Vinegar Syndrome dips back into the Troma vaults for their Blu-ray of the stylish but dull GIRLS SCHOOL SCREAMERS.

A year after the death of Trinity School for Girls benefactor Tyler Welles (Charles Braun), his will bequeaths his entire estate to the school to keep or put up for auction. The Mother Superior decides that, as a show of respect for the late Welles, the previous year's winners of his financial endowment – sensible Jackie (Mollie O'Mara), cynical Elizabeth (Sharon Christopher), awkward Rosemary (Monica Antonucci), spunky Adele (Marcia Hinton), ditzy Susan (Karen Krevitz), and interchangeable Kate (Mari Butler) and Karen (Beth O'Malley) – should spend the weekend at the estate cataloguing his expensive art collection under the supervision of elderly Sister Urban (Vera Gallagher).

Sister Urban has enough problems reining the girls in as they start playing hide and seek as soon as they arrive and avuncular Dr. Robert Fraser (Tony Manzo) turns up as a potential buyer who is actually conducting his own investigation while treating a boy (Jeff Menapace) who has gone catatonic after being dared to break into the house. Jackie stumbles upon the diary of Welles' niece Jennifer who Sister Urban reveals was once a pupil of their school and died in an accidental fall while visiting her uncle at the estate. As Jackie is nudged supernaturally towards the truth of the past incident – with the help of her newspaper editor's son boyfriend Paul (Peter Cosimano) – someone (corporeal or spectral) starts killing off the girls and their boyfriends who decide to crash the weekend with Paul when Sister Urban takes to the sick bed.

Shot in Philadelphia in 1984 under the title THE PORTRAIT, GIRLS SCHOOL SCREAMERS (guess where that title came from) is a strangely old-fashioned take on the body count film, making the most visually out of an incredible gothic mansion location with authentic pieces of artwork from around the world (the owner was an art restorer) to the accompaniment of a top notch eighties horror synth score by John Hodian (who has since moved on to scoring TV documentaries), largely eschewing exploitation elements like sex and gore for a film about teenage girls getting knocked off. Much of the running time is made up of inane chatter from largely untrained actresses given banal dialogue. Had Troma not decided to add some poorly-conceived gore inserts after picking up the film for release two years later – perceptions of the gore being cut are incorrect since the abrupt edits are due to the shoddy insertion of the material – the film might have been better sold directly to television (or an even lower budget video label who would have just misrepresented its exploitation content on the box art). First-time director John P. Finnegan followed the film up half a decade later with the "killer lawnmower" film BLADES (out on Blu-ray soon from Vinegar Syndrome).

Released in 1986 by Troma theatrically and on VHS by Lightning Video, GIRLS SCHOOL SCREAMERS was released on DVD by Troma in 1998 using the same old tape master. Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from a new 2K scan of the original 35mm camera negative that is expectedly brighter and more colorful. The enhanced clarity reveals just how well-shot this regional flick really is, and just how flat the Troma-lensed inserts look by comparison (the shot under the new title card and repeated later was always significantly darker than the surrounding footage). The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono audio boast clear dialogue and some more ambitious-than-usual sound design and scoring (Hodian is also credited with sound design and editor/second unit director Thomas R. Rondinella also worked on the sound editing and mentions some further foley and ADR tinkering by Troma as part of their changes). Optional English SDH subtitles are provided.

The film is accompanied by a pair of audio commentaries. On the first, writer/director/producer Finegan recalls stumbling upon the location with his journalist father – who plays Peter's father in the film and rewrote all of his dialogue – and wanting to make a film but having no experience, so he brought his private investment to NYU and convinced a number of members of the graduating class to schedule their holidays at the same time to make his film (and having to refuse requests by some of them to also direct), speaks highly of the inexperienced cast (apart from Manzo who insisted on the role because he also painted the portrait of Jennifer that he notes looked nothing like the actress in spite of multiple remarks in the dialogue about the resemblance), and cringes at his dialogue.

On the second track, editor/assistant director Tom Rondinella and second assistant camera/second assistant director Bill Pace recall their enthusiasm at getting to shoot a feature film on 35mm and the film being sold as a Hitchcockian thriller rather than a slasher, their shifting roles as the crew dwindled during production, run-ins with the wife of the house's owner (who has a small role as one of the school's teachers), moving a three-hundred-pound decades old Mitchell camera (a considerably cheaper rental than Panavision) around the mansion, impaling a piece of renaissance art with a tripod (an easy fix, according to the owner), scheduling tail-slated "special rehearsals" for Gallagher who was always better during rehearsals than when she knew the camera was running, and the ruinous Troma alterations (while also providing some context about how the scenes originally played out before the inserts).

Also on the disc is "28 Seconds of Violence: The Making of GIRLS SCHOOL SCREAMERS" (29:40) featuring Finegan, Rondinella, and Pace as well as actor Cosimano and sound designer Hodian. Rondinella reveals that Pace went to Finegan's presentation and recommended him, upon which he found out he was appointed editor without having to show his reel, their excitement adding dolly moves to make up for lack of coverage (some of which still occurred in the editing), Cosimano losing weight for his role and still managing to injure his co-star during their make-out scene), and Troma's additions which included bring back actress Antonucci for a single shot which made up part of the titular twenty-eight seconds. Sadly, no trailer is included (although I seem to recall Troma did one that appeared on some of their tape and disc releases). The cover is reversible first 5,000 copies ordered directly from Vinegar Syndrome come with a special limited edition embossed slipcover designed by Earl Kess. (Eric Cotenas)