Faculty

Released By:

Dimension Home Video,  Distributed By Buena Vista Home Video

Features:

1998; 104 Min; Rated R; Dolby Digital 5.1 English; Widescreen (1.85)

Extras:

Theatrical Trailer

Review:

Thing From Another World, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing and The Faculty. What do these films have in common? Aliens are trying to take over the world by infecting our bodies . Who says originality in Hollywood is dead? When I watched The Faculty, I instantly started to think of it's predecessors. The sad part of it? I've only seen The Thing. Yes, this story is so old, I can even remember the plots of films I haven't seen. C'est la vie.

The cast list is enormous so I'll get this out of the way first. The faculty is played by : Robert Patrick as Coach Willis, doing an imitation of his T-1000 role. Jon Stewart is Mr. Furlong, apparently a student favorite within the faculty. Pipper Laurie plays Mrs. Olson. Famkke Jennsen (Goldeneye) is Miss Burke, a psychologist (teacher?) with a creepy crush on Zeke. Bebe Nuwerth is the Principle.  I guess she's not showing up on Frasier enough. Even Selma Hyack shows up as nurse Harpper. Damn, no Cheech Marin.

The students are as follows. Jordana Brewster is Delihla, the school bitch. Josh Hartnett ( Halloween H20) is Zeke, the school's scam artist. Shawn Hastoy plays the school jock, Stan. Cela DuVall plays Stokly, the school's generic outcast. Casey, the nerd, is played by Elijah Wood. Finally we have Laura Harris who plays the new kid in town, Marybeth.

The movie opens, setting up most of the faculty's situation. Coach Willis is a hard ass football coach, with tendencies towards sexual harassment. He's the first to be taken over, and thus the main "carrier" of the disease. Principle Drake is hated the faculty, she's next. One by one they all fall victim to the new organism. Overall, the teacher's backgrounds are set up in a skeleton form. Williamson seems to concentrate more on creating the characters of the students.

Stan is shown initially being torn down by Coach Wills, then by his girlfriend Delihla, who seem to be with him just for the status. If I remember correctly, Casey was introduced by being beat up by the jocks of the school, while Stokley casually walks by. Marybeth is also introduced, looking completely lost in a new school. Finally we have the introduction of Zeke, selling some form of drugs to the students, and being confronted by Miss Bukre, who I assume is the school psychiatrist.

As I mentioned above, Kevin Williamson seems to concentrate on developing the students and their relationships more than the faculty's. That probably the way it should be. After setting up the characters, which lasts about fifteen minutes, he goes into his cliche mode that he capitilized on in Scream. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it does lack some originality.

One of the cliche's that stood out was the student's analyzing of how, and why the aliens were here, by using a film analogy. Williamson executed this effectively in Scream and Scream 2. Ironically, I think he was mocking Scream. I must have missed the joke this time.

While I can usually deal with rip-off's, the scene that pissed me off , was the "Are you an alien?" test in chapter 22 (tweakin'). For anyone who has seen John Carpenter's The Thing, it was complete deja va. Instead of heat begin applied to one's blood, it was drug's being taken. Now I may be overly conservative on this issue, and I'm in no way in favor of the censorship of films. But, I felt this scene was one of the primary reasons that the government is starting to brandish their "clean up your act Hollywood!" sword. They might have a point.

The presentation of the film was pretty good. The colors were stable, and the dark scenes didn't show any signs of digital artifacts. The sound, once again, is superb. The music is aggressively mixed into the rear channels, while the actual dialogue and sound effect show no signs of being manufactured. The football game was one of the demo sections for this discs. Overall, it was par for crouse in this Disney release, it was everything I expected.

The film ranks about a 5, it didn't blow me away, but aside for the two scenes mentioned above, I didn't feel ripped off.

The disc's presentation ranks a 6.5. Hey, at least it had a trailer.

Dan Linzmeier, FIT Productions
Fitprod@aol.com
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