Hell High — also known as Raging Fury — is a 1987 home-invasion slasher.
The teachers are tough... but exams are murder.
Brooke Storm accidentally kills two people as a young child and grows up severely traumatized by what she had done. She now works as a biology teacher at a high school, where she has trouble controlling her classroom and chooses to seclude herself socially. After an encounter in class with punk Dickens, he and his gang decide to play a prank on Miss Storm at her home that ends up going way too far.
Maureen Mooney (Miss Storm) and Christopher Cousins (Jon-Jon) star, with Christopher Stryker playing the rotten Dickens.
This film contains the examples of:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Coach Heaton shows interest in Miss Storm, who has absolutely no interest in him or dating in general. She does eventually accept his invite to watch the football game, but she ends the date the minute she gets home. It's clear that Coach just wants to get laid.
- Ax-Crazy: After Miss Storm is attacked in her home, she snaps and starts dispatching the kids one by one.
- Bludgeoned to Death: Miss Storm takes Queenie by surprise by using a stone to smash her head in until she's dead.
- Chase Scene: After he steals the Quarterback's jacket, Jon-Jon veers off in a convertible and the Quarterback and a buddy pursue him on a motorcycle. This results in a Game of Chicken where both vehicles drive toward each other. The motorcycle ends up falling sideways and crashes into a nearby car, causing an explosion.
- The Corrupter: Dickens is the self-proclaimed boss of the group and brings out the worst in people through his control and manipulation. Queenie doesn't seem to like him much, but she reveals her true colors when she shows him how to assault Miss Storm. Dickens also involves Jon-Jon in some Peeping Tom behavior at Miss Storm's house and forces Smiler to go to the swamp when he clearly didn't want to go.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Miss Storm was ready to dissect an alive Dickens, who is tied up against the wall with markings all over his body. This is ultimately subverted when Jon-Jon shows up and knocks her out before she could cut him with a scalpal.
- Death by Irony: Miss Storm and Dickens die at the exact same time. Add in the fact that sexual assaulter Dickens gets penetrated by a fire poker and slasher Miss Storm gets her throat cut.
- Downer Ending: Jon-Jon does survive the ordeal and even manages to get his rival arrested for murder, but he's left just as traumatized as Miss Storm and the cycle could easily repeat in the future.
- Egging: In a case of trope flexibility, Smiler is seen antagonizing two fellow students by throwing not eggs but popcorn at them during the game. He finishes the scene by dumping his entire bag on them as he was leaving.
- The '80s
- Final Girl: Gender-inverted. Jon-Jon is a studious ex-football player who is an innocent compared to Dickens, who is an obvious punk with a nihlistic outlook on life. Dicken's group seems to comprise of outcasted kids. This is justified too given that Jon-Jon is the newest member of the group.
- Foreshadowing: After the spectacle at the football game, Coach Heaton remarks that Dickens' gang made him look bad and that they better pray that tomorrow never comes.
- Frameup: Jon-Jon retrieves the Quarterback's jacket from his car to implicate him in Miss Storm's death.
- Jerk Jock: Jon-Jon's ex-girlfriend Mink starts dating the Quarterback, who taunts Jon-Jon and calls him a coward. It's his bullying of Jon-Jon that helps Dickens secure him as a recruit to the group. Coach Heaton also bullies Jon-Jon as well, implying that he was this back in his high-school days as well.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: A sex-crazed jerk biker and his girlfriend get swamp mud thrown at them while riding. They end up crashing and falling onto spikes. This also occurs at the end when Dickens falls on a fire poker and dies.
- Improvised Weapon: The first couple of deaths involve a stone and, fittingly, a pencil. It's later on when Miss Storm takes up a butcher knife and a scalpal.
- Kick the Dog: Dickens taunts an injured football player with a knife, remarking that he hoped the injured thought about the knife as they put him under for his operation.
- Mook Horror Show: Miss Storm is definitely the victim, but she morphs into the slasher as she kills off the pranksters, who are the main villains. The story therefore works as an inverted Slasher Movie.
- Ms. Fanservice: Miss Storm is seen enjoying her shower.
- Never Trust a Title: Neither title really captures the movie accurately.
- Hell High would make one think the horror would take place at school, but it actually takes place completely in the home of one of the teachers.
- Raging Fury implies the teacher is on a revenge mission after being victimized. In truth, she is an unstable woman who is driven stark mad and killing to defend herself.
- Overly Long Scream: The film ends with this as Jon-Jon imagines Miss Storm as he's being scolded by the substitute teacher. Cue credits.
- Plot Hole: Miss Storm is destroyed by what she had done as a young girl, to the point where she never left her childhood home. This makes it hard to believe that she would attend college, much less choose a profession that would require her to be around people all day every day.
- The Prankster: Dickens. Pranking people seems to be his way of socializing, and several of his pranks are very mean-spirited in nature. Some examples:
- He goads the Quarterback into a fight after tying Minks' skirt to his coat, which results in the garment being torn off and exposing her underwear when the Quarterback takes a swing at him. This is how he befriends Jon-Jon.
- He and the gang drive their car through a football field while a game is commencing. Jon-Jon catches the football and they speed away before they could get caught.
- He scares Queenie and Jon-Jon in the swamp, which upsets Jon-Jon enough to throw mud at him.
- He tricks Queenie into bending over to pick up a bag of slime, which he uses as an opportunity to pinch her butt.
- He has the group wear Halloween masks and make noise on Miss Storm's roof, triggering the trauma from her childhood.
- Rape and Revenge: The movie definitely was marketed in some way as this, with an alternate title being Raging Fury and showing a woman in her knickers wielding a fire poker on the cover. While penetrative rape never actually occurs, there is definitely non-consensual touching and kissing from Dickens onto Miss Storm which would classify as sexual assault. It doesn't take long for her to snap on the gang in retaliation.
- Sex Signals Death: While averted for the most part when it comes to Dicken's posse, it was subverted at the beginning with the biker and his girlfriend, who wouldn't put out because she found his chosen spot to be creepy and uncomfortable. They both die anyway.
- Shout-Out: ...or ripoff, of Carrie (1976). The story arc between Miss Storm and Dickens is similar to that of Miss Collins and Chris in that Dickens acts out and ends up getting slapped by his teacher. He even uses Chris' infamous line "This isn't over by a long shot!" as he storms out of class.
- Super Window Jump: After she is assaulted, Miss Storms crashes through her upstairs bedroom window and lands on the ground below. Not surprisingly, the group thinks she's dead after this. Yeah, she isn't really.
- Title In: 18 Years Later. The movie starts with a young Miss Storm in a pink dress being scolded not to go down to the swamp, which she ignores and does anyway. After throwing swamp mud at a jerk and his girlfriend for ripping off her dolly's head, they die and she runs off. 18 years later, Miss Storm is still traumatized by what happened.
- Urban Legend: The death of the biker and his girlfriend in the swamp seem to become this in town. No one seems certain that it's actually true. Yet, the tale is around and makes some wary to venture into the swamp.
