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 Closets are dark, cavernous things, fit for cramming skeletons into. Every big actor has one. No one STARTED OUT on the A-List. Clint Eastwood has TARANTULA, Tom Hanks has BOSOM BUDDIES and Jack Nicholson not only has the Roger Corman movies he made, but his happy ass wrote the screenplay for HEAD… Which starred The Monkees. And Brad Pitt has CUTTING CLASS (Directed by Rospo Pallenberg). You know, I’d say it’s from his “wooden plank” stage as a younger actor but ya know, with the exception of a couple of movies he made in the mid nineties, it’s not really a stage he grew out of. Oh well. At least it’s better than BABEL.
Two things I give less than a damn about (the nineteen eighties and Brad Pitt) collide in this dutifully forgotten slasher “classic” from 1989. C’mon kids, we all know the words! There’s a killer on the loose at a High School and it’s up to our bland-as-dry-toast heroine Paula (Jill Schoelen) to figure out who it is. Is it creepy-as-all-hell Brian, (Donovan Leitch Jr.) who just got out of a mental institution for doing in his Dad and has a habit of popping up in the damnedest places? Or is it hunky beefcake Dwight, (Pitt) who has serious anger and entitlement problems? Whodunitry and Red-Herringism ensues.
In what is billed as a campy horror comedy, the attempts at humor fall flat in some places and in others, just come off as creepy. Not the thrills and chills in a horror movie kind of creepy. No, it’s the carrying a picture of John Wayne Gacy in your wallet and calling him “Uncle Jack” kind of creepy. The “Voting for Mitt Romney and Being Really Proud of It” kind of creepy. One needs look no further than the late Roddy MacDowell’s turn as Mr. Dante, the principal of the school. At one point he gives Paula a new Cheerleader outfit and invites her to his office to get it. “It’s on the floor,” he says, and has her bend over to get it so he can have a look at her undies. Ick. No, it’s not that the principal wants to fuck his student, no, that I can handle. It’s that RODDY MCDOWELL wants to fuck a student. I know he was a human being like the rest of us, but… JESUS H. CHRIST, IT’S RODDY MACDOWELL! He’s all fey and English and I… I just don’t want to think about that!
Anyway, with the exception of Martin Mull as Paula’s father, who gets shot with an arrow in the first five minutes and spends the rest of the movie walking home, I don’t think this movie was intended as a comedy at all. It takes itself deadly serious as huge lapses in logic aren’t given a second thought. Two kids and a teacher disappear… AND NO ONE SAYS ANYTHING! A janitor mops up blood in the school gym after a basketball game and he opts not to tell anyone about this. I guess the budget couldn’t include a cop car or a fake badge for the sake of credibility. Nope, the video company just saw a laughably bad movie and just ran with it. The back of the little Netflix sleeve said it was a “campy teen whodunit” and I was left decamped and not caring whodunit. I’d rather think about other things than write about this movie. It’s gotten so bad that I looked at the above paragraph and my Microsoft Word Spellcheck informs me that “decamped” is an actual word, as evidenced by the lack of the little red squiggle beneath it… I just thought I’d share that with you.
But you don’t want to hear about the movie. You want to hear about Brad. Well, when we first see him we think “Holy shit, it’s Brad Pitt!” Then he blends into the woodwork and we don’t give him a second thought… Kind of like now. I’m surprised he hasn’t done what George Lucas did with the STAR WARS Christmas Special and used his influence to have release of the movie blocked. Heads will roll if this ever shows up on his AFI tribute in a few years. What I’d really like to do is travel to whatever third world country he and Angie are staying at for their impending addition to their Orphan collection and stand outside their palatial residence. And lo, I shall raise a television playing CUTTING CLASS over my head Lloyd Dobler style with the sound blaring… Just to keep him grounded.
Anyway, when it comes to embarrassing past projects from present-day big stars that have an art teacher dying in a kiln, a killer who quotes YANKEE DOODLE DANDY during his killing spree and features the chick that exploded into a million little slugs in SLITHER… I think CUTTING CLASS ranks about fifth. But do know this: That if you watch it, you will make Brad Pitt cry. Oh yeah, and the terrorists will win, but I’m sure you already knew that.
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