School Spirit (1985)
Studio: Buena Vista
Theatrical Release: October 30th, 1985
DVD Release: December 26th, 2005
Rating: R
Directed by Alan Holleb
Review by Craig Sorensen
So the stories go, back in the heyday of exploitation a film could get produced based on a title and a poster. It didn’t matter what the fuck happened in the film as long as you had an ad campaign. So as long as you had about three minutes or so of action to cut into a trailer it didn’t matter what else happened during the rest of the 60 to 70 minutes. Sometimes that would lead to creative people using that freedom to create films that transcend the genre and go on to become beloved classics. Other times it would just lead to lazy people not giving a shit. Guess which kind of people worked on School Spirit.
So Billy Batson (Tom Nolan of Batman Begins) is trying to get in the pants of Judith Hightower (Elizabeth Foxx of one episode of Trapper John M.D.) but he doesn’t have a rubber. So he rushes out to get one. On his way back he is hit by a truck and killed. Of course he turns into a ghost. His dead uncle Pinky (John Finnegan of A Woman Under the Influence) shows up to guide him to the other side but Billy gives him the slip to try to fuck Judith. So, being a ghost means that Billy can turn invisible by waving his hand over his head (or vise versa) because the screenwriter doesn’t know what a fucking ghost is. So what hijinks there are to be had are of the invisible man variety from here on out. And even then, most of the time he spends the movie visible so I don’t know what the point is. Anyway, there’s this French girl who’s rich and is giving a donation to the college (because of course this takes place at college). Billy and the French girl Madeleine (Daniéle Arnaud, ZZ Top Muse Girl in ZZ Top: Greatest Hits) fall in love and so now Billy wants to stay alive. What do you think folks, will Billy actually go to heaven at the end of this or will he return to his body like nothing ever happened? Do you care? Oh, also all this takes place during something called Hog Day, whatever that means.
OK, so usually the plot for these kind of films is really just an empty framework to hang dumb jokes and lots of boob shots. And that’s fine, I went into the film expecting that. It’s just that everything seems so lazy. First of all lets start with the premise. A horny ghost in a college filled with hot girls. That could lead to all kinds of shenanigans. Just imagine the panty raids. We only get one scene here and that’s the girl’s shower scene on the poster. One real supernatural set piece and that’s it. Sure he does a couple more things (usually involving throwing food at someone) but really that’s about it. And he doesn’t really do anything in the shower scene. The girls wander around and take showers and he stands against the wall (invisible of course) and gesticulates wildly. Then he leaves. He doesn’t even run off with their clothes or anything. It’s just like they added the scene because they needed something for the ad campaign. No thought whatsoever was put into it. And that’s really how the rest of the film plays out. I mean, who makes a film about ghosts where the main ghost spends most of the running time as a solid regular looking guy just going to college? What’s the point? Why not just make that film and save yourself the trouble of shooting bad invisible man effects? Here’s the perfect example of how poorly thought out this film is. At one point in the film Billy is arrested. He has to wait for Madeleine to break him out of jail. He’s a fucking ghost! Just walk through the goddamn walls or something! Another problem I have with this film is the nudity. It’ll be hard to write this without sounding like an asshole (probably too late for that anyway) but the nude girls they got for this just aren’t that attractive. They all look like bad ‘80s strippers (maybe they are, I don’t know). This film is full of bad tans, bad boob jobs and bad hair. There are cute girls here but none of them do nudity, which is good for them I guess but not so good for a film built on the promise of titillation. There is one thing that I liked in the film. There is a band that plays at the big Hog Day party that plays a song called ‘Here Comes Mr. Fun Hog’. If I had a band we’d cover that song for sure.
And a bad film deserves a bad DVD and that’s certainly what you get here. First of all, the film is presented in 1.33:1 and I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be matted or not. Some of the compositions looked fine at 1.33 and some had way too much headroom. I’m pretty sure that this had a theatrical run at some point so it probably should be matted for 1.85:1 but then you could be cutting off the tops of heads in some scenes. It could be that the film is just really poorly shot. Colors are murky as well. It really looks like they just dumped an old tape master onto disc and called it a day. Really, it just kind of looks like shit. I wouldn’t really be all that surprised if this didn’t have the Buena Vista logo slapped on it. This thing had Disney money behind it and they couldn’t find better elements? Sound is also shit. Everything’s hard to hear and (again) murky. The sound on the theatrical trailer is better than the film itself. Speaking of extras, you get the afore mentioned theatrical trailer and three more trailers for completely unrelated films.
Theatrical Release: October 30th, 1985
DVD Release: December 26th, 2005
Rating: R
Directed by Alan Holleb
Review by Craig Sorensen
So the stories go, back in the heyday of exploitation a film could get produced based on a title and a poster. It didn’t matter what the fuck happened in the film as long as you had an ad campaign. So as long as you had about three minutes or so of action to cut into a trailer it didn’t matter what else happened during the rest of the 60 to 70 minutes. Sometimes that would lead to creative people using that freedom to create films that transcend the genre and go on to become beloved classics. Other times it would just lead to lazy people not giving a shit. Guess which kind of people worked on School Spirit.
So Billy Batson (Tom Nolan of Batman Begins) is trying to get in the pants of Judith Hightower (Elizabeth Foxx of one episode of Trapper John M.D.) but he doesn’t have a rubber. So he rushes out to get one. On his way back he is hit by a truck and killed. Of course he turns into a ghost. His dead uncle Pinky (John Finnegan of A Woman Under the Influence) shows up to guide him to the other side but Billy gives him the slip to try to fuck Judith. So, being a ghost means that Billy can turn invisible by waving his hand over his head (or vise versa) because the screenwriter doesn’t know what a fucking ghost is. So what hijinks there are to be had are of the invisible man variety from here on out. And even then, most of the time he spends the movie visible so I don’t know what the point is. Anyway, there’s this French girl who’s rich and is giving a donation to the college (because of course this takes place at college). Billy and the French girl Madeleine (Daniéle Arnaud, ZZ Top Muse Girl in ZZ Top: Greatest Hits) fall in love and so now Billy wants to stay alive. What do you think folks, will Billy actually go to heaven at the end of this or will he return to his body like nothing ever happened? Do you care? Oh, also all this takes place during something called Hog Day, whatever that means.
OK, so usually the plot for these kind of films is really just an empty framework to hang dumb jokes and lots of boob shots. And that’s fine, I went into the film expecting that. It’s just that everything seems so lazy. First of all lets start with the premise. A horny ghost in a college filled with hot girls. That could lead to all kinds of shenanigans. Just imagine the panty raids. We only get one scene here and that’s the girl’s shower scene on the poster. One real supernatural set piece and that’s it. Sure he does a couple more things (usually involving throwing food at someone) but really that’s about it. And he doesn’t really do anything in the shower scene. The girls wander around and take showers and he stands against the wall (invisible of course) and gesticulates wildly. Then he leaves. He doesn’t even run off with their clothes or anything. It’s just like they added the scene because they needed something for the ad campaign. No thought whatsoever was put into it. And that’s really how the rest of the film plays out. I mean, who makes a film about ghosts where the main ghost spends most of the running time as a solid regular looking guy just going to college? What’s the point? Why not just make that film and save yourself the trouble of shooting bad invisible man effects? Here’s the perfect example of how poorly thought out this film is. At one point in the film Billy is arrested. He has to wait for Madeleine to break him out of jail. He’s a fucking ghost! Just walk through the goddamn walls or something! Another problem I have with this film is the nudity. It’ll be hard to write this without sounding like an asshole (probably too late for that anyway) but the nude girls they got for this just aren’t that attractive. They all look like bad ‘80s strippers (maybe they are, I don’t know). This film is full of bad tans, bad boob jobs and bad hair. There are cute girls here but none of them do nudity, which is good for them I guess but not so good for a film built on the promise of titillation. There is one thing that I liked in the film. There is a band that plays at the big Hog Day party that plays a song called ‘Here Comes Mr. Fun Hog’. If I had a band we’d cover that song for sure.
And a bad film deserves a bad DVD and that’s certainly what you get here. First of all, the film is presented in 1.33:1 and I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be matted or not. Some of the compositions looked fine at 1.33 and some had way too much headroom. I’m pretty sure that this had a theatrical run at some point so it probably should be matted for 1.85:1 but then you could be cutting off the tops of heads in some scenes. It could be that the film is just really poorly shot. Colors are murky as well. It really looks like they just dumped an old tape master onto disc and called it a day. Really, it just kind of looks like shit. I wouldn’t really be all that surprised if this didn’t have the Buena Vista logo slapped on it. This thing had Disney money behind it and they couldn’t find better elements? Sound is also shit. Everything’s hard to hear and (again) murky. The sound on the theatrical trailer is better than the film itself. Speaking of extras, you get the afore mentioned theatrical trailer and three more trailers for completely unrelated films.
[Rating:2]
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