My review was written in February 1989 after watching the movie on Academy video cassette.
Intriguing but disappointing, "After School" attempts to mix exploitation elements with the traditional morality tale. Pic received a modest regional release last year ahead of video.
Format of present-day moral crisis mirrored by intercutting with primitive man's behaviour thousands of years ago is a throwback to silent cinema, especially the work of Cecil B. DeMille. Confusion of content is reflected in pic's title changes, ranging from "Before God" and "Return to Eden" to distributor's racier "Private Tutor" and finally "After School".
Sam Bottoms toplines as a young priest teaching at St. Joseph's Catholic College in Florida who is selected to defend the faith on the Dick Cavett tv talk show against ex-priest Robert Lansing's book "Before God", which claims man created God in his own image.
While prepping for the debate, Bottoms falls in love with beautiful student Renee Coleman, whose own perceptive classroom questioning of church dogma adds to his doubts and ultimately forces Bottoms to go his own way, leaving Lansing victorious.
Pic's use of primitive man footage is a bit suspect, since it includes lots of topless scenes of beautiful cavewomen Alison Woodward, Jacqueline Rodriguez and Catherine Williams that are extraneous to the main action. Director William Olsen managed to juggle the commercial realities of exploitation filmmaking and thoughtful themes far more convincingly in his 1983 feature "Getting It On".
Bottoms is earnest in an old-fashioned style and the film drags on repetitively rather than developing its religious ideas. Coleman as his love interest is a fresh new actress worth watching (also seen to good effect as the kidnapped beauty in the recent release "Who's Harry Crumb?").
Tech credits are fine, with colorful lensing in the Orlando, Florida area.
