Cutting Class

CUTTING CLASS
(R, Vestron Pictures, 91 mins., limited release date: March 24, 1989)

Arriving far too late to capitalize on either the slasher or sex comedy cycles that were meant to amuse undiscriminating children of the 1980s, Cutting Class functions more like a remedial-friendly term paper on both of these genres. It's a tough sit for anyone with the slightest appreciation of what is a mostly overqualified cast, from luminous Jill Schoelen (cf: The Phantom of the Opera) on down to slumming vets Martin Mull and Roddy McDowall. One might be compelled to give it a spin on the basis of Brad Pitt in a prominent, pre-marquee supporting performance. But this isn't even on the same plane as rediscovering, say, Tom Hanks in He Knows You're Alone or Leonardo DiCaprio in Critters 3, as Cutting Class is to Pitt what Shadows Run Black was to Kevin Costner. George Clooney, all is forgiven.

It's also the kind of movie that made me appreciate more the things Pet Sematary Two got right, particularly the scene-stealing vigor of Clancy Brown, his sadistic one-liners having worked as comic relief based on his professionalism. Cutting Class is also peppered with smart-alecky dialogue: "I'm going to change my IQ. Is 300 too high?" and "I'm the custodian of your fucking destiny!" and "I was a murderer. It wasn't as prestigious as being a doctor or a lawyer, but the hours were good." The first is spoken apropos by the school exhibitionist (Brenda Lynne Klemme, who'd go on to James Gunn's superior Slither) while her friends are searching through the school files hoping to learn about a creepy kid. I guess this is meant to justify the unfounded Heathers comparisons some fools throw at Cutting Class, but this doesn't wash due to poor timing and performance.

The second quote comes from the janitor (Robert Glaudini), a nutty veteran who cleans up after the aforementioned girl's grisly demise. It would've worked better had the janitor not turned away from the students twice before saying it, because it does come off as desperate. I'll leave the third quote alone, as it easily the best of the bunch and the closest thing to successful humor Cutting Class nearly pulls off. But the point stands in that I've seen Friday the 13th sequels with more finesse than this, and there isn't a single funny line to compare with what you'd find in a cheesy Juan Piquer Simon bloodbath like Pieces or Slugs.

Wholesome Paula Carson (Schoelen) says goodbye to her father William (Mull), a district attorney off on a week's duck-hunting vacation which is sabotaged by a homicidal archer. The body count would seem to begin, but one lone arrow isn't enough to kill Mr. Carson, and Martin Mull spends the rest of the movie trudging along the marsh looking for unwilling help. Paula, meanwhile, rebuffs the advances of her boyfriend Dwight Ingalls (Pitt), a dim jock on the verge of failing out of school and blowing his basketball scholarship because of his mean streak. The bane of Dwight's ire is his former best friend Brian Woods (Donovan Leitch), who has returned to school after being institutionalized for the murder of his father and develops a spooky crush on Paula. Brian and Dwight in turn become the only tangible suspects when members of the faculty and a couple of Paula's friends get killed.

Rospo Pallenberg, in his sole directing credit after a career under John Boorman's mentorship, and writer Steve Slavkin (who transitioned to children's entertainment starting with Nickelodeon's Salute Your Shorts) lack the basic motor function which keeps their tongue inside cheek, so they instead blow raspberries at the target audience. You would expect a satiating supply of gore and nudity, but both these obligations are carried out half-heartedly. The art teacher is cooked alive in a kiln and the gym coach lands on the blunt end of a flagpole during trampoline exercises (Eli Roth was indeed paying attention). These are the only interesting set pieces, and they are both insufficiently nasty. Only at the end of the film is the splatter quota jacked up, but the resolution of the central murder mystery is as predictable as the flippant turn of the killer.

Excepting some mandatory locker room flesh (two breasts, as Joe Bob Briggs would point out), the camera leers at Jill Schoelen to such an overbearing degree that it makes her shower scene in The Stepfather a model of high class. Schoelen is well and truly sexy, but in the asinine context of Cutting Class, the peek-a-boo panty shots put you in the loafers of the opportunistically perverted principal (Roddy McDowall, losing all dignity on his way to Shakma). Not helping matters is the stultifying blandness of her character, who is both the only student aware of the missing persons as well as so desperate for her cocky squeeze's ring that she breaks into the school with him just to ridicule Brian. Again, this is the exact opposite of Jill's solid work in The Stepfather.

Schoelen is capable but squandered here, which is more than you can say of the male leads. Brian is meant to remind us of the Norman Bates of Psycho II, a reformed murderer nervously trying to preserve his dwindling sanity even as he's vilified by an angry mob who takes it on faith that he's no better even after being exposed to more shock therapy than any of Nurse Ratched's charges. But as played by Donovan Leitch (son of "Sunshine Superman" and brother to Ione Skye), Brian is an uninspiring mixture of Emilio Estevez's Kirbo from St. Elmo's Fire and Lawrence Monoson's Gary from The Last American Virgin, which is bad enough chemistry on its own. Brian's not even the Norman Bates of Psycho III. Brad Pitt's hothead stud is just as embarrassing, from a "cute" opening in which he nearly runs over a child ("Same time tomorrow?") to a horrendously simpering breakdown over a payphone (he's not the Norman Bates of Psycho IV). Paula's supposed moment of Final Girl triumph is utterly ridiculous given the reprehensibility of both Brian and Dwight. 

Cutting Class is absolutely needless, to say the least. There was only one real attempt at parodying slasher movies in the 1980s: Student Bodies, a hit-and-miss gagfest clearly inspired by Airplane! On the whole, though, horror comedies walked a very thin line back then, with An American Werewolf in London and Fright Night managing to work on both levels and others like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 or TerrorVision (and countless others, judging by your memory) coming across as just plain goofy. Cutting Class doesn't even fulfill that low standard. Even the soundtrack, with its original tunes by new wave has-beens Wall of Voodoo, cannot set a convincing tone. Never has a campus movie held itself back with such mechanical indifference as Cutting Class.

The Phantom of the Opera (1989)

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
(R, 21st Century Film Corpopration, 93 mins., theatrical release date: November 4, 1989)

The mounting success of the Nightmare on Elm Street series back in the 1980s turned Robert Englund into the definitive superstar of the slasher era. Not too many onscreen bogeymen of this time lent themselves to making household names of their performers, as Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Leatherface were played by a wide variety of stuntmen and one-flick wonders. Englund, though, was lucky in that the Freddy Krueger character had such a distinctive personality to match his classical talents, and he secured his legacy based on the original Elm Street franchise, seeing it through many promotional tie-ins, spin-offs and even convention appearances.

By the end of the decade, it seemed like no surprise to learn that in the tradition of fellow horror heroes like Lon Chaney, Claude Rains and Herbert Lom, Englund would essay the iconic Phantom of the Opera, the most durable anti-hero of 20th century literature, theater and film. As far as cinematic embryos are concerned, Englund as the Phantom is a virile conception. New Line Cinema could do no wrong by installing a new bedroom into The House That Freddy Built.

It's a shame to know that the paternity test revealed not Bob Shaye as the daddy, but instead one Menahem Golan. You know what that means: Robert Englund would have to be fired out of a Cannon to get this role.

The Englund-centric update of Phantom of the Opera was originally slated for production by the notorious Cannon Films, but their trio of over-budgeted, under-performing Tobe Hooper genre films led to the company's bankruptcy. The dissolution of the Golan/Globus partnership meant that the project would wind up in the hands of one or the other, and with English exploitation maven Harry Alan Towers on his side, Golan kept that particular project after becoming the new CEO of 21st Century Film Corporation.

The pedigree was initially British, seeing as how it was originally written by Gerald O'Hara and offered to director John Hough, who once upon a time made films like Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry and The Legend of Hell House. Hough also worked steadily for Disney in the 1970s, making the two Witch Mountain films as well as The Watcher in the Woods. However, the 1980s saw him stinking up his resume with the likes of The Incubus, American Gothic and Howling IV: The Original Nightmare. Golan wisely replaced Hough with Dwight H. Little, who had made a splash with Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and would go on to make competent popcorn pictures with Steven Seagal (Marked for Death) and Brandon Lee (Rapid Fire). Also, O'Hara got demoted to a "based on" credit after Duke Sandefur, who previously scripted the 1988 Charles Band obscurity Ghost Town and would later claim a co-writing credit on Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike, was brought in for cost-cutting rewrites, especially since Golan couldn't afford to shoot a chandelier crash with his diminished cash flow.

Although many have been quick to point out the ways in which O'Hara and/or Sandefur's script demonstrates fidelity to Gaston Leroux's inaugural novel (paying more than due respect to Leroux's fondness for Faust), the fact is that this is clearly more in line with Golan's unwavering opportunism. The pizza-faced poster art and Englund's cackling, hack 'n' slash interpretation of disgraced, lovelorn Erik [Destler] are obvious concessions to the Freddy phenomenon. There is no room for tragedy this time around, just brazen condescension.

The old adventures of New Christine also reflect a severe mistrust of the source material, as Erik spends more time predictably stalking than credibly seducing the girl soprano, embodied here by teen dream/scream queen Jill Schoelen (The Stepfather). Her Christine Day is actually a modern ingénue looking for her big break in Broadway, the "welcome to prime time, bitch" arriving via a runaway sandbag which knocks her into an unconscious time warp during her audition. Waking up in ancient London instead of Gay Paree (and recreated in Budapest), Christine is revealed as a cast member in Charles Gounod's opera of Faust, particularly as the replacement for spiteful diva La Carlotta (the late Stephanie Lawrence, undoubtedly cast for her association with Andrew Lloyd Webber).

Under the guise of a fatherly angel, Erik grooms Christine into a powerhouse performer and then bloodily orchestrates her ascension to center stage, eliminating their various foes along the way. The body count is so transparently beefed-up as to include a trio of tavern thugs who accost Erik down a foggy alleyway, and their demise is plucked straight from an Elm Street sequel script, glib retorts and all. Eventually, Christine's gentleman suitor Richard (Alex Hyde-White) and grizzled Inspector Hawking (Terence Harvey) work together to rescue Christine from the risible affection of the wicked Erik, who will have her for eternity dead or alive.

The Phantom's back story this time around involves an unfinished opera called "Don Juan Triumphant," which is discovered in present-day bookends by Christine and meant to create the sense of serendipity that binds them together in the past. Erik capriciously makes a deal with a pint-sized Devil which will allow his music to live forever at the expense of his love life, or at least Englund's hyena-style handsomeness. The rules in regards to how the Phantom is to be unleashed collapse through the stage floor when some shots reveal him as a blue-tinted shadow figure staring out superimposed over Christine in her dressing room, and others deliberately reveal Erik's face, or at least whatever visage he can assemble from the trophies of his victims.

Essentially, Erik Destler is Ed Gein in this scenario, and director Dwight Little offers no shortage of moments where Erik is sowing the skin of others onto his own disfigured flesh. This is meant to be the kind of splatter-punk inversion of the traditional Phantom disguise, but all it does is kill the mystery enough to render much of the action utterly ridiculous. This is especially true when Hawking conducts his search and seizes upon a motive, calling Erik "an artist who specializes in flesh." You'd figure he could catch Erik without the need of a rat-catching stool pigeon, but the script is so formulaic as to be utterly boring, especially when Hawking's search party heads into the sewer and get subsequently picked on and bumped off by the puckish Erik.

Englund's Phantom has no real chance to show genuine romance in regards to his pursuit of Christine, only coming across as another campy pervert (he even shackles up with a harlot to vent his sexual frustrations, calling her "Christine" instead of Maddie) and basement-occupied deviant. The chemistry between him and Jill Schoelen is non-existent, and I thought less of sparks flying than of embers dying, especially when I remember Schoelen would play out this same plot in the subsequent Popcorn, with a faceless serial killer swooping upon a cineplex. Here, Schoelen comes across more like a wooden child bride than a confused young woman, and she is sold distressingly short despite her beaming, bright-smiling charms. Bill Nighy and Molly Shannon, both of whom would make pretty big names for themselves later on, have minor roles as the show's immoral producer and Christine's best friend in the Manhattan wraparounds. Aside from them and Stephanie Lawrence, the rest of the cast are instantly forgettable.

The allure of sensual immortality and the deployment of skinned corpses immediately remind me of Clive Barker, who understands the delicate alchemy used to make proper viscerally-charged dramas of gore and gumption. Sadly, nobody behind the scenes of this are on that level of skill, and The Phantom of the Opera '89 reveals itself to be quite a stain. As an adaptation, it is misguided; as a slasher film, it's tedious; as a vehicle for Englund and Schoelen, it's half-baked. The movie does have a particularly nice level of Gothic detail in the cinematography and production design, but the staging and situations are not at all worthy of this craftsmanship.

Skip to either Dario Argento's 1987 Terror at the Opera, if you want this done right, or the Italian provocateur's own Phantom of the Opera retread from 1998 starring Julian Sands, if you need something amusingly bad. This mercenary murder-fest is the sad ghost of a brilliant idea, and better to call the curtains on it.