THE FACULTY

'''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 and Josh Hartnett.

Contents

Plot summary

Cast

Soundtrack

Track listing

Filming locations

DVD release

Trivia

References

External links

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 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 Stokely, Delilah, 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.
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 drys 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. 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 and Stan is infected. 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.
At the same time, Marybeth reveals herself to be the queen alien by changing into a large aquatic creature. 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. He and Casey fight Marybeth, but Zeke is knocked out, leaving only Casey. In an attempt to persuade 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 and Delilah is no longer vindictive.

Cast

★ Elijah Wood as Casey Connor

★ Jordana Brewster as Delilah Profitt

★ Clea DuVall as Stokely 'Stokes' Mitchell

★ Laura Harris as Marybeth Louise Hutchinson

★ Josh Hartnett as Zeke Tyler

★ Shawn Hatosy as Stan Rosado

★ Salma Hayek as Nurse Rosa Harper

★ Famke Janssen as Miss Elizabeth Burke

★ Bebe Neuwirth as Principal Valerie Drake

★ Robert Patrick as Coach Joe Willis

★ Usher Raymond as Gabe Santora

★ Jon Stewart as Professor Furlong

★ Piper Laurie as Mrs. Karen Olson

★ Harry Knowles as Mr. Knowles

Soundtrack

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

# "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" - Class of '99
# "The Kids Aren't Alright" - The Offspring
# "I'm Eighteen" - Creed
# "Helpless" - D Generation
# "School's Out" - Soul Asylum
# "Medication" - Garbage
# "Haunting Me" - Stabbing Westward
# "Maybe Someday" - Flick
# "Resuscitation" - Sheryl Crow
# "It's Over Now" - Neve
# "Changes" - Shawn Mullins
# "Stay Young" - Oasis
# "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:

★ Austin, Texas

★ Dallas, Texas

★ Lockhart, Texas

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.
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.

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 are a 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.

★ 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.

★ The car Zeke drives is a 1970 Pontiac GTO.

References

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

External links

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