School Spirit

"School Spirit" is weird in the way it introduces an old fashioned Hollywood fantasy formula, and then does nothing with it, save for a few scenes where actors throw water on themselves and fall over and we are supposed to believe that the "spirit" did it.

The main character is a ghost who can make himself visible by running his hand through his hair. The movie establishes this, but most of the action has something to do with a smarmy jerk played by Larry Linville trying to do something that we don't want him to do because he's a smarmy jerk. I don't think the movie really establishes what the Linville character wants, or why we should hope it doesn't work out.

The movie has quite a bit of nudity from random models who I guess were flown in to take their tops off for the camera for a few dollars. None of the main female characters show any skin.

I have to point out that the first word in the title is misleading. Schools must not come cheap for filmmakers; most of these low budget teen sex comedies can't afford one. This movie has only one scene set in a school, a classroom scene. Most of the action takes place in the characters' houses.

What we end up with is a movie that does nothing with its starting premise and follows a subplot that comes too late and makes no sense. The only reason to watch is the nudity, and I guess it delivers on that front, though it disappoints in that none of the actual characters get naked, it's all just topless extras.

Addendum: I have seen many visible boom mics in movies, but this is one of the few where you can see the pole the boom is attached to, as well.

School Spirit, noooo!!!! The concept alone makes me wanna vomit, much less naming

a movie after such a heresy. Alas, the title is a charming play on words, as a young man who is killed in a car wreck en route to his first lay returns from the dead to.. to what?? Get some, I guess? Okay, he's a ghost. Sure, that's fine, we've seen it before and we'll see it again, it's an accepted film staple. But, a ghost that can make himself visible at will???!! NO!!! That's wrong! That's completely wrong, that defies the very principle of being a ghost! When you are a ghost, people can't see you! They can't touch you (unless you bond with them on some very emotional level like in that crap movie Ghost), they can't smell you, you are a GHOST! And you stay that way! You can't just snap your fingers

(or, in this case, wiggle your fingers on your head like Curly used to do on The Three Stooges) and become a living, sentient being again. That defies even basic religious precepts! Add to that the ridiculous notion that God would allow you a second chance on Earth just to "tap it".. jeez, this was rotten. Found it in the "mature" section, though suitable for 12 year olds. Minimal t&a but mass quantities of 80's frizzskank and terrible cliches. Also features poor old David Ogden Stiers as the dean.. From those goofy Armitraj brothers, who brought us Nine Deaths of The Ninja and innumerable other no-budget flicks.

My review was written in October 1985 after a Times Square screening.

"School Spirit" is a weak, low-budget comedy that arrives way too late in the overdone teen fantasy cycle. Announced as an Almi PIctures release last year, film debuted instead from Roger Corman's new distribution company in April 1985 in Atlanta.

Tom Nolan (imagine Michael J. Fox as a 6-foot-tall football player) toplines the overage-looking cast as Billy Batson (no relation to Captain Marvel), a college student who is killed in a car crash while rushing heedlessly home from a drugstore with an all-important condom to be down with campus beauty Judy (Elizabeth Foxx). His late uncle Pinky appears in the hospital as a transparent ghost to take Billy to heaven, but our hero, discovering that a hand motion (reminiscent of Curly's shtick for the Three Stooges) can materialize him as flesh-and-blood, escapes to stay on Earth one more day. Object: get laid.

With chintzy special effects, the pic's ghost gimmick is extraneous, mainly used for an obligatory scene of eavesdropping (invisibly) in the girls' shower room to ogle various siliconed cuties. Grainy photography, muffled sound recording and dinky production values all indicate that the picture was ground out carelessly as just another title for market.

Cast is sunk by the material, but executes the praffalls acceptably. Only surprise is the presence of a Corman mainstay of 15 years ago (in all those Filipino women's prison pictures) Roberta Collins as the perennially drunken wife of the college president.

"School Spirit" is an anonymous and by now largely forgotten mid-80's comedy that obviously just got made in order to cash in on the contemporary popular trend of sleazy and vulgar high school/college comedies. Bob Clark's "Porky's" kick-started the trend and copious replicas were released within the next couple of years, like "Zapped!", "Screwballs", "Revenge of the Nerds", "Loose Screws" and "Fraternity Vacation". These movies invariably revolve on dim-witted and usually nerdy kids with exclusively sex on their minds and became big box office hits because they occasionally feature naked boobs and perfectly shaped butt-cheeks. They're fun and completely harmless for as long as they last, but even more forgettable and dumb.

"School Spirit" tried to add a supernatural element to the generally straightforward concept of high-school comedy, which is presumably why it failed and ended up in B-movie oblivion. Billy Batson, the lead scoundrel of the bizarrely named Lavatoire College, is about to score (in the principal's office of all places) with the ambitious geek-girl Judith, but forgot to bring a protective rubber. In his haste of purchasing one, Billy causes a car accident and dies on the operating table. His guide towards the bright white light, however, is his perverted old uncle Pinky and he isn't in too much of a hurry. Billy grants himself one more day to fornicate with Judith, but instead there's plentiful of other stuff going on. Billy and his wild-partying buddies are preparing for "Hog-Day" and he encounters true love in the shape of French sponsor of the school.

The main purpose of a film like "School Spirit" becomes apparent not long after the supposedly deceased Billy discovers that he now has the ability to make himself invisible. What's the first thing a young and hormone-driven stud does with a powerful gift like that? That's right, he sneaks into the girls dormitory's bathroom and extendedly observes how they shower and rub soap all over their breasts. The clichés just keep on coming in this film (nerd kids discover the art of partying, two sworn best friends falling in love, the "evil" principal going bonkers, etc) and the dialogs are really dumb, but it's all so innocent and served with great enthusiasm that you simply cannot hate the film. The character of Pinky Batson is an old pervert, though, and if the film had been made in this day and age, his character undoubtedly would have been played by a much younger actor. There's a pretty immoral and deviant sequence in which the sleazy senior exposes a girl's breasts and butt while she's sleeping. I really don't see that happening in movies nowadays and righteously so. Other than that, you know exactly what to expect from this type of cheap and unpretentious 80's comedies: horrendous rock music soundtrack, badly acting but good-looking young people, a terribly forced happy ending and … T&A, of course!

I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't watch 80's "Porky's"-style comedies if you have a low tolerance for head-slapping stupidity. But this movies does REALLY push the envelope. A horny college student (Tom Nolan) dies in an auto accident while rushing to buy condoms to seal the deal with a sexy co-ed (this could be a commendable "safe sex" message, but since this event results in the rest of this movie, I'm not so sure). Through some technicality, the guy is allowed to remain on Earth as a "ghost", but a strange kind of ghost that everybody can see except when he taps the top of his head and becomes invisible, but apparently still corporeal. Thus, this ends up being a re-tread of "The Man who Wasn't There" (a much more famous movie in the 80's but one not yet on DVD). So does he use his new powers to sneak into the showers at the sorority? But, of course. After that though the movie turns into a "Caddyshack" snobs vs. slobs thing as the dead guy and his friends are celebrating their annual "Hog Day" party while uptight the school president (Larry "MASH" Linville,who could play this role in his sleep and pretty much does) tries to get a financial endowment from a wealthy French woman.

But let's get to the two most important things--the "T", and of course, the "A". There's generous helpings of both from anonymous actresses in the shower and "Hog Day" slip-n-slide scenes. The lead actresses all stay mostly dressed, however, including Elizabeth Foxx as the grade-grubbing co-ed our hero is initially trying to score with and Marta Kober as Linville's daughter. (Kober, who nicely fills out an 80's bikini here, is perhaps most famous for "Friday the 13th Part II" where she becomes the first of only two female characters in the entire series to actually be killed by Jason DURING sex). I can't complain too much about this aspect of the film, and I genuinely liked the punk-style band that was playing during the "Hog Day" party (usually these type of movies are lousy with horrid music).

I originally saw this on "USA Up All Night" nearly twenty years ago and I must have been especially drunk that night because they would have cut out all the T and A, and so the band at the end at the end would have been about the ONLY thing this had going for it.