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.
