Duane Martin | Through the Shattered Lens

After being passed over twice as a result of both a “brushing incident” with a Russian submarine and an embarrassing tattoo, Lt. Commander Thomas Dodge (Kelsey Grammer, playing Dodge as being the laid back opposite of Frasier Crane) has finally been promoted and given his own submarine to command. The catch is that the submarine is a rusty piece of junk from World War II and he’s been assigned a crew of misfits. Captain Dodge is to take part in a war game. Admiral Winslow (Rip Torn) wants Dodge to prove that even an out-of-commission submarine can be dangerous by infiltrating Charleston Harbor undetected and then blowing up a dummy warship in Norfolk Harbor. If Dodge is successful, he’ll get a nuclear submarine to command. If he fails, he’ll be assigned of desk job and probably leave the Navy. While the sympathetic Winslow encourages Dodge to “think like a pirate,” the antagonistic Admiral Graham (Bruce Dern) pulls out all the stops to make sure Dodge fails.

I imagine that Down Periscope was probably pitched as Police Academy In The Navy and it follows the general rules of the Police Academy films, right down to casting Lauren Holly as the one woman on the submarine who has to overcome her own insecurities and prove herself to all the men. Unfortunately, none of the misfits on the crew are as memorable as the cadets from Police Academy and the movie’s attempts to mix juvenile humor with suspenseful naval action are not at all successful. Having Rob Schneider go totally over the top as Dodge’s second-in-command while having William H. Macy give a serious performance as the captain assigned to prevent Dodge from reaching the harbor indicates that Down Periscope has a definite identity problem.

Harry Dean Stanton plays Howard, who is the submarine’s chief engineer and who uses whiskey as a fuel to keep the submarine moving. Toby Huss has a few amusing moments as the electrician who keeps electrocuting himself. Grammer, Dern, and Macy have more than proven their talents in other projects and Rip Torn will always be remembered for bringing Artie to profane life on The Larry Sanders Show. Director David Ward also directed Major League and wrote The Sting. A lot of talent went into making Down Periscope so it’s a shame the film wasn’t more memorable.

Have you ever wanted to see Jon Stewart get stabbed in the eye with a hypodermic needle?

If you answered yes, then 1998’s The Faculty might be the film for you!

The Faculty takes a look at what happens when a new alien species happens to turn up outside of a painfully normal high school in Ohio. By painfully normal, I mean that Herrington High School is just as messed up as you would expect a suburban high school to be. The teachers are all underpaid and resentful of their principal (Bebe Neuwrith). Prof. Furlong (Jon Stewart) is the overqualified science teacher who will perhaps be a little too excited about the chance to examine a new alien species. Coach Willis (Robert Patrick) is the emotionally shut off coach of the school’s losing football team. Mrs. Olson (Piper Laurie) is the drama teacher who struggles to promote creativity in a school that’s more interested in blind conformity. Miss Burke (Famke Janssen) is the teacher who cares too much. And, finally, there’s Nurse Harper (Salma Hayek), who looks a lot like Salma Hayek.

And, as typical as the teachers may be, the students are even more so. We get to know a few and they all neatly fit into the expected stereotypes. Casey (Elijah Wood) is the nerdy outcast who is regularly picked on by … well, by everyone. Deliliah (Jordana Brewster) is the status-obsessed head cheerleader who has just broken up with her boyfriend, Stan (Shawn Hatosy), because he quit the football team. Zeke (Josh Hartnett) is the school rebel, the kid who is repeating his senior year and who sells synthetic drugs out of the trunk of his car. Stokes (Clea DuVall) is an intentional outcast who pretends to be a lesbian and has a crush on Stan. And finally, there’s Marybeth (Laura Harris), a new transfer student who speaks with a Southern accent.

These students would seem to have nothing in common but they’re going to have to work together because the entire faculty of Herrington High has been taken over by aliens! Fortunately, the aliens are vulnerable to Zeke’s drugs, which is something that is learned after Jon Stewart takes a hypodermic to the eye…

When one looks over the top Texas filmmakers (director like Terrence Malick, Richard Linklater, Mike Judge, and David Gorden Green), Robert Rodriguez often comes across as being both the most likable and the least interesting. Like his frequent collaborator Quentin Tarantino, Rodriguez fills his movies with references and homages to other films but, unlike Tarantino, there rarely seems to be much going on behind all of those references. However, Rodriguez’s referential style works well in The Faculty because, along with acting as an homage to both Invasion of the Body Snatchers and John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Faculty also manages to tap into a universal truth.

Teachers are weird!

Or, at least, they seem weird when you’re a student. Now that I’m out of high school, I can look back and see that my teachers were actually pretty normal. They were people who did their jobs and, as much as I like to think that I was everyone’s all-time favorite, I’m sure that there have been other brilliant, asthmatic, redheaded, aspiring ballerinas who have sat in their class. My teachers spent a lot of time talking about things that I may not have been interested in but that wasn’t because they were obsessed with talking to me about algebra or chemistry or anything like that. They were just doing their job, just like everyone else does.

But, seriously, when you’re a student, it’s easy to believe that your teachers have been possessed by an alien life form.

Probably the best thing about The Faculty is the fact that the aliens cause the teachers to act in ways that are the exact opposite of their usual personalities. For most of the teachers, this means that they turn into homicidal lunatics. But, in the case of Coach Willis, this actually leads to him not only becoming a happy, well-adjusted human being but it also turns him into a good coach. Suddenly, Willis is getting emotional about the games, his team loves him, and he even gets a win!

Go Coach Willis!

As for the film itself, it’s not bad at all.

Lisa’s rating: 7 out of 10.