This strangely offbeat and unusual late 80's slasher starts off vile and promisingly, but soon degenerates into a prototypically dumb and exaggeratedly implausible flick. Some people more specifically its very small but devoted fan base tend to describe "Raging Fury" as reminiscent to the gritty revenge-themed exploitation efforts of the late 70's, but I hardly see any connections. Nope, this is merely just another cheap and uninspired flick that actually insults the viewer's intelligence with all its impossibly far-fetched story twists. The highly entertaining opening sequences show a little girl "accidentally" killing a young biker couple in the swamp near her parental house because they destroyed her dolly. Enjoy this intro with its nasty make-up effects and glorious sleaze as much as you can, because it's all downhill from here
18 years later, the little girl Brooke Storm grew up to become a biology teacher in a standard American high school, but she obviously still suffers from a very unbalanced mental condition due to her traumatic childhood experience (which makes you wonder how she ever managed to finish her own teaching studies). Elsewhere in the school, the popular jock all of a sudden decides it's time for a personality change and joins the school's gang of bad kids (again, the most common thing in the world). As some sort of initiation rite for Jon-Jon, the clique decides to terrorize Miss Storm in her own house. They even set up a plan to frame the football team's quarterback in case anything goes wrong! Needless to say the nightly attack causes Miss Storm to go totally bonkers again and the thugs get a whole lot more than they bargained for. "Hell High" is a bunch of senseless nonsense without tension or horrific atmosphere. The film only evokes unintentional laughs (when the police actually do come to arrest the quarterback, my mates and I were laughing tears) and sentiments of pity. Not surprisingly, the cast and crew list only exists out of nobodies. Director Douglas Grossman as well as most of the actors and actresses never worked on any other film again. Lead star Christopher Stryker even died of AIDS before the film's release. I know it's not a very nice thing to say but I doubt it was a big loss for the cinema industry.
