Cutting Class (1989)

... aka: Assassinato no Colégio (Killing in College)
... aka: Cutting Class - Il ritorno di Brian (Cutting Class - The Return of Brian)
... aka: Die Todesparty 2 (Death Party II)
... aka: Filo de sangre (Edge of Blood)
... aka: Giovani omicidi (Young Murders)
... aka: Profession: Tueur (Profession: Killer)

Directed by:
Rospo Pallenberg

Brad Pitt is one of those Hollywood stars that I've never really cared much for. I've always felt he was kind of like the male version of Julia Roberts. You know, more "movie star" than actual actor. Middling talent. Limited versatility and emotional range. Severe lack of nuance and subtlety in each performance. As far as Pitt is concerned, he sometimes has his moments, few and far between as those may be, but for the most part I find his acting style overly-mannered, obvious and hammy, almost never find him believable in any role he plays and think he often stands out like a sore thumb as the weak acting link in most of the movies he's done. To make matters worse, he has a hilarious inability to do accents yet insists on doing them all the time, anyway. Directors have actually had to alter roles specifically to accommodate this in order to take advantage of his "sex appeal" and box office "star power."

When Interview with a Vampire was first announced, I was mostly concerned with Tom Cruise's miscasting and didn't think much of Pitt at the time, but ended up walking out of the movie thinking Cruise, Kirsten Dunst and most of the rest of the cast acted circles around him. I found his performances poor in everything from Meet Joe Black to Troy to Inglorious Basterds. The least said about the PG-13 zombie apocalypse movie World War Z, which became an undeserving box office hit, the better, and I know everyone loves Se7en, but I found his performance in that lacking as well and still laugh during the "shocking" finale due to his poorly-delivered anguished freak out. I think we can all list a few popular actors we just don't "get" for whatever reason and Pitt just happens to be one of mine. Nevertheless, he's the ONLY reason this film has had any legs over the years, the only reason it's received endless releases on home video and the only reason it remains one of the most viewed late 80s slasher flicks.

Jill Schoelen, she of the beautiful face, vibrant smile, long, black and refreshingly unpoofy-by-80s-standards hair, husky voice and occasionally awkward line delivery, stars as Paula Carson, a high school senior whose academic smarts don't appear to transition over to her love life. She's dating hot-tempered high school jock Dwight (Pitt), who is first seen having a laugh after almost running over a kid on a tricycle. Always with beer in hand, Dwight is a future alcoholic and wife beater who bosses Paula around, screams in her face ("Get in the car!"), never listens to her, doesn't seem to respect her wishes at all and does about a hundred other things that only a doormat with severe self-esteem issues would tolerate. Dwight's behavior becomes even more obnoxious and insufferable once Brian Woods (Donovan Leitch) reenters the picture.

Brian, a former childhood friend of Dwight's, was put in a mental institution five years earlier for cutting the brake lines on his dad's car but has recently been released. His former bestie wastes no time letting him know he no longer wants to be associated with him and he's to stay away from both him and Paula. And yet Dwight is such a putz that his "leave us alone" demands completely contradict the fact he keeps bullying (and spying on) Brian. He even breaks into the school at one point just so he can get a look at Brian's student file. Said file shows that Brian's been diagnosed as a "violent schizophrenic" and received daily electroshock treatments in the nuthouse; info Dwight and some friends use to play a cruel prank on him.

The killer's first target is Paula's district attorney / "mail order outdoorsman" father (Martin Mull), who's out mallard hunting when he's shot with an arrow. Instead of dying, Mull ends up lying in the swamp gasping for breath and then crawls around for what feels like an eternity trying to make his way back home. He's unable to talk or scream while students are there on a field trip yet seems to have no issue talking to a dog in the very next scene. I think this is supposed to funny. Interestingly enough, while Mull is barely in the movie and his scenes are pointless, he's probably the second most likable person in the film, which speaks volumes about how repellent, weird, annoying and / or obnoxious everyone else is.

Roddy McDowall has an embarrassing role as a perverted principal who sniffs dirty socks, tricks a short-skirted Paula into bending over so he can see her panties and is caught cross dressing in the theater's wardrobe department. Nancy Fish plays a bitchy vice principal who's xeroxed to death and Dirk Blocker is a loud-mouth gym coach who is impaled with a flagpole while on a trampoline, which may sound fun but is so poorly executed it's not. The math teacher is axed and the flamboyant art teacher is baked in a kiln. There's also a stereotypically weird / unkempt janitor (Robert Glaudini) lurking around who shouts "I'm the custodian of your fucking destiny!" (huh?) and cleans up blood after the murders yet forgets to tell anybody.

Seeing how most of the victims are adults, I was thinking perhaps this was intended to be cathartic for maladjusted teens wanting to see authority figures get slaughtered after being depicted in the most exaggerated, unflattering ways imaginable. Then again, there are teen victims as well, including Paula's voluptuous friend Colleen (Brenda James), who gets slashed under the bleachers along with her boyfriend after rallying the school with her panty-free cheerleading routine. So, yeah, that probably wasn't the intention at all, was it?

None of the unsavory side characters really function as red herrings as the film narrows down the suspects to just Dwight and Brian fairly early on. So, who is it? Dwight, who's controlling, insecure, prone to angry outbursts and basically just a big ol' douchebag? Or Brian, who's already killed once and may have snapped again? Better question: Will you even care? While I can't answer for you, I can answer for myself and say that, no, I never cared. Neither Leitch nor Pitt help matters as they're both terrible in this (Leitch - who curiously gave a fine performance in the previous year's Blob remake - certainly isn't helped any by the atrocious one-liners he's given toward the end), but the direction and writing are what ultimately do the film in.

While an untalented or inexperienced director can easily ruin a good script, a skilled director should be able to find various ways to improve upon or at least distract from a weak script. Pallenberg, who was best known for working on John Boorman films prior to this, is unable to do either in his film debut. That may also explain why Cutting Class was his first and only film as director. However, this appears to have always had an awful screenplay. What else can you say about a movie where a key piece of info is relayed by having a character bump into a shelf and knock off a tape recorder that falls on the ground, hits the play button and happens to be at the exact spot on the tape necessary to plant a seed of doubt in the protagonist's mind to fuel the entire third act? Development of the plot, the characters, dialogue, pacing, all of it is truly awful. And the tone is all over the place.

I saw this several times before as a kid and, though I didn't love it back then, I don't remember it being THIS bad. But, hey, at least there's one enjoyable thing to be found in this mess: the Andy Prieboy / Wall of Voodoo soundtrack, which features some great songs like "Nearer to Morning" (also featured on the same year's C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud soundtrack) and "Man Talk." So I will now add these to my New Wave playlist while permanently banishing Class to my "Never Again" pile. Thanks for at least that much, I guess.

Due to Pitt's presence (he'd start becoming a major star just two years later), this has never gone out of circulation. There have been countless VHS and DVD releases over the years, with third-billed Pitt placed front and center on the covers. Vinegar Syndrome put out a newly scanned and 4K restored Blu-ray just last year. Their release comes with interviews with Schoelen, Leitch, cinematographer Avi Karpick and the director. Not surprisingly, Pitt wasn't involved.

In Germany, it was released under the title Die Todesparty 2 ("Death Party II") as a sequel to SLAUGHTER HIGH (called Die Todesparty there). In Spain, it was called Clase sangrienta ("Bloody Class") and merely swiped the poster art from Slaughter High. A UK video release also re-used the Slaughter High art. How these two unrelated films became connected on the home video market appears to be entirely the work of Vestron Video.

★

Phantom of the Opera, The (1989)

...aka: Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera

...aka: Phantom of the Opera: The Motion Picture

Directed by:

Dwight H. Little

With Robert Englund cast as the love struck Phantom you know this isn't going to be high art, but it's an OK effort with good cinematography, decent production values, fine art direction and period detail and, of course, plenty of gory make-up effects to keep Bob's legion of Elm Street fans happy. The story is about the same as the classic Gaston Leroux adaptations as beautiful opera understudy Christine (Jill Schoelen, who's quite appealing here) is unwillingly helped out by the evil Phantom/Erik; he's out to both avenge those who have mocked him and advance her budding career. The biggest differences between this and other versions is that the title character stitches the skin of his victims onto his face, has made a pact with Satan and dispatches the supporting cast in more violent ways (including substituting a decaptiation for the famous chandelier dropping scene). Englund doesn't seem to know whether to be menacing or campy here, and in a movie like this it's hard to have it both ways. The supporting cast includes Alex Hyde-White, Bill Nighy and a pre-Saturday Night Live Molly Shannon making her film debut in the bookmarking scenes set in New York City.

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The "sequel" to this film isn't actually a sequel. It's the 1991 film DANCE MACABRE, which was filmed in Russia by director Greydon Clark, features Englund in a dual role as a choreographer and an elderly wheelchair-bound female ballerina (!) and was re-titled PHANTOM OF THE OPERA II for some markets.

★★★

Curse II: The Bite (1989)

...aka: Bite, The

Directed by:

Frederico Prosperi

Curse II: The Bite (originally called simply The Bite) has absolutely nothing to do with the original THE CURSE (1987), a gory adaptation of Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space." It also has no connection to the other two films released later as part of this series, which has been known to annoy many people. In the case of this one, if you're willing to put the annoying marketing out of your mind and take it at face value, it isn't too bad. If you're scared of snakes, it effectively plays that fear to the hilt... and then some! Attractive young couple Lisa (Jill Schoelen) and Clark (J. Eddie Peck) are traveling through New Mexico when some decidedly strange things begin to happen. For starters, snakes seem to be are all over the place, including the road they're driving on in a memorable opening sequence. One manages to get into their jeep, he's bit on the hand and we eventually find out that the snakes have been exposed to radioactive materials. This, mixed with some anti venom injection given to him by Jamie Farr (not a qualified doctor), combine for horrific results when Clark's hand slowly turns into an uncontrollable killer snake with a mind of its own. It reaches down a cop's throat and pulls his heart out of his mouth, blinds a woman (Savina Gersak) by spitting venom in her eyes and rips a female doctor's jaw completely off during several of the more potent gore / murder scenes. However, the best fx (from the reliable Screaming Mad George) are saved for the big finale as Clark begins to go through a major transformation. His tongue and eyeballs fall out, he starts vomiting up snakes and eventually falls apart to reveal a huge snake monster.

Ridiculous as this all may sound, the premise in unusual enough to maintain interest throughout, the make-up effects are inventive and there's a nice Southern road movie feel with scenes taking place along windswept interstate highways along the desert, in country bars and in the house of some backwoods religious folks. Performances are mostly good, with the two leads doing fairly well, as well as Farr. Smaller roles are played by veteran character actors Bo Svenson (as a blowhard Sheriff), Marianne Muellerleile (Farr's female truck driver girlfriend), Sydney Lassick (a guy at the hotel) and Al Fann (a gas station attendant whose dog has been also been effected by the snakes), plus there's an early performance from Shiri Appleby (TV's "Roswell") as a nosy little girl. There were American, Italian (Ovidio G. Assonitis was one of the executive producers) and Japanese backers on this project.

★★1/2