10 Slasher Movies That Broke All The Rules

Often forgotten even amongst horror aficionados, Return to Horror High is a low budget mid-eighties curio notable for two reasons. One, it’s the onscreen debut of George Clooney, who ironically plays an arrogant no-name actor who’s convinced he’ll make it big, only to be offed almost immediately.

Two, and more importantly, the film is probably the most comprehensive pre-Scream meta-satire of the slasher subgenre. Following a production crew as they film—surprise—a trashy slasher film in a high school where a killing spree occurred years earlier, the film constantly pivots between “reality” and reconstruction, allowing the creators to satirize both the exploitative side of the horror genre and the notoriously cynical movie industry.

Some of the film’s most intense sequences are interrupted by producers yelling “Cut”, actors comment on the thin and unlikely motivations of their characters, and the final twist is one of the most audaciously silly to ever grace the silver screen. It’s a bit far-fetched for some, but for genre fiends who grew up with countless paint-by-numbers eighties slashers, Return to Horror High is a genius deconstruction of both these films and the people responsible for them.