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Oh children...children, I'm terribly sorry to have to tell you this, but you're going back to school.  College kids, high school kids, all of you are going back to school whilst writers like myself can continue to stay up late and play World of Warcraft to our heart's content.  Yeah, I'll be thinking of you when I'm sound asleep at eight in the morning the day after Labor Day and the whole lot of you are back in class.

It'll be nice to be able to go to the video store, or the movies, or anywhere else without tripping over you.  And just to twist the knife a little more, here's a list of the cum laude of the horror high community--my ten favorite back to school horror flicks!



10. The Craft

If this doesn't get you interested in hitting the books, well, I don't know what will manage to pull it off for you.  A collective of hot chicks, including the always-alluring Fairuza Balk and the downright delightful Neve Campbell, having some witchery duels between classes is just the thing to get you ready for another year.



9. Scream

Once again Neve Campbell gives us all the reason we need to hit the books.  The daughter of one of the area's most notorious murder victims, she's got to fend off another set of serial killings from a source she never saw coming.



8. I know What You Did Last Summer

See, summer is not all it's cracked up to be, and this is the proof.  Especially when you're out with your friends getting illicitly hammered and hitting people with your car.  It puts you on the bad side of a pact with your friends and a string of serial murders, and you know that's going to do really horrible things to your grade point average.



7. Nightmare on Elm Street

One of the three great horror franchises, high school kids were pretty much the only target of scorch-faced slasher Freddy Krueger.  Thus, there were plenty of scenes down at Springwood High School, and some of them got downright freaky.  Anyone else get creeped out by "In Fourteen Hundred and ninety three, Freddy sailed the sea"?  I sure did.



6. Halloween

If there were more kids like Jamie Lee Curtis roaming our back in my high school, I think I would've been a lot more popular than I was.  Of course, it's not every day you meet the little sister of the living embodiment of Druidic evil (and NOT the little sister of some white-trash basket case as Rob Zombie would have you believe)


 
5. Night of the Creeps

The good news is your date is here.  The bad news is he's dead!  When a group of teenagers band together to fight a race of alien parasites that enter human hosts through their mouths and turn them into mobile flesh-zombies, you know you're in for high marks fun.  Even better, the main characters are all named after masters of horror, including Christopher "Chris" Romero, Cynthia "Cindy" Croenenberg, and of course, Detectives Cameron, Landis and Raimi.  Homages AND zombie blasting.  What more can you want?



4. 5ive Girls

Between the fact that this one's got Ron Perlman of Hellboy fame and a tagline like "Five girls, 2000 demons. You do the math.", it's hard to say how you can't like 5ive Girls.  Especially since it's about a bunch of hot chicks in a reformatory who discover that they've got secret powers.  Of course, people who get secret powers in the middle of horror movies usually have to fight something nasty, and this will be no exception as the five naughty hot chicks take on the ancient demon who discovered pigs make good condos, Legion.



3. Class of 1999

When the educational system in America gets so bad that heavily armed androids look to be the solution, you know you're in Seattle, and you know you're part of the now-anachronistic Class of 1999.  See, I was actually class of 1998, myself, so knowing that I would be leaving a whole year before the androids rose up and started killing the underachievers left me kinda relieved.



2. Class of Nuke 'Em High

There's something gravely wrong at the high school in "Class of Nuke 'Em High", and it may have something to do with the fact that there's a nuclear power plant right next door.  Or...it could be the drugs the kids are buying.  From the nuclear power plant worker.  That happen to be contaminated with nuclear whatsits!  Well, don't look for science from this Troma classic, instead look for lots of blood and comedy from this toxic class clown.



1. Ghost Stories

Leave it to the Japanese to make a cartoon about the paranormal society at the local high school, and manage to make it both scary AND funny by lengths.  Anything that can combine a haunted schoolhouse with lines like "Get out of my cat, you fat stinky ugly demon!" is absolutely in a class by itself.  And, even better, this top ten list's valedictorian.

And so, as you pick up your books and you set your alarm clocks to take yourselves back to school for another year, remember, knowledge is power, education is valuable, and horror flicks make great date movies.  You might, in fact, want to try some of these next time you get the opportunity.

- Steve Anderson