Zombie High

Zombie High is a 1987 American comedy horror film directed by Ron [Link (director)|Ron Link]. The film was released theatrically on October 2, 1987, and stars Virginia Madsen as a beautiful young teenager who must fight against a boarding school that is intent on turning everyone into a Stepford-esque "perfect" student.
In the film, classical music is used for the mental conditioning of the brainwashed victims. By accident, a character finds out that rock music has the opposite effect, restoring human traits to the victims.

Plot

Andrea is a teenage girl who has won a scholarship to Ettinger, a formerly all-male boarding school. She leaves behind her boyfriend Barry in the hopes of scholastic achievement but soon discovers that things are not as they seem at Ettinger.
Andrea finds that her friends are slowly changing from regular teenagers into personality-less drones. Some investigation shows that the school's faculty has been harvesting life-sustaining chemicals from the student body, which makes them seemingly perfect students who are focused on doing well in school and obeying rules.
Andrea is spared from this fate by one of her professors, Philo, who takes pity on her due to her resemblance to a former lover. Along with her boyfriend, Andrea discovers that the staff uses classical music to stabilize the students. Philo gives her a tape to play over the loudspeaker system, which he claims will stop the faculty and students from capturing her and turning her into a zombie, only for her to lose it while the school's students chase her. With nothing to lose, Barry plays a tape of rock music in its place, accomplishing the desired task of stopping the students and saving their lives.

Cast

Virginia Madsen as Andrea
Paul Feig as Emerson
Sherilyn Fenn as Suzi
Clare Carey as Mary Beth
Scott Coffey as Felner
Richard Cox as Philo
Kay E. Kuter as Dean Beauregard Eisner
Henry Sutton as Bell
Walter Addison as Chief Hillis
Christopher Peters as Phillip
Christopher Crews as Biff
James Wilder as Barry
John Sack as Senator Felner
Paul Williams as Ignatius
Susan Barnes as Mom
Jeff Morgan as Zombie student
Tease as themself

Reception

Lana Cooper of Brutal as Hell wrote, "For unintentional humor and as an ‘80s genre horror timepiece, Zombie High cannot be beat. Just don’t expect to be scared." The Chicago Tribune panned the film in a 1988 review, expressing surprise that Madsen would star in Zombie High, as they viewed it as a step down from her previous acting work. Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times called it "a student project gone awry". Glenn Kay, who wrote Zombie Movies: [The Ultimate Guide], called the film a "nondescript, forgettable flick". Writing in The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, academic Peter Dendle said, "The movie plays the concept more seriously than the title lets on, and, in fact, winds up dragging quite a bit."