Teaching Mrs. Tingle

I was thinking about high school horror movies after Jennifer BrinkMeyer’s recent post. High school’s always been my favorite setting for a disturbing story. Kevin Williamson has been responsible for the scripts of a lot of these movies. He wrote Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer and over a hundred episodes of The Vampire Diaries. One of his lesser known screenplays was Teaching Mrs. Tingle, starring Katie Holmes and Helen Mirren. Marisa Coughlan’s wacky character Jo Lynn, who desperately wants to be an actress and die in a few horror movies, is probably why I rewatched this one several times.

Notice the August 20th on the movie poster? This movie came out in 1999, so this movie came out fifteen years and a week ago.

So, the story! Mrs. Tingle is a little worse than your average crappy teacher, and she has this deep hatred for all of her students, especially Leigh Ann, who is trying her hardest for an A in history. She needs to be valedictorian for her application for scholarships to Harvard, and Mrs. Tingle just isn’t going to let that happen.

So Leigh Ann and friends go to ask her to listen. And she refuses. So they… try to make her. It doesn’t go well.

Angry lady with a crossbow. Every movie needs a crossbow sitting around, waiting to be used.