The Faculty
Scream, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. None of you are safe!
Starts off nuts. The apparently meek Theatre teacher brutally murders the principal after she announces there is no money for a Guys and Dolls musical. Somehow, she enlists the help of the jock PE/American Football coach.
Eventually, alien parasites invade the bodies of nearly everyone, including the main cast. But who is infected?
The parasite is the classic Commie spook story: collectivism, loss of identity. But the characters themselves break the mould of their stereotypes before they are infected:
- the jock wants to be recognised for his intellect
- the bullied weirdo is just eccentric
- the school paper editor is a mega bitch
- the rebel genius just wants to be loved
- the emo is just shy (eat shit, The Breakfast Club)
- the goody two shoes from the South is deep down inhuman.
When all is resolved they live a little.
This has an incredible cast, so many famous people! Jon Stewart. Salma Hayek. Elijah Wood. Jordana Brewster. Famke Jansen. The script is very good, hot damn!
The faculty room has a sign with the classic “The floggings will continue until morale improves”.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers is mentioned by name, The Breakfast Club by characters. So is a (mythical) naughty tape of Neve Campbell and Jeniffer Love Hewitt which was clearly a scam.
The worse part of this is really being produced by Harvey Weinstein. Imagining him panting on set, particularly on the final locker room scenes… Yuck.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.