Hello and welcome back for another round of Forgotten Favorites. Please take a seat or stand; I’m not the boss of you, and enjoy this week’s nostalgic memory.
Today I’d like to reach into the memory bag and pull out a horror movie that most of you have probably forgotten through the years. I am talking about the alien invasion flick, The Faculty.
The Faculty landed in theatres Dec. 25, 1998. Not exactly your traditional Christmas movie, because this movie is about aliens taking over a small Ohio high school.
The film starts by introducing all of the main characters in their various cliques around the school. You have the jock, the nerd, the bully and the lazy drug dealer, just to name a few. These people, as you guessed it, will have to settle their differences and work together to stop the alien invasion that is slowly happening around them.
The title is a good indication of how it begins. The faculty starts acting strange and slowly the students follow after one of our characters finds a weird organism in the football field. It’s up to our rag-tag group of misfits to join up and stop it from spreading to the rest of the world. And how can they stop this? By killing the queen of course! They have no idea who she/he is, but they must figure it out before the huge homecoming game, which all of the town will attend.
It also doesn’t help that they slowly start to suspect and turn on each other. But that is where drugs come in! Remember how I said there is a lazy drug dealer? Well, he has created a drug much like cocaine. If one of the infected inhales the drug, it will dry out the parasite alien, causing a violent reaction in the host.
Doesn’t really jingle the holiday bells, does it? The movie was directed by Robert Rodriguez who had the likes of Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn under his belt. This film seemed to not be as successful or withstand the tests of time. The movie had a relatively all-star cast with the likes of Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Famke Janssen, Salma Hayek and even Jon Stewart. And like a lot of movies trying to pull an even broader audience, it had a cameo by Usher Raymond (who was successful at the time).
It references the cliché story plots like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and throws a wrench in the gears to bring this spooky sci-fi thriller. It is a clever plot twist horror/comedy that if you haven’t seen, I highly suggest that you do.
Well that’s it for now my nostalgia addicts, be sure to come back next week for another slice of Forgotten Favorites, sliced up and served fresh!
