School's out...of this world

Coming at the tail end of a decade featuring teen thrillers like "Scream" (1996) and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" (1997) is "The Faculty" (1998), a sci-fi film about high school teachers turning into aliens and taking over the school. A stereotypical, Breakfast Club-esque cast of teenagers including a geek (Elijah Wood), a jock (Shawn Hatosy), a spoiled girl (Jordana Brewster), an outsider (Clea Duvall) and a rebel (Josh Hartnett), find themselves defending the school against an alien takeover. The school's 'faculty' is peopled with plenty of familiar faces, as well. Robert Patrick is the hard-assed football coach and the first person infected and turned into an alien. School nurse Salma Hayek (a regular in films directed by "Faculty" director Robert Rodriguez) and science teacher Jon Stewart also fall victim, as do school principal Bebe Neuwirth and drama teacher Piper Laurie. Meek young teacher Famke Janssen, forever tormented by the rebel Zeke who at one point offers her chocolate laxatives hidden in a stash in the trunk of his car, turns into a vixen when the aliens take over the school. The movie has great dialogue and impressive special effects. It's a battle of students vs. teachers as the students try to find out who the head alien is, so they can destroy him or her. Drugs provided by the rebel (Josh Hartnett) figure into the plot as a way of killing the aliens and things eventually return to normal for the students and the faculty (one student even refers to the teachers as 'the faculty' at one point, which isn't usually how a student refers to his teachers). The movie is a little more violent than I would expect for an alien movie, with a pencil going throw someone's hand and a pen going through someone's eye, after the character who suffers this fate alludes to this very thing earlier in the film. Clearly, something is wrong with the teachers if pens and pencils aren't being used in the way they were intended. I had seen parts of this movie on TV years ago and had always wanted to see it in its entirety. I was very impressed with it, with the cast and the dark comedy of it.