Sleepy Hollow High

Sleepy Hollow High was made in 1995. It was released in 1999 to cash in on Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. Can you guess which film is superior? Cunt of Nazarene, this is a piece of shit. Mother of iguana splooge. Holy fistfuck. Son of a...well, you get the point. I'm struggling to conceive of a frame of reference, a felicitous habitude to gauge the quality (or lack thereof) of this partial birth abortion. To put things in perspective, writer/director Kevin Summerfield also helmed Max Magician & the Legend of the Rings and Operation Dalmation: Paws & Claws Rescuers. But wait! A fellow by the name of Chris Arth is credited as co-director. Yes, it took two people to commandeer a camera and baste this eyesore together.

Last year, Arth produced a documentary entitled Lone Wolves & Dragon Tattoos: How Scandinavian Crime Fiction Conquered the World. I was set to mock his pet project, but actually, it seems to be far more interesting than Sleepy Hollow High. If the preposterous critic quote on the cover hasn't clued you in (Scream meets Dawson's Creek...where do I sign up?), this is a slasher. A thin, bromidic slasher. Any correlation with Washington Irving's inculpable short story is merely cosmetic. We follow a group of teenagers as they pay their debt to society. They are burdened with the task of communal upkeep. For whatever reason, these rapscallions have to...clean a forest? I spaced out here and there, so I'm a little fuzzy on the trivial minutiae of the plot.

Anyway, they are systematically picked off by a pumpkin-headed sociopath brandishing a sword. Okay, this could have been a cool villain, but he/she is wasted. A similar baddie appeared in 1995's Jack-O, and as pitiful as this may sound, I'd rather sit through Jack-O. It's not even a close call. Hell, at least that flick bequeathed Linnea Quigley's wet curves to its audience. Sleepy Hollow High is devoid of nudity. To add insult to injury, the death sequences are painfully dry. We get a single severed limb, a bloodless decapitation and a couple of ho-hum stab wounds. Big deal. It goes without saying that the characters are forgettable caricatures fit for an afterschool special. Therefore, I won't say it.

The pacing...goddamn it, the pacing. I fought to stay awake during the first act. The first act! The trenchant synopsis that I relayed earlier is meatier than the fucking script. NOTHING happens. Yeah, that's right; Sleepy Hollow High is "all caps" boring. We are treated to an extraneous pregnancy subplot, but it only garners five minutes of total screen time. Let's see. What else? The lighting is horrid, the cinematography is horrid, the acting is horrid, the ending is horrid...motherfucker, the ending is horrid. We find out (oh, spoiler alert) that the whole film was a nightmare. I wish I was joking. If Kevin Summerfield ever decides to kill himself, I want this review to serve as his suicide note. How's that for a critic quote?