Cutting Class

I’ll watch about any 80’s slasher flick if given the chance. As a child, I had posters of Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers lining my walls. There’s something in my DNA that adores that particular genre in that particular decade. It’s probably the numerous outlandish ways they found to get rid of their victims. Cutting Class definitely has some classic kills. Death by copy machine! Baking the art teacher in the ceramic kiln! And who could forget the ol’ flagpole through the trampoline (Eli Roth stole this one for his Grindhouse Thanksgiving trailer to humorous effect)? It’s just too bad that the plot really gives no reason for them to happen.

High school senior Paula (Jill Schoelen aka teen Blake’s big crush) is being left alone for the week by her District Attorney father (Martin Mull). Before he goes on to hunting trip, he reinforces the rules he expects her to follow while he’s gone. “NO CUTTING CLASS” seems to be most important. It’s a lame setup to a joke that comes at the end of the movie. In fact, it’s so lame that I was shocked that something so stupid could be ever actually make it into a film. Thankfully Martin Mull had the dignity to deliver it anyway. This happens to be the same day that Brian Woods (Donovan Leitch) returns to class. Brian had the unfortunate luck to have been placed in a mental hospital after he did such a minor thing as murder his father. Unfortunately, Woods has taken a liking to Jill, and her asshole boyfriend Dwight (young Mr. Brad Pitt in a defining film role) isn’t down for someone else buttering his bread. Complicating the situation is the fact that Brian and Dwight were best friends before the murder (and that Brian refused to name Dwight as his unwitting accomplice). The school’s principal (Roddy McDowall feigning interest in a girl) is constantly sexually harassing young Paula (not that she really notices), and I would be completely retarded if I didn’t mention the bat-shit insane school janitor that tells students that he’s “custodian of their fucking destiny.” Long story short… a murderer kills various students and faculty of the high school while Paula studies through the entire film. She’s definitely taken her father’s rules to heart. She’s studying in every fucking scene. I’m not sure, but I think she might have been studying as she was running for her life. That’s taking overachieving to a whole new level. She’s so obsessed with making good grades that it carries over to others as well. Like any teenage boy, Dwight wants to have sex with his girlfriend, but she holds out on him stating, “Not until your grades improve!”

The film tries to make itself a “whodunit.” This might have worked if they hadn’t already told us that an insane murderer was released at the same time the murders start occurring. Seriously! Either the filmmakers are moronic, or they believe their audience is. Brian kills people for no reason at all. The art instructor makes him and Paula model for the class in an extremely close sexual pose, so Brian fries him in the ceramics kiln. He must’ve killed his dad because he gave him one too many Christmas presents. I might have forgiven this flawed narrative if the film had even tried to work toward some suspense, but the kills are dropped right in your lap with no build-up at all. At least I’ll always love the scene in which the math teacher’s head meets an axe because he couldn’t figure out a math problem that Brian wrote on the chalkboard.

All in all, Cutting Class isn’t that great of a movie, but if you stick to it you’ll be rewarded with some good kills and a very entertaining finale (battle in the machine shop!) and the comedic skills of Martin Mull.

Oh yeah… Brad Pitt’s head in a vice: