High School Spirits (1986) User Reviews

Is This Really A Rarity?

[hae13400 · 3/10 · 12 June 2003]

An university graduate, Kyle Skudstad, and his buddy named Andy (both are the members of SCIENCE CLUB) go to the FULTON HOUSE (a.k.a. DEATH HOUSE), and succeed in taking photographs of the ghost of Joshua Fulton who was killed in its loo (actually, this old man was attacked, stupidly enough, by the spiders in the chamber pot!). But then, strangely enough, their teacher, Dr. Dick S. Blunt, somehow confiscates these photos... My American Friends and I were forced ourselves to find this 1986 film (of which filming location is Springville, Utah) simply because not a few informative-but-not-always-trustworthy literatures seemed to assert this film was nothing but a rarity which one could hardly find. (But, actually speaking, one could and can rather easily find this American film at least in Portugal and Japan where each subtitled VHS was rather broadly released.) And now, I can tell this film, which is heavily influenced by GHOST BUSTERS, is not particularly boring but cheap and almost nonsense junk of silliness, and therefore I have almost nothing say about it. Still, mainly because some of my friends seemed to find themselves liking (if not loving) this one, I want to add something interpretative. As mentioned above, I don't think this film is particularly boring simply because it is almost continuously and even self-destructively full of jokes. But, problematically enough (though it also has rather harmless but less laughable parodies of PSYCHO, THE EXORCIST, FRIDAY THE 13TH, and, of course, GHOST BUSTERS) most of these jokes are directly and/or indirectly made based upon a simple (fictional) fact that the leading character, Kyle Skudstad, is a seriously virginal (rather than simply shy) and therefore funny man. That means the very source and/or centre of almost every jokes this film has is nothing but one person's virginity. Here, although I don't really care whether John Doe (or Jane Doe) is a virgin or not, I want to say one's virginity is definitely not a laughing matter. (Partly because there are some philosophical theories which insist one's virginity is nothing but an expression of his-or-her choice through his-or-her responsibility for his-or-her-own belief and/or even emotion. But this not right time and/or place to develop so-called PHILOSOPHY-OF-VIRGINITY.) But, even instead of the problematic unwholesomeness this film as a whole has, I can admit Neil LaBute is an almost surprisingly talented comedian. Because of the above mentioned virginity, his character, Kyle Skudstad, has almost unnaturally limited expressiveness and therefore not only visually but also interpersonally funny. Furthermore, interestingly enough, this character is almost fanatically crazy about golf. Needless to say, according to the Freudian psychoanalysis, his golf is substituting for his (interpersonal) sexual activity, and LaBute effectively, it not superbly, expresses this substitutiveness. So it can be said that if one can (like my friends could) simply enjoy his acting, there is a possibility he-or-she finds himself-or-herself liking or even loving this film.

Neil Labute

[relativitytheory · 1/10 · 30 June 2012]

Clearly, Neil Labute wrote the review on IMDb about how he was the only redeeming quality in this film. This sort of self promotion is despicable, given that he tries to salvage himself at the cost of all others who worked on this film. He is credited with writing, yet during filming, had to go back for a second shoot to add a "sub-plot", which was neglected in the first wave of filming. Poor, typical Utah-Mormon production! Labute has the audacity to both pan the film, yet compliment his role and ability as a comedic actor in the same review! The film was clearly a very low budget production, originally entitled "High Spirits", but when the larger production with the same title was made in 1988, Labute's film was forced to rename itself to "High School Spirits". Where is there a high school reference in any part of this film? No where! Except for the fact that it is as if a high schooler wrote it!