Study Hell pisses me off. It's not the fact that the entire movie is bereft of any sort of entertainment or talent and it's not because director Mark McNabb and scripter Jeff McArthur seem to have a huge hard-on for John Hughes' The Breakfast Club. No, it's none of that. The reason a movie like this pisses me off is due to the fact it managed to get distribution from a fairly large company (in this case MTI) while more worthy independent movies are sitting around waiting for a deal - though I don't imagine the makers of this worthless cross between Hughes' beloved 1985 teen angst comedy-drama and a slasher movie cost MTI much more than a few grand to buy up.

The sad thing is that the opening scene, while cheap, happens to be the best moment here as a cheerleader bursts through the doors to the gym only to find her squad mates dead on the floor in pools of blood before falling victim to the same fate after her hiding place in a locker is discovered. Sure, it's nothing new, but it gives us hope this might be at least another passably silly low-budget slasher movie. Only that doesn't turn out to be the case as what follows is what could possibly called the worst school based psycho killer movie ever made - and that's considering other groaners such as Slaughter High and Cutting Class.

The set-up is completely teen comedy as we see various students around a high school being handed detention cards. We get the pot smoker, the nerd who is framed for stealing, the bully that's caught putting shaving cream all over a fellow student's head, and various other clichés. Not only does this give us an idea of just how stereotypical things are going to be, it also lets us know early just how awful the acting is prone to be the rest of the movie - a fact that is proven over and over again by a cast I like to refer to as "drama class rejects".

At the same time teacher Don Keller (Steve McDougall) is being given a last chance to hold onto his job by the principal, as there's been many complaints about how he treats the students and his inability to educate them. It's a simple task as he's been given the duty of looking after the detention students that evening but we know something's not right early on when he proceeds to randomly freak-out on our stoner character by telling him he's a "scum-sucking ditch pig".

Cue the blatant rip-offs of The Breakfast Club as the characters are the same batch of kids (right down to the silent, hair-in-face girl) and McArthur tries to give the movie some insightful and humourous dialogue that falls flat on its face from the get-go and isn't aided by the actors who constantly look like they're either forgetting their lines or being fed them from off-camera. Hell, this was such a clone I was almost expecting a Simple Minds song to crank-up on the soundtrack at some point.

Of course, since this also wants to pass itself off as a horror movie, we learn from the kindly school janitor that Mr. Keller was once in the war (which is shown to us in some completely ghetto looking flashbacks) and for the rest of the movie our teenage victims have to try to stay alive when the good teacher goes completely bananas. This leads to a few bloodless deaths, two characters discovering a closet full of weapons in Keller's classroom (?), the kids running across our janitor pal hiding out in the machine shop (double ?), and McDougall's character getting to make threats over the P.A. system while cracking his neck and grimacing in, what I assume is to be, a threatening manner.

Study Hell is the kind of movie that makes it sometimes embarrassing to be a genre fan. It's the kind of movie that is so bad I ended-up having an excruciating headache by the time it was over. I'm even willing to say it's worse than some of the horror flicks being picked-up by Lionsgate - and if you've seen some of those gems you might have trouble believing such a claim. And the worst thing is that McNabb and some of his cast members here would go on to make another slasher movie with Dark Fields, which was not only put out on DVD by Lionsgate but is also apparently just as bad. (Chris Hartley, 10/30/07)

Directed By: Mark McNabb.
Written By: Jeff McArthur.

Starring: Lindsay Dell, Brian Austin Jr., Steve McDougall, Shaylyn Doyle.

Picture Ratio: 1.66:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: There was barely any money behind this movie and the transfer here proves it. It looks like the shot-on-video junker it is with fuzzy clarity and no real definition. In other words, it's crap.

Extras: All we get here is a trailer, which should've been enough warning for me.

Visit MTI Video for more info.