MOVIE REVIEW : ‘SLAUGHTER HIGH’ SHOCK, SCHLOCK IN GOOD FORM

In its primitive way, “Slaughter High” (citywide) is one of the better teen revenge horror pictures.

An especially nasty bunch of high school seniors get so carried away in taunting a nerdy classmate, Marty (Simon Scuddamore), that one of their pranks backfires, leaving him as disfigured and deranged as the Phantom of the Opera. Marty gets his revenge by inviting his tormentors to a five-year reunion at their now-abandoned school; one by one they receive their comeuppance by various hideous means.

Co-writer-directors George Dugdale, Mark Ezra and Peter Litten have working for them the inherently gratifying nature of revenge fantasy, plus irrefutable logic: A bunch of young people who would be so mindless and cruel as to treat Marty the way they do could be expected to behave just as stupidly when he turns the tables on them five years later. They’re so dumb that they’re slow to suspect there’s something fishy about holding a reunion in an abandoned building and to wonder why no one else has been invited. If they were any brighter, they’d be so conscience-stricken about their treatment of Marty that they’d have no desire ever to see one another again or to return to the scene of the tragedy.

“Slaughter High,” which benefits greatly from its authentic setting, a big, old derelict Tudor-style school building in a remote area, gets actually quite scary, yet its grisly special effects are of the darkly comic, Grand Guignol variety. There’s a trite coda that the film could have done without, but even so, “Slaughter High” (appropriately rated R) is effective schlock.

‘SLAUGHTER HIGH’ A Vestron Pictures presentation. Producers Steve Minasian, Dick Randall. Writers-directors George Dugdale, Mark Ezra, Peter Litten. Camera Alain Pudney. Music Harry Manfredini. Production designer Geoff Sharpe. Special effects Coast to Coast Productions. Film editor Jim Connock. With Simon Scuddamore, Caroline Munro, Donna Yaeger, Kelly Baker, Sally Cross, Bill Hartman, Carmine Iannaccone, Gary Martin.

Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes.

MPAA rating: R (under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian).