Since I injured my back saving the world from complete and utter destruction last Tuesday, I haven't felt much like putting my cinematic thoughts to virtual paper. There's been a fleshy cork in my creative process, a small child's finger situated delicately inside my leaky literary dike. I'm truly at a loss, people. Try as I might, nothing worthwhile will spring like merry little daisies from these womanly fingertips, forcing me to watch even more sad B-grade productions in the meantime. Somewhere in Turkey, a faithful reader wonders if his Internet hero will ever return from the depths of personal despair.
Fear not, foreign readers, for I have returned.
The one-stop cure for my achy breaky back muscles, it would seem, is Timothy O'Rawe's 1990 splatter flick Ghoul School, a campy little mixture of Class of Nuke 'Em High and Lamberto Bava's Demons. Some say rip-off, I say mixture. To each his own. Whatever gets you through the night, pal.
Shot during what I'd like to call "The Sweet Mullet Decade," the film wallows in its low production values while repeatedly assaulting you with some truly disgusting special effects work. This isn't the sharpest movie you've ever stumbled across in a dark alley on a stormy night, but it'll kill a wintry afternoon filled with bodily aches and pains before you have a chance to realize that it's probably one of the worst movies you've ever seen.
In a Troll 2 kind of way, of course.
The setup is pretty basic: Two degenerate thugs accidentally unleash a bizarre substance into a local high school's water supply while attempting to shake down a janitor late one afternoon. Naturally, the first people to encounter this freaky chemical is the school's swim team, who promptly turn demonic and brutally butcher their unsuspecting coaches. Yummy.
They soon invade other parts of the building, munching on hapless principals and talentless basketball players along the way. The only people brave enough to stop these hideous mutant freaks from devouring everyone in sight are a couple of horror-obsessed nerds, a square-jawed basketball coach, and a metal band called Blood Sucking Ghouls. Can they eliminate this flesh-eating threat and escape with their hides intact?
As you can tell, there's really not much of a story to speak of. The characters crack wise, race through hallways, bicker amongst themselves, and kill any student who happens to be a skin-peeling demon from the bowels of Hell. What exactly are these creatures, you ask? Couldn't tell you. The film doesn't spend too much time explaining the how's and why's of this odd little scenario. Instead, it would rather show you what the inside of a swim coach's stomach looks like. Which is great, actually, considering what type of film we're dealing with here.
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