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| Remember the good old days, back in high school, when your teachers doubled as the football coach, or stayed after school to watch over detention, or inspired the occasional sex fantasy? Where did you go to school, you freak? |
| My high school employed a football coach who was an egomaniac, a principal who was actually cool (even if he could never remember anyone's name), a science teacher who blew up fuse boxes, and a math teacher who took after the psycho Russian in the Bond films, the old woman with the spike sticking out of the front of her boot who was determined to skewer some biscuits if it robbed her of her last dying breath. |
| Those were the teachers we liked... |
| Now comes a film which revisits those wonderful, hormone-driven days. A film in which the teachers are caring, nurturing, kind. Strict, disagreeable, menacing. |
| Meet "The Faculty," a film directed by Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, its "re-make/sequel" Desperado, From Dusk Til Dawn, and the only worthwhile segment of Four Rooms). Written by Kevin Williamson, who gave us Scream and Scream Again. Posing as the staff of a school: Robert Patrick, Jon Stewart, Bebe Neuwirth, Famke Janssen, and Salma Hayek as the nurse. |
Salma Hayek Heats Up Male Faculties |
With Salma Hayek as the school nurse, this film is off to a great start. As for plot, a grab-bag of students band together to save the Earth from aliens posing as teachers. Theoreticallly a great disguise, the aliens betray themselves through their actions: they aren't alcoholics and they fight back when students harrass them. Immediately suspicious, assorted students find themselves in uncrowded classrooms, notice friends missing after school, and finally conclude their teachers are alien visitors when bribes for grades repeatedly fail. Relieved that they don't have to get an education after all, but concerned that these aliens might have more of a clue than their parents about their nocturnal activities, this disparate collective of Tommy Hilfiger-branded sheep decide to brandish their anti-social behaviors in defense of teenage keggers and MTV parties. |
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As it turns out, though, the teachers are aliens from Canada, who left after seeing families and homes destroyed by rabid, roving herds of killer jackalopes. The spaceships, the most reliable form of transportation in the Canadian wilderness, were bought back in the 60s at U.S. military auctions, and the "alien" look is simply the result of radiation fallout from Chernobyl. Of course, none of these potential Mensa members noticed that all of these teachers spoke French and that the school cafeteria was serving only crepe suzettes. The story ends with the teachers taking the kids to France to learn anti-social behavior from the most rude people on the planet, and the kids graduate and become ruthless CEO's of multi-national companies, thus completing the plan for world-domination that the teachers-who really were real aliens all along- had always hoped for. So I guess the lesson here is to never go to school unless you want to learn to be a French CEO who doesn't take crepe off of anyone. Or maybe the lesson is, "Save yourself $7.00 and buy yourself some new underwear, 'cause this is one movie that is pure crepe!" |
Choose your favorite caption: | |
| (A) | Wow...uh, hey teacher, when you said you'd show us how to use a condom, we didn't think you'd actually SHOW us how to use a condom... |
| (B) | So women really are from Venus and men from Mars... |
| (C) | I suppose we shouldn't have given the rabbits caffeine AND Viagara... |
Vampire Sailor From The Valley |
