Oscars Post-mortem

In recognition of George Clooney's Oscar win the other day, I watched Return to Horror High today. I bought it on DVD a few weeks ago at a going out of business sale for a used disc store. The quality of the film itself is indicated by the fact that the DVD menu offers the option to "Strat Movie."

Clooney's character, an actor named Oliver, is the lead in a low budget horror movie based on a series of unsolved murders that occurred at the high school where the movie is being shot. Oliver, playing a cop, informs the director in the first ten minutes that he's just gotten the lead in a TV series ("a ripoff of Miami Vice and Moonlighting" he says) and is leaving the production. Naturally, a few minutes later he becomes the first victim. Alex Rocco dominates every scene he's in as an over-the-top exploitation-minded producer who, when told that Oliver is quitting, replies that he "couldn't act for shit anyway."

It's a weird little film, hopping back and forth in time and between "real" events and the movie within the movie, sometimes leading you to mistake one type of jump for the other. Worth a viewing, though.

I wouldn't imagine the guy who played Oliver here ever meriting an Academy award. Another guy in the movie looked familiar, but it took awhile before I could place him as the kid who played Alice's son on the sitcom Alice. At least he doesn't have an Oscar. Apart from Rocco, the best performance in the movie is given by Maureen "Marsha" McCormick as a high-strung police officer.

I'd intended to link to a couple of articles analyzing the awards, but I couldn't find any that were the least bit interesting.