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The Faculty

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The Faculty
Directed byRobert Rodríguez
Written byKevin Williamson
David Wechter (story)
Bruce Kimmel (story)
Produced byElizabeth Avellan
StarringJordana Brewster
Clea DuVall
Laura Harris
Josh Hartnett
Shawn Hatosy
Salma Hayek
Famke Janssen
Piper Laurie
Bebe Neuwirth
Robert Patrick
Usher Raymond
Jon Stewart
Elijah Wood
CinematographyEnrique Chediak
Edited byRobert Rodríguez
Music byMarco Beltrami
Distributed byDimension
Release dates
December 25, 1998
Running time
104 minutes
LanguageEnglish
Budget$15,000,000 (estimated)

The Faculty is a 1998 horror/science-fiction film, written by Kevin Williamson and directed by Robert Rodríguez. The film stars Elijah Wood, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Usher, Josh Hartnett and Shawn Hatosy.

Plot summary

The Faculty is about a fictional high school, Herrington High (said to be located somewhere 'in the middle of Ohio'), at which the faculty and staff become taken over by alien parasites. In turn, the faculty then infects the students with the organism. A rag-tag group of six students resists, including: Zeke Tyler (Josh Hartnett), a loner and genius repeating his Senior year because he didn't care about graduating, whose parents travel constantly so as to 'get away from their big bastard mistake,' and who sells, among other illegal items, a cocaine-like drug of his own creation to his fellow students; Stan Rosado (Shawn Hatosy), a jock who decides Senior year to quit the football team and focus on his academics; Stan's girlfriend Delilah Profit (Jordana Brewster), a popular, yet vindictive girl who is the editor in chief of the student paper; Casey Connor (Elijah Wood), an outcast picked on by the students at Herrington, who has a crush on Delilah, and who is intelligent and a photographer for the school newspaper; Stokely 'Stokes' Mitchell (Clea DuVall), a female outcast and literary buff who claims to be a lesbian in order to prove her independence from people, and has a crush on Stan; and Marybeth Louise Hutchinson (Laura Harris), the new girl at school, claiming to have come from Atlanta to live with relatives because her parents had died in a car crash, and who has a crush on Zeke.

The aliens who take over the school do so by injecting a parasitic organism into the ear, which takes over the brain and creates what appears to be a different version of the person- one that desires to spread the parasite as much as it can. The faculty sends the entire student body to the nurse for ear inspections, where they are taken over by the parasite. Before this, however, Casey has figured out their plot (he and Delilah are hiding in the teacher's lounge closet when they see the nurse taken over by the parasite), and he warns Delilah, Stokely- turning to her to seek information on fictional examples of invasions such as The Body Snatchers- and Stan. Joined by Zeke and Marybeth, who overhear them talking of aliens in the science lab, they are all convinced of Casey's theory when Mr. Furlong (Jon Stewart), the science teacher, enters the room and attempts to infect them with the alien. Zeke pulls out a pen filled with his drug, and jams it into Furlong's eye, which then dries out the alien inside of him, as the drug is a diuretic and the aliens require water to cope with life on Earth; an older teacher made a poor host as she lacked the necessary water for the alien to exist.

Thus, they all leave the school, which has become completely infected, and go to Zeke's house with a sample of the parasite, where they verify that Zeke's drug is diuretic/desiccant and dries the alien out. Stokely speculates that destroying the queen alien will kill all the parasites, without killing their victims. Soon, the group becomes suspicious of each other, each of them citing such actions as Stan's recent shift from football to academics and Casey's sudden courage as potential evidence that they aren't who they say they are. In a scene that parallel's John Carpenter's "The Thing," they each take turns snorting the drug to prove that they have not been infected. When Delilah's turn came, she refused, revealing that she had already been infected. She then destroys most of Zeke's supply of the drug, as well as his equipment for producing it, before getting away by bursting through the wall. With the remainder of his drug, the remaining five go to the school (where the entire town is watching the school football game). They succeed in killing Principal Drake (Bebe Neuwirth), but the other hosts remain unaffected, Stan subsequently becoming infected when he goes onto the field to investigate. Because they ran out of their supply of the drug, Zeke and Casey decide to go to Zeke's car for more. Marybeth and Stokely wait inside the school gym, for their return. While Casey served as the decoy, Zeke went to his car. There, he encounters Miss Burke (Famke Janssen), who is infected; he decapitates her by driving into a bus, though she survives and reattaches her head.

At the same time, Marybeth reveals herself to be the queen alien by changing into a large aquatic creature; when snorting the drug, she blocked up her nostrils and tipped out the drug while everyone was distracted by Delilah. Casey returns before Zeke, and he and Stokely must run from the transformed Marybeth. Zeke returns with more of the drug, only to find that Stokely, too, has been infected. After confirming that Casey remains human, the two of them try to fight Marybeth in the locker room, but Zeke is knocked out, leaving only Casey. In an attempt to talk Casey into surrendering, Marybeth delivers a speech about how she crashed onto Earth, came to their school, found all of them alienated and unhappy, and started infecting them in order to create a better life for the entire world, one of harmony and acceptance, and then attempts to seduce him by appearing naked. Casey rejects her advances, running through the back of the gym's bleachers after triggering them to collapse against the wall, and the alien (having chased him) becomes trapped. Casey then stabs the drug into her eye, killing her.

After this, these five adolescents are completely changed- Zeke applies his genius to schoolwork and has joined the football team (and seems to be dating Miss Burke); Stan and Stokely become boyfriend and girlfriend; Stokely changes her appearance and is happy now; Delilah and Casey become boyfriend and girlfriend; Casey is more accepted at school (With various papers talking about his extraterrestial encounter despite the official denial of the FBI) and Delilah is no longer vindictive.

Cast

Soundtrack

Untitled

The score is composed by Marco Beltrami, who had previously scored the teen-slasher-horror film, Scream, as well as Mimic. Both Beltrami's score[1] and songs by various artists used in the film were released as albums. The "music from the motion picture" album features songs by various indie and alternative rock groups.

Track listing

  1. "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" - Class of '99
  2. "The Kids Aren't Alright" - The Offspring
  3. "I'm Eighteen" - Creed
  4. "Helpless" - D Generation
  5. "School's Out" - Soul Asylum
  6. "Medication" - Garbage
  7. "Haunting Me" - Stabbing Westward
  8. "Maybe Someday" - Flick
  9. "Resuscitation" - Sheryl Crow
  10. "It's Over Now" - Neve
  11. "Changes" - Shawn Mullins
  12. "Stay Young" - Oasis
  13. "Another Brick in the Wall" - Class of '99

Filming locations

The Faculty takes place in fictional Herrington, Ohio but was filmed at the following locations:

DVD release

The Faculty was one of the few Robert Rodriguez films not to receive special treatment on DVD. Missing are traditional extras typical for a Robert Rodriguez DVD including "10 Minute Film School", audio commentary and making-of featurettes. Fans attribute this to the fact that this was the only Rodriguez film that he didn't write himself, aside from collaborations From Dusk till Dawn (written by his friend and frequent collaborator Quentin Tarantino) and Sin City (by the film's co-director Frank Miller), leading many to believe that he only directed it because of a contractual obligation with Miramax.[citation needed]

The absence of deleted scenes or a director's cut version of the film on DVD is especially disappointing to fans since several scenes involving an additional character named Venus, played by Kidada Jones, were shown in previews but cut from the film.[citation needed]

Trivia

  • The naming of the characters contains inside jokes, such as Principal Drake (the Drake equation being one that attempts to define the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the universe), and names referring to prophets of The Bible (Zeke is short for Ezekiel; Delilah Profit may refer to Delilah, from the book of Judges, and Profit referring to prophet).
  • The group of kids is an homage to the social make-up of the kids in the film The Breakfast Club, with a jock, a basketcase/outsider, a princess, a geek and a rebel. It even ends with the jock and the basketcase hooking up, with Clea DuVall's makeover almost identical to that of Ally Sheedy's at the end of the movie.
  • The film also contains a small theatrical in-joke: when Mrs. Olson begs Principal Drake for money to put on a musical, Drake responds that they should "use last year's set from Our Town." Our Town is a play famous for being performed with no set whatsoever.
  • The scene at Zeke's house, where each of the students must sniff the 'drug' to be sure none of them are aliens, is similar to the scene in The Thing where they must test their blood to confirm that they haven't been infected.
  • The car Zeke drives is a 1970 Pontiac GTO.
  • The film was named Parasite パラサイト (Parasaito) in Japan.
  • The film's trailer features no footage of Stan, one of the main characters of the film. Instead, the trailer makes it seem like Usher's character is a main protagonist. Similarly, the film's VHS and DVD cover features Usher, but not Shawn Hatosy.
  • The character portrayed by Jon Stewart is named Edward Furlong, which is the name of the actor who played John Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Coincidentally, Robert Patrick, who played the T-1000 in Terminator 2, also stars here as coach Joe Willis.
  • According to the commentary track for the special edition DVD of Sin City, Robert Rodriguez stated that he met Jessica Alba when she auditioned for a role in this film.
  • The movie was filmed in Lockhart, Texas which is the Barbecue Capital of the World and is the site of many other movie productions in the past.

References

  1. ^ http://www.soundtrack.net/albums/database/?id=2443
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