman.

The entire cast of Zombie High is quite notable with special mention going to the equally charming and creepy Richard Cox (so memorable in Friedkin’s Cruising earlier in the eighties) and, of course, young Sherilyn Fenn seen here a year before he break out role in Zalman King’s staggering Two Moon Junction. Fenn is granted some of the film’s wittiest dialogue, and it’s clear that really special things are just around the corner for her.

Zombie High is far from a perfect production, but most of the problem’s on hand can be correlated back to ambition exceeding its budget. The film’s final act, which features a few too many chase sequences, doesn’t measure up to the sly first-hour, and the film’s soundtrack by Daniel May dates it much more than the clothes or Fenn’s enormous hair. Regardless of its shortcomings, there is a lot to love about Zombie High and anyone who felt disheartened by the creepy conservatism of the mid-to-late eighties will feel more than a little affinity with the film.

Zombie High has a had a troubled release history to say the least and Link only managed one more film, the elusive Divine vehicle The Neon Woman (1990). Very briefly released in a few theaters in 1987, Zombie High grossed less than $25,000 the film appeared on a dust gathering VHS in 1988. After years of lying dormant, both Shout Factory and 88 Films unleashed the film on Blu-ray, although only the 88 Films version contained any special features.

The title Zombie High might have been the film’s undoing, as it’s misleading on a number of levels. Critics who bothered reviewing the film certainly couldn’t see past it, as a barrage of poor notices also damaged its release. Critics and title be damned, though, Zombie High is an extremely perceptive film and stands as a great message for young people to embrace individuality and open mindedness, and to not become another one of America’s conservative douche bags whose only motivating factor is the almighty dollar.

-Jeremy Richey, Expanded and Revised from my May, 2011 Moon in the Gutter post-

Here is a selection of vintage reviews from Zombie High’s initial release: