The Faculty (1998)

Plot of The Faculty: A group of students at a Texas High School are confronted by the possibility that some of the staff may have been taken over by aliens. The school magazine photographer, Casey, and Delilah, the editor hide in a cupboard in the staff room and see the nurse being disabled by the coach, already acting weirdly, and taken over by an alien parasite. Casey, Delilah, the school bad boy Zeke and others retreat to Zeke’s laboratory  where the experiment on a rat to find that it is taken over by a fragment of alien parasite. However, Zeke has been creating a drug distributed in the bodies of ball point pens, and they find that it will kill the alien. Somewhere out there, disguised as a human is the alien queen, and they think that if it can be killed everyone who has been invaded by the parasite will return to normal. But who is the queen, and will it work?

Content: No sex or nudity, but just a bit of teenage snogging. Also Zeke distributes his home made drug and people take it. The staff are weird in various ways and since the aliens are happiest in a watery environment, they are constantly drinking water and standing out in the rain. The students are gradually picked off, and are revealed as they are forced to take a test involving sniffing the drug, made by Zeke, but are the actually sniffing it? Some gross out scenes, the most memorable when Miss Burke, as an alien, is trying to recruit Zeke, and he crashes his car. She is flung through the windscreen and beheaded. The head sprouts tentacles and  makes its way to the body.

A View: This film was well liked and made money. It managed to focus on the teens without the cloying interaction which seems to be part of all young adult movies today. Obviously there are references to other horror films, particularly The Thing and the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but is no worse for that. So if you fancy a light-hearted alien invasion movie you can still give this vintage outing a view.

Fun Fact: For petrol heads the car in the movie is a 1970 Pontiac GTO.