We live in what’s called “Co-operative Housing,” which means we’re shareholders in a small community of sorts. We all pay a small monthly fee for the Co-op’s satellite system, which has HBO and TCM, among other services. Some of the channels are great—full HD, though our TV only supports 1080p—and some are meh as far as quality of picture and sound. The other day, one of the channels had The Faculty on, which we saw years ago when it came out, and really haven’t watched it since. But the quality wasn’t great, so I dug out the DVD—we obviously liked it well enough to get that—and we watched the movie over supper.
The movie came out in 1998, and I’m sure we watched it on TV whenever it was first shown; I didn’t remember a lot about it except that we enjoyed it. It was straight “alien invasion” science fiction, with a bunch of actors we knew—Robert Patrick from Terminator 2, Salma Hayek from From Dusk Till Dawn, Frodo… I mean, Elijah Wood from Lord of the Rings, Bebe Neuwirth from Frazier, and Piper Laurie from Carrie (at the time, I didn’t realize it was she in The Hustler with Paul Newman). And some of the other actors looked kinda familiar. At the time, I didn’t realize it was directed by Robert Rodriguez (Figure 1). I didn’t know anything about Robert Rodriguez, either; I didn’t know he had directed From Dusk Till Dawn, either—it was a favourite vampire movie. This time, I paid attention to the credits.
Well, as a science fiction fan (and dedicated pool player), all the above actors and shows were pretty iconic to me. I hadn’t, at that time, realized that Rodriguez directed the vampire movie; I’d thought it was a Quentin Tarantino flick. (By the way, that series is a perfect example of “going too often to the well.” The first movie was humorous and scary, and well thought out—the second was worse, and the third one made no sense whatsoever in my opinion. The first one was character-driven; the byplay between Tarantino’s character and the other characters, including his brother (played by George Clooney), was really well done. But I digress.)
Rodriguez is notable because his first big-screen movie release was a fixup by a major studio of a film shot on 16-mm stock (silent) with a budget of about $8,000(!), of which they used $7,800. The sound (Spanish language) was added and synced later. It so impressed a studio that it was worked up into a studio release, and Rodriguez’s career was off and running.
The plot of The Faculty is pretty simple: one of the teachers (Robert Patrick) at a high school (locale unspecified, but it appears to have been shot in Texas) is approached by an alien that infects him with a parasite that in effect makes him a pod person from the Kevin McCarthy Invasion of the Body Snatchers. While this infection is spreading among the teachers, a student (Frod… er, Elijah Wood) finds a peanut-sized and shaped thing in the grass on the football field. A new female student from Georgia tries to integrate into this tightly-knit student body, but ends up only being able to connect with the local goth outcast, who pretends to be a lesbian to keep the other students, especially male students, away. She’s an outcast because she wants to be. The new student, named something like Mary Beth, is too goody-goody to be belieived. Another student (Josh Hartnett, not one of the studious ones, but one of the smartest) is making a living selling homemade “picker-uppers” called “scat,” disguised as pens, and other contraband, from the trunk of his car. Once the aliens have control of the faculty, they set about “podding” the student body, opposed only by a small group comprising the students I just mentioned.
The different student cliques, the various teachers’ relationships, and the changes in “alienized” teachers is all well done. Even the CGI was very good for 1998. Wood’s character is sort of a hapless sad sack who is harassed by jocks, but he becomes the catalyst for the student group finding out how to oppose the aliens. I don’t want to give too much away if you haven’t seen it, but I think it maintains that kind of tension that BodySnatchers did so well (even the juiced-up Donald Sutherland version). Of course the outcast “lesbian” girl points out that Bodysnatchers was a ripoff of Robert A. Heinlein’s (though she mispronounces his name) The Puppet Masters.
It’s not a perfect movie by any means, because there are several major flaws—for example, they theorize that killing the original alien (even though they don’t know who is the original alien), the “queen” (a trope overused in many SF movies), will kill all the offspring leaving the hosts unharmed, which makes little sense—what happens when the queen dies of old age or disease? Does the whole species then die out? How does the alien change size and mass so quickly?
The students discover that the “scat” drug purveyed by Hartness’s character kills the aliens (and the host) by drying them out; they come from a world lacking in moisture. At one point, he is left with only one or two doses, but doesn’t go to the storeroom where he gets all his supplies to rearm himself with the active ingredient. But these are minor quibbles, forgotten in the excitement of the struggle between the non-possessed students and the pod people first, then the alien “queen.” A fun movie with some good actors in it.
As I have done every year for the last seven or eight, I’m going to skip the remainder of the year for this column, coming back after my birthday in early January. So at this point, I would like to wish each and every one of you a joyous and wonderful holiday season, whether yours be religious or secular, and no matter what you’re celebrating, and hope that you have a terrific New Year. So here’s to the end of 2024 and a hope and wish that 2025 will be an improvement! See you all in January.
If you have any comments about this column, good or bad, just email (stevefah at hotmail dot com) me or comment here on Amazing Stories Online. I’d like to hear what you think. My opinion is, as always, my own, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of Amazing Stories or its owner, editor, publisher or other columnists. See you next year!
