1998, I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it not just because I own a 1998 purple Ford Fuckin Ranger - 1998 was the best year of the 90s, especially for horror. 1996 had Scream, but 1998 had Disturbing Behavior, Bride of Chucky, I Sill Know What You Did Last Summer, Strangeland, Halloween H2O, and today’s topic of discussion - The Faculty.
Images & screenshots are owned of The Faculty by Paramount Pictures.
Directed by Robert Rodriguez and written by Kevin Williamson, this movie is rated 58% on Rotten Tomatoes and 6.6/10 on IMDB. Rodriguez covered horror in From Dusk til Dawn, which is rated higher than The Faculty on both, which makes no sense to me as both resonate in camp, but I’ll give it George Clooney in the lead with a neck tattoo and psychopathic tendencies warrants the 5% extra tomatoes.
Really, it’s Kevin Williamson’s writing that makes this movie. (I will follow Kevin Williamson wherever he leads, so let’s do a quick highlight of his career - Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Following, and Dawson’s Creek.) I was able to find a very early draft of The Faculty script when Casey was named Pacey, the opening and ending are similar, but different in vibe, and the dialogue was base without the quips and snappy comebacks that made awarding “Best Line” very hard. It’s also subtitled “The Feelers”, which is the third big change I’m grateful for.
Let’s get into it.
The Faculty is about a small town high school being invaded by an alien parasite starting with the football coach. This is the first change I’m so happy they made. The opening scene is the same, though fleshed out, but the following sequence with Coach Willis crashing in as Principal Burke is trying to leave is so much stronger than him harassing the librarian in the script for two simple reasons - when Principal Burke is hiding in the classroom, we hear this noise in the darkness coming closer and it’s revealed to be Coach Willis blowing his whistle as he’s running after her; and the script calls for bookshelves to go down like dominoes, but we get this in the locker room at the end, instead. These are the creepy, out of the box elements I come to Williamson for.
The core group is like The Breakfast Club plus one - jock, cheerleader, goth girl, geek, and burnout, plus a naive new girl. The faculty is also spot on for small town - the jaded alcoholic, uninvested principal, inappropriate relationships, and the hardass football coach (looking at you Swetland).
This movie is self aware of its camp down to the staff casting - Jon Stewart, Piper Laurie, Robert Patrick, Selma Hyak, Daniel von Bargen - that I truly believe this is the main reason behind so many low ratings. It’s also a solid eight years before Juno hits audiences with its snappy dialogue and two years post Scream with its sardonic nature among characters, so maybe timing worked against The Faculty, but really, if it’d been well received we wouldn’t be talking about it, at least I wouldn’t be talking about it.
As fantastical as the main story is, the secondary stories between the core group realistically aligns with the alien context and is on par with Williamson subtext.
When the parasite takes a person, their personality shifts to their opposite - hardass Coach Willis is suddenly soft and even-keeled - which ties into the unraveling of secondary stories. This all comes to a head in a showdown scene straight out of The Thing where each accuses the other of being an alien due to the sudden revelations - Stan, the jock, announces he’s quitting football; cheerleader, Delilah, shows up to school in glasses and no makeup; Stokely (played by the amazing Clea Duvall and who I wanted terribly to be friends with) the closeted straight goth girl has only been playing lesbian; Zeke, the burnout repeating senior year, reveals he’s probably a genius with a chem lab in his garage. Casey, the geek, never changes, but has to prove he’s not an alien first because “it’s your birthright” (contender for best line).
I’d like to touch on the brilliance of Kevin Williamson’s subtext that we’d seen in Scream though we didn’t realize or accept it until recent years when Matthew Lillard spelled it out for us - Stu and Billy are gay (!!!). The Faculty is about aliens taking over a high school and people’s personalities changing when they’re infected, but when we meet the core group, they’re revealing themselves uninfected.
The ending of the script is mildly different from the theatrical ending, which led to my feelings being similar to my Pretty in Pink take - I agree with the theatrical ending. The script focuses on Pacey / Casey’s outcome while ignoring the rest of the group where the theatrical ending shows us a “where are they now” since the school is no longer infected by aliens. Personally, I like this ending because each character is living their truth. Zeke is a burnout football player embracing school; Stokely ditched false lesbian hood for a relationship with Stan who is now just a plain old student; and Delilah is less of a bitch. Casey goes the against the hero’s journey stereotype hero in that he doesn’t learn a lesson or change, he stays the geeky Stephen King kid, but the world is recognizing his value. In a nutshell, Williamson is telling us - just be who you are.
Really, Stokely? Not just pastels, but pastels to match your dude?
As the geeky Stephen King kid slash falsely labeled lesbian teenager in my high school, thank you, Kevin Williamson, this ending was not lost on me then or now.
Before we get to the awards, let’s talk about the soundtrack for a minute. Or more importantly the only one we associate with The Faculty - Class of ’99’s cover of “Brick in the Wall”. I had a TIL moment when I looked up Class of ’99 realizing I’d never heard any other song and saw not only is it a supergroup, but Layne Staley is singing. “Brick in the Wall” is one of the last recordings of Layne and while I like this song, there is a small part of me that wishes this wasn’t him or that I remained ignorant. A lot people will say “if only we’d gotten one more song/album” out of people, but the audible deterioration in his voice strikes me otherwise. Pour one out for Layne.
Now for the awards.
We’re getting best dressed out of the way because it should be obvious - Zeke. The thermal long sleeve with stretched cuffs under the black t-shirt (did anyone else notice the sincere lack of graphics on clothes? Licensing coordinator’s dream), the low-top shoes that resemble boots. On top of this Josh Hartnett’s haircut, leftover from Halloween: H20 when he cut his own hair in attempt to not be a teen heartthrob (sorry, Josh, there’s always been weird burnout kids like me).
Zeke’s car counts as an accessory, counting towards his win.
Honorable mention for best dressed goes to Mrs. Olson for her transformation from school marm to chic Catherine Martell.
Best line - “I’m not an alien, Delilah, I’m just discontent.” Honorable mention - “Fuck you, tit bags.”
Best moment - Infected Miss Burke chasing Zeke in his car, the car crash, Zeke climbing backwards out of his car, and the cherry on top - Miss Burke’s decapitated head crawling around via tentacles and her body looking for her head.
This one had a few honorable mentions because I think the cinematic moments of this movie are greatly overlooked:
For comedic purposes, when the group is in the garage and realize Delilah is infected, Stan grabs a croquet mallet from somewhere and carries it the rest of the sequence.
For a pay-off moment, Zeke stabbing Mr. Furlong in the eye after Mr. Furlong offhandedly says in the teacher’s lounge to someone busting his balls, “just stab me in the eye with a pen.”
For cinematic purposes, following the supposed death of Mr. Furlong, we’re entering the second second act when everyone is on board that the school is being invaded by aliens, our Breakfast Club executes the plan to exit school to the parking lot. This scene is brilliant and I’ll die on that hill. The music, the editing showing how students have changed, the eerie vibe given as they all approach Zeke’s car and then Usher shows up trying to get Stan to come be a part of the team again before Stan finally gets in the fucking car. This is my favorite scene, but I accept Miss Burke’s tentacle head meets the criteria of best scene.
That wraps up The Faculty, don’t forget to drink your water and be yourself.
My 1998 purple Ford Fuckin Ranger, Shelia from the Block, that has nothing to do with this movie.
